Remembering Liverpool Structures - The Tower Building

There had been a townhouse on the Liverpool shore going back as far as the 13th Century with the first being a sandstone mansion built in 1256.  Its first owner is not known, but by 1360 it was owned by the landowner Sir Robert Lathom, whose daughter Isabella de Lathom married Sir John Stanley in 1385. By the beginning of the 15th century ownership had now passed to Sir John Stanley who, in 1406, gained permission from King Henry V to fortify his stone built house, having had the old house pulled down, which was then named the Tower of Liverpool. Situated at the shore end of Water Street by the river he used it as an embarkation base to travel to his property in the Isle of Man. Water Street was one of the original seven streets of Liverpool, originally called 'Bonke Street' as 'Bonke' was Lancashire dialect for 'bank' i.e. taken from river bank. Through the years it became Bank Street and then eventually Water Street in the 1520s. With smaller buildings attached, the Tower occupied three sides of a courtyard and had gardens to the north and east. It is likely it was an occasional residence of the Stanley family, waiting for a favourable wind to proceed to the Isle of Man, or upon the occasion of some important event which called upon them to pay a visit to the town. In 1485, the Stanley family became the Earls of Derby but the Tower was forfeited and sequestrated when James Stanley, Lord Derby, was beheaded on the 15th of October 1651 for his treason to the Commonwealth.
It was then probably alternately occupied by whichever party, Royalist or Parliamentary, happened to be in power in Liverpool, and used as a temporary prison. After the execution of Lord Derby, contracts were made by the trustees of the forfeited estates for the sale of various portions, and Alexander Greene entered into an agreement for either the lease or the purchase of the Tower outright. In 1651 Lord Molyneux had been captured and brought into Liverpool, after plotting with Lord Derby to take it, and was temporarily imprisoned in the Tower, under Greene's charge. In May 1653 Greene contracted to buy the Tower, but he was probably only a 'dummy' set up by the Derby family to purchase it as a few years later the eighth Earl of Derby took back the Tower into his possession. By July 1665 Charles, Earl of Derby, was once more in possession and on the 14th of that month granted a lease of it to Lawrence Halstead of Rooley, Lancs, gent, and George Hill of St. Clements Danes, London, gent. It would appear that they held the lease in trust for Ruth Greene of Manchester, the widow of Alexander Greene, and the daughter of Thomas Atherton of Liverpool and his wife Ruth.

In 1669 Lord Derby sent a messenger to the Mayor, demanding possession of the houses "lately erected between my house called the Tower and the sea," which doubtless were a great obstruction and annoyance to his tenant. This demand the Corporation declined to comply with, on the grounds that the houses were built on Corporation land, and apparently they successfully maintained their ownership. In 1682 we find Mrs.Atherton entering into an agreement with 'Thomas Clayton of Liverpool, Merchant,' for the sale of her interest in the Tower. Thomas Clayton, merchant, of Adlington and Liverpool, the uncle of William Clayton, M.P. was initially the lessee of the Tower from 1682, and its occupier in 1708. On the death, in 1702, of the ninth Earl of Derby, his estates, including the Tower of Liverpool had passed to his daughter Henrietta as heiress. She married Lord Anglesey in 1706, and subsequently Lord Ashburnham in 1714. The marriage settlement stated that the Tower, with many manors and other estates, was vested in trustees for the purpose of raising funds to perfect the trust. However in 1717 it became necessary to sell outright many of the properties and the Tower was sold next to Richard Clayton of Adlington. 

The Merchants Coffee House ( courtesy of @BygoneLiverpool )

 

In 1737 the Town Council decided that the common Gaol of Liverpool in Castle Hill was too small, and leased the vaults and rooms of the Tower, with the upper rooms being used for civic functions. Later the house at the corner of Tower Gardens commanding the entrance up to the Churchyard, occupied by Robert Linnaker, mariner, was also leased. One of the cellars in the Tower, known as the Leather Hall, on the 6th of November 1745 was fitted up as a guardroom for the soldiers. Steps were then taken to make the Tower into a Prison, with rooms for a House of Correction, and iron grates, ceilings and other things being removed from the old prison and refitted here. The Tower had 7 small underground dungeons, each approx 6' square with between 3-5 prisoners per dungeon, so 'jail fever' was prevalent. A room at the Tower was also used as a Chapel and later became the Debtors Room. During the Seven Years' War with France, from 1756 onwards, large numbers of French prisoners, captured by the Liverpool privateers, were brought into the town with many of them being imprisoned in the Tower.

Tower Building 1856 by A J Picton

In 1774, a proposal was made to the Corporation by the now owners, Rev. John Clayton, and his brother, Sir Richard, for the sale outright of the Tower and its precincts. This proposal was agreed to and these properties were conveyed to the Corporation by the Rev. John Clayton by a deed dated the 11th of November 1775. A new prison was built in Great Howard Street, and the Tower building ceased to be used for this purpose in 1811. For some years after the Tower remained an unproductive asset of the Corporation, and finally, in October 1819, it was decided to pull down what remained of it to widen Water Street, and to sell the materials by auction. The site was used for a row of warehouses until, in 1846, the first structure to be known as Tower Buildings was built to a design by Sir James Picton and the offices known as Tower Buildings were erected and opened in 1857. In 1877 two men convicted of robbery were executed in Water Street opposite the Old Tower. A thick belt of houses had over time sprang up alongside the Tower including Merchants' Coffee House and Assembly Rooms, which stood next to 'the Strand', at the south-west corner of the churchyard - ( see picture above ). In 1883 all these houses, and part of the churchyard, were purchased by the Corporation in order to widen the street alongside George's Dock. In the course of time this building again became obsolete, and in 1907, it was pulled down to make room for a huge pile of offices and opened under the old name of Tower Buildings.

The present building, one of the first steel-framed buildings in England, was designed in 1906 by Walter Aubrey Thomas, who also designed the Royal Liver Building, with its construction completed in 1910. In 2006 it was converted into apartments, and into units for commercial and retail use.

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/09/remembering-liverpool-structures-st.html