History
The house is dated 1867 and was designed by John Douglas. It was the most ambitious of Douglas' early works and one of the largest houses he designed. Douglas also designed the two entrance lodges. It had been built for John & Thomas Johnson, merchants and chemical manufacturers of Runcorn. However they lost all their ships in the blockade of Charleston in 1865 and subsequently became bankrupt. The house was bought from them by John Higson, a Liverpool merchant, who became the house's first resident. He was followed by John Hayes Higson and then by Captain William Higson, the head of Higson's Brewery in Liverpool.
In 1943 the house was bought by the Miners’ Welfare Commission and it became a rehabilitation centre for injured miners. In 1951 it became part of the National Health Service, initially for rehabilitation for people injured in industrial accidents, and later for rehabilitation for all groups of people, including children. It has been converted into flats.
Read more about this topic: Oakmere Hall
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)