At the very beginning of the nineteenth century, Liverpool was a prosperous and expanding town, and the wealthy elite were looking for a place to admire and to be admired in, within the boundaries. And so the first twenty years of the 1800s saw the former peat bog of ‘Moss Lake’ drained and arranged in orderly geometric patterns, the creation of the first Botanic Garden, and the first houses and gardens of Abercromby Square built.
For a period of time, this was the place to be in Liverpool, and the occupants of the Georgian terraces read like a Who’s Who of Liverpool. The Gladstone family, the Melly’s, and the MacIvers of Cunard fame to name just three rubbed neighbourly shoulders with the proprietors of the Liverpool Post and Echo, judges, surgeons, bankers, ship-owners and ambassadors.