Thornton Manor is a large manor house in the village of

Thornton Hough Thornton Hough () is a village on the Wirral Peninsula, in Merseyside, England, of pre-Conquest origins. The village grew during the ownership of Joseph Hirst into a small model village and was later acquired by William Lever, founder of Lever ...

, Wirral,

Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan county, metropolitan and ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of List of ceremonial counties of England, 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Merse ...

, England. It is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, an ...

as a designated Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The house was first built in the middle of the 19th century and has been altered and extended in a number of phases since. From 1888 to the end of the 20th century the house was occupied by the Viscounts Leverhulme.

History

The land on which the house stands was owned originally by the

Mostyn Mostyn is a village and community in Flintshire, Wales, and electoral ward lying on the estuary of the River Dee, located near the town of Holywell. It has a privately owned port that has in the past had a colliery and ironworks and was invol ...

family of North Wales. The land was bought in 1849 by Charles William Potts, a solicitor. It is thought that he built the

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

, but there is no evidence that he lived there. In 1863 Potts sold the house and land to Thomas Brittain Forwood, a businessman who died in 1884. His son, Sir William Forwood, chairman of

Liverpool Overhead Railway The Liverpool Overhead Railway (known locally as the Dockers' Umbrella or Ovee) was an overhead railway in Liverpool which operated along the Liverpool Docks and opened in 1893 with lightweight electric multiple units. The railway had a number ...

, let the house to

William Lever William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme , (, ; 19 September 1851 – 7 May 1925) was an English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician. Having been educated at a small private school until the age of nine, then at church schools ...

(later 1st

Viscount Leverhulme Viscount Leverhulme, of the Western Isles in the Counties of Inverness and Ross and Cromarty, was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom created in 1922 for the industrialist and philanthropist William Lever, 1st Baron Leverhulme. He had ...

), builder of the soap factory and

model village A model village is a type of mostly self-contained community, built from the late 18th century onwards by landowners and business magnates to house their workers. Although the villages are located close to the workplace, they are generally phys ...

Port Sunlight Port Sunlight is a model village and suburb in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside. It is located between Lower Bebington and New Ferry, on the Wirral Peninsula. Port Sunlight was built by Lever Brothers to accommodate workers in it ...

, in 1888.

Leverhulme era

Thornton Manor became the home of the Viscounts Leverhulme. William Lever bought the house in 1893 and lived here from 1888 until 1919, retaining ownership until his death in 1925. Lever started on a series of alterations and additions soon after his purchase. The architect Jonathan Simpson made some minor alterations but the first major work was designed by the

Chester Chester is a cathedral city and the county town of Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Dee, close to the English–Welsh border. With a population of 79,645 in 2011,"2011 Census results: People and Population Profile: Chester Loca ...

firm

Douglas and Fordham John Douglas (11 April 183023 May 1911) was an English architect who designed over 500 buildings in Cheshire, North Wales, and northwest England, in particular in the estate of Eaton Hall. He was trained in Lancaster and practised throug ...

in about 1896. This constituted the main block of the house and was in

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...

style. In 1899 stables designed by J. J. Talbot were built and around this time a kitchen and service quarters designed by Grayson and

Ould Ould is an English surname and an Arabic name ( ar, ولد). In some Arabic dialects, particularly Hassaniya Arabic, ولد‎ (the patronymic, meaning "son of") is transliterated as Ould. Most Mauritanians have patronymic surnames. Notable p ...

were added. In 1902 a music room followed, also designed by Talbot, and this formed a new block to the northeast of the main block. Two years later a temporary ballroom was built, which was later converted into a swimming pool. A porch was added to the south front in 1906, changing the main entrance to the house from the west to the south. A gatehouse designed by J. Lomax-Simpson was built in 1910; the base of this is in stone and its upper part is

half-timbered Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...

. In 1913 a major reconstruction of the house took place when Elizabethan-style wings were added to the west side of the house. Lomax-Simpson was again the architect. In the process of the reconstruction, most of the work designed by Douglas and Fordham was demolished, leaving from their design only two shaped

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

s and semicircular

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or r ...

s. Plans for further enlargement of the house were prepared by Lomax-Simpson, but these were not built because of the outbreak of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. The 1st Viscount Leverhulme died in May 1925 and the house was inherited by his son, William, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme. He died in May 1949 and the house passed to his son, Philip, 3rd Viscount Leverhulme. Lord Leverhulme died in July 2000, and, the following year, the house was sold with planning permission to convert it into a hotel. The house contents sale broke the UK record by raising £10 million in 2001.

Architecture

The house is built in stone with

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

roofs. It has three storeys and an irregular plan. The entrance front faces southwest and has protruding wings on both sides. Behind the house, at an angle towards the northeast, is the wing containing the music room. The windows are

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid supp ...

ed and a number of them are in

canted Cant, CANT, canting, or canted may refer to: Language * Cant (language), a secret language * Beurla Reagaird, a language of the Scottish Highland Travellers * Scottish Cant, a language of the Scottish Lowland Travellers * Shelta or the Cant, a lan ...

, two-storey bays. The stables extend to the northwest.

Grounds

The park was first laid out during Forwood's ownership. It included paths, a small

summer house A summer house or summerhouse has traditionally referred to a building or shelter used for relaxation in warm weather. This would often take the form of a small, roofed building on the grounds of a larger one, but could also be built in a garden ...

and a bridge. The gardens as they are now, were planned by Thomas H. Mawson and the 1st Viscount. The kitchen garden contains a

loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior gallery or corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the ground level of a building. The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a series of columns ...

dated 1912, and there is another loggia to the southeast of the house; both were designed by Lomax-Simpson. To the northeast of the house is a structure known as ''The Lookout'', which was designed in 1896 by Douglas and Fordham. A lake lies to the west of the house. A system of tree-lined avenues was laid out in 1912–14 by Lomax-Simpson, and has a total length of about .

Present day

The Manor House is now privately owned and is available to hire for weddings and events.

British Prime Minister The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet and selects its ministers. As modern p ...

Boris Johnson Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (; born 19 June 1964) is a British politician, writer and journalist who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He previously served as F ...

and Irish

Taoiseach The Taoiseach is the head of government, or prime minister, of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The office is appointed by the president of Ireland upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Oireachtas, Ireland's national legisl ...

Leo Varadkar Leo Eric Varadkar ( ; born 18 January 1979) is an Irish politician who has served as Taoiseach since December 2022, and previously from 2017 to 2020. He served as Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment from June 2020 to De ...

held private talks at Thornton Manor on 10 October 2019 in relation to

Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or ...

. During the evening of 5 February 2022 a substantial fire took hold in the main building requiring the attendance of eight fire engines. The venue and ownership have since come under intense criticism for their refusal to refund couples who had weddings booked, students who had a graduation booked there and persons who had rooms booked during the fire and lost possessions.

References