When it was suggested that we check out a care home, I was a little bit unenthusiastic. I've seen abandoned care homes before. I've worked in care homes where staffing issues make them seem pretty abandoned, and I've worked in care homes where they'd actually be improved if the staff did abandon them. So I kinda thought I knew what to expect in this one.
I was wrong. This one was gorgeous, and it has history. Let's slip inside.
Check it out! This was evidently a fancy home at some point, and a quick google search brought me to the usual copy & paste news stories and urbex reports, all of which said that this care home had once been the home of a ship owner, "Gerard Lockett," in the 1930s. The news reports slip it in like they expect everyone to know who Gerard is. It's worded something like "The care home, once the home of Gerard Lockett...,"and that's literally the only mention. It's like they slid it in because it's a claim to fame.
But who is Gerard Lockett? What's his story? Well it would have helped me find out much quicker if the papers got his name right. It's Gerald, with an L. I also found that narrowing down his time here to the 1930s was a bit of an understatement too, and describing him as a ship owner really didn't do him justice.
Already we're off to a great start. Naturally I had to dig deeper...
I found that the house was initially built in the 1860s for the sugar refiner, Charles James Crosfield, and just to give it that Colonial-era twist that nobody asked for, he named it after his sugar plantation in Guyana. But he didn't stay here. He may have had it built, but it's the Locketts who called it home.
A hallway fireplace is quite an interesting touch. I can't imagine it saw much action before it was bricked off. Above it is a religious sculpture of an angel talking to a ginger kid.
"No, you can't go to heaven if you don't have a soul, soz."
Onto the dining area...
Here is the very fancy dining room, where the Crosfields and then the Locketts would have eaten their meals.
It
was in 1833 that the company "William & John Lockett" was founded,
advertising themselves as ship owners and wine dealers. There are
numerous Williams and numerous Johns in the Lockett brood, but it
certainly seems likely that this John in question was a "John Hilton
Lockett," born in 1799. He is said to still be head of the company as of 1871,
but also working with him are his sons, William Jeffrey Lockett and
Another Fucking John because these people have no imagination. William
Jeffrey Locketts son "Jessie," also ended up working there and most
notably a "Richard Robertson Lockett" began working there in 1876.
Richards life in the 1870s just seems to be going from strength to strength. He made a fortune in the South American Nitrate trade, married his love Isabella in 1872 and shot his DNA into her to produce a couple of adorable crotchfruit, Richard Cyril Lockett in 1873 and then Norah in 1875, before joining the family business. With his new family growing, and being fucking loaded, Richard decided to splash out on a fancy new house, and ended up buying this place. It was a fixer-upper in the beginning. Throughout the 1880s, Richard had the interior designers S J Waring & Sons, whose client list included Queen Victoria herself, transform his home into something resembling an Elizabethan manor. This dining room was completed in 1895, and thanks to the internet, we can see how it looked back then.
The Dining Hall. (Photo not mine, obviously)
So Gerald Gonville Lockett, the one member of the brood that the media has decided to focus on, was born in 1879 which means he probably came kicking and screaming into the world right here in this house.
The 1881 census mentions that he was two at the time, while the older siblings Richard Cyril and Norah were eight and five. The census also mentions another John Lockett, who was three at the time, and a newborn who the parents decided to name, God only knows why, Garstang Bradstock Lockett.
That poor kid isn't even one yet and we already know he's going to get bullied in school.
But as you can see, it's a little weird that the media decided to focus on Gerald when he is one of many Locketts who would have lived in this house.
Also mentioned as living here in the 1881 census is Elizabeth Paterson, who is Richards Mother-in-law and Gerald's maternal grandmother. They also had four servants who the census also names. There's 23-year-old Mary Melville, 47-year-old Mary Fulham, 20-year-old Mary Waddell, and just to prove that they aren't just collecting Marys, 44-year-old Sarah Lightfoot. So in total, twelve people lived here. It must have been a pretty busy household.
This area is quite literally falling to pieces. There's a chasm between me and the fireplace.
This fireplace is in what was once the lounge of the family home, and it's got some pretty nice tiles there, one depicting a couple riding on horseback. It was the tiles that helped me match this fireplace with an older photo from the 1890s.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
It sure is strange to look at this fireplace now and imagine Elizabeth, or Richard, or any of the other occupants sat here chilling with a book and a glass of wine or something.
The census of 1891 gives us a few more details. It seems that in 1888, Richard and Isabella had another child, Elizabeth Sybil. And, I might be panicking at the wrong disco here, but it seems suspicious to me that the couple went at it like rabbits for nearly a decade, producing a brood of five with one to three year intervals, before waiting nearly a decade and suddenly having another. It was like the spark died, and then something happened. Maybe I'm just a cynic when it comes to long-term monogamy but I can't help but wonder if there's a story here waiting to be uncovered.
The 1891 census lists Elizabeth Sybil as two years old, while her siblings are eighteen, fifteen, twelve and ten. Interestingly Isabella's mother, Elizabeth, is listed as a "visitor" despite the previous census proving that she's been there for a decade now. And what's also interesting is that the servants have all been replaced. There are five now. Charlotte Cox who is 24, Mary Hirans who is 32, Sarah Jones who is 26, Elena Shallcross who is 24, and Sarah Griffiths who is 17. Having no experience working as a Victorian-era servant, I can't say for sure how long servants were typically retained by their wealthy employers, but it does seem odd that all of them were replaced in the span of a decade. But even so, this paints quite a picture of the household, and I can't help but wonder about what it was like. Did Mary Hirans feel lonely, being the oldest servant among colleagues who were each of a more relatable age to each other? Was Sarah Griffiths also friends with Richard and Norah Lockett, what with them all being roughly the same age? It's intriguing.
But it's impossible to find much on the servants. Their story will go untold for now. Even the information on the family is pretty vague. But what I do know is that the daughter, Norah, got married in 1901, and according to the census her husband moved into this place with the Locketts. His name was Dudley Baines Forwood, and now that we're entering into the 20th Century, it's easier to find photos of these people.
Dudley Baines Forwood. (Photo not mine, obviously)
So as you can probably tell from the uniform, Dudley fought in the first world war. I find it particularly odd that he decided to move in with his new wife and her family, because the Forwoods weren't exactly poor. Dudley's father had been the mayor of Liverpool in 1878. There's a statue of him in the city and everything! This was a pretty wealthy family. But for some reason, at this moment in time, Dudley and Norah were unable to move into their own home.
But perhaps they had intended to inherit the family home. Norah's father, Richard Robertson Lockett, passed away in this house in 1905, at the age of 59. Norah's older brother, Richard Cyril, also moved away at some point prior to 1901. Norah was the oldest remaining child, married and still living at the family home. It made sense that she might inherit it and start a family of her own.
And so in February 1908, Norah and Dudley had a child, Arthur. But rather sadly he passed away in May. It must have been a sad time for the family. Norah had lost her father and her baby in just three years.
I want to touch briefly on Richard Cyril Lockett, because even though he moved away, he still grew up in his house. This place is part of his story too.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Richard Cyril Lockett doesn't show up on the 1901 census, so evidently he had moved out by then. In 1906 he began collecting coins from around the world. In fact by the 1920s his coin collection was one of the largest in the UK, taking up an entire room of his house. He also became the chairman of the William & John Lockett Ltd shipowners company, so he was pretty important. Gerald himself would become a business partner in 1911, and later become the director.
But as of the 1911 census most of the Lockett kids had grown up and moved out. The father had passed away. Richard Cyril had moved out. John and Garstang Barstool had moved out. Isabella's mother seems to have passed away too, while Isabella herself is mentioned as the head of the household at 62. Norah is still there, 35 years old and listed as "Lady Forwood," while her husband Dudley is still present. Gerald is still there at 32, and so is Elizabeth Sybil, youngest of the pack at only 22 years old.
The census lists four servants, Margaret, Sarah, Jane and Agnus, along with a cook named Annie, so it's fair to say the place was still full of life in spite of all of the loss.
Onto the recreation room.
This was obviously the recreation room back when the place was a care home, but if we look at photos from 120 years ago we can see that it was also once the Locketts billiards room.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Beneath the wall-mounted taxidermy head is a cupboard which blends into the walls quite nicely. Now it's wide open and empty, but I wonder if back then it held the snooker cues.
In 1912, still presumably occupying this house, Dudley and Norah had another child, Dudley Richard Forwood. This guy is perhaps the most historically significant member of the household, going on to become equerry to former King Edward, who had one of the shortest times as a monarch in British history.
King Edward had fallen in love with a woman called Wallis Simpson, who had *GASP* been divorced twice! This simply wouldn't do. The Royal Family will gladly and unashamedly have a nonce or two, but a woman who had been married previously was apparently not one fit to marry a King. Poor Edward was given the choice, the crown or his love. He reigned for less than a year, and was replaced by his brother George.
Had Edward not married Wallis Simpson, then the UK would never have had King George, and subsequently never had Queen Elizabeth or Old Sausage Fingers currently. So it's really interesting to think that Edwards choice had such a ripple effect.
It was when he was still a Prince that Edward and Wallis met Dudley Richard Forwood.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Dudley met Edward and Wallis in Austria in 1934, where he was meant to be Prince Edwards Aide-de-camp. He thought he would be expected to sit in a hotel room and take telephone calls, but Edward invited him to come skiing with them. They remained friends, with Dudley becoming Edwards equerry after he stepped down from being King. Dudley says that being forced to give up the crown broke Edward, as did the fact that the woman he loved was ostracised by his family.
Nevertheless, Edward was proud, and still insisted that his employees treated him as they would if he were king.
In 1937, Dudley joined Edward and Wallis on a trip to Nazi Germany to meet Hitler, a trip which gave rise to many rumours that they were Nazi sympathisers. Dudley himself defended Edward on this, albeit admitting that he did find Hitler likeable. He denies any knowledge of the Nazis rather notorious crimes against human rights. In fact he says that when they asked what these big concrete buildings were, the Nazis told them that it was where they kept cold meat. Technically it wasn't a lie, but it would still have shocked them to look inside. Dudley Forwood says that Edwards main motivation was simply to provide
his wife with a state visit. That is, a formal invitation for one ruler
to go to another country to meet their ruler. No longer King, he
couldn't provide such a thing for the woman he loved, so when Hitler
invited them, he did the polite thing and accepted.
All of them hanging out with Hitler (Photo not mine, obviously)
The popular rumours are that they made a deal for Hitler to reinstate Edwards title as the King if the coming war went in Hitlers favour. Personally I think this is just the media being a rabid dog with a chew toy, with Edward and Wallis being the Harry and Meghan of their generation. Hitler was sympathetic to their situation, but that doesn't make them Nazis. Edward went on record saying that he thought Hitler was nice but somewhat ridiculous, and Dudley would go on to fight for the UK in the second world war.
The thing is, the UK wasn't at war with Germany until 1939, and in the preceding years there was still an attempt to keep the peace. Edward personally expressed a desire for a unified Europe to take out the growing threat in Russia, so his priorities clearly weren't pro-Nazi, but more about working with them.
Edward did say that the British and German people were one, because they shared the same origins, to which Dudley commented that his employer had clearly forgotten the Norman conquest. That's pretty funny.
Onto the Drawing Room.
A drawing room is a place in old stately homes where all the socialising would be done. It's named such because it's the opposite of the "withdrawing room" where one would withdraw for privacy. It's a really pretty room, and I just so happen to have a centuryish-old image that shows it as it was.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
It would have been a pretty amazing place back in the day. I'm quite fond of that curtain in the arched centre, which could separate this area into two rooms if need be.
So far the occupants have included the sons of mayors, men with famous coin collections, and an equerry of a deposed King who met Hitler. All of this further makes me wonder why the mainstream media decided to focus on the fact that an otherwise unassuming ship owner lived here too. Let's talk about Gerald for a bit, and try to figure out what made him so special to the mainstream media.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Oh, now it all makes sense! They thought he was one of the Chuckle Brothers!
In all fairness, Gerald Gonville Lockett was pretty successful. Not only was he quite high in the company business, but in his spare time he raced pigeons, and founded his local championship pigeon club. His passion for pigeon racing got him a place in the military's pigeon service during the first world war, where pigeons were used to send messages. Evidently his arch nemesis in wartime would have been Dick Dastardly.
Gerald married a lady named Evelyn Mawdsley in 1927, but seems to have stayed in this house with his mother, eventually being the sole sibling to do so. Norah and her husband moved out by 1938, and the others were long gone.
I did read a little chunk of newspaper from 1919 which made mention that
"Lockett Brothers & Co," formerly "W&J Lockett" had dissolved
due to the retirement of a John Lockett. I have no idea which John that
would be, but it sure is interesting to see that the later generation
Locketts changed the company name to drop the initials of their
ancestors. The article did say that Gerald, his brother Richard, as well
as an Edward, and two George Lockets, presumably cousins, were looking
to set up a business elsewhere, but I'm not sure what became of that.
Time to slip upstairs.
I presume this was the master bedroom back in the day.
And back in the day, all of the smaller rooms would have been the bedrooms of the Lockett siblings, at least during their childhood.
Of the Lockett siblings, Richard would die in 1950. His coin collection was so big that it had to be sold in fourteen sales over a seven-year period just to avoid flooding the market.
Their oddly named Garstang Bradstock Lockett actually died in 1936, but bizarrely I found a second Garstang Bradstock Lockett that threw me on the wrong trail, dying in World War One form injuries sustained in the battle of the Selle. It's pretty crazy that there were two people with such a name, and presumably they were related and these names come from some shared ancestor. But from what I can tell, the one who died in the war did have different parents, and came from Cheshire.
Gerald died in 1940, without leaving a will. It seems that his widow didn't stick around, and his mother Isabella now had the house to herself, albeit with her servants. It must be strange to live in the same house that once had your entire family, and now have it just big and empty. Having outlived her husband and some of her children, Isabella must have had a sad few years before she finally died in 1944.
The room with the yellow archway is pretty interesting, but looks quite modern. Unfortunately I don't have a wide angle lens so I couldn't do it justice.
So with Isabella dead, the house was vacant, and in 1947 it became a memorial college honouring the work of a social reformer and feminist, Josephine Butler. Josephine Butler was heavily into promoting women's education and getting the right to vote, as well as rehabilitating prostitutes and ending trafficking. She died in 1909, so a memorial college in 1947 seems a tiny bit delayed, to say the least.
The college trained social workers to support unmarried mothers and prostitutes. It seems utterly bonkers now in 2023 but back in 1947 being pregnant out of wedlock was a huge taboo, and many women were ostracised and referred to as sluts or whores, which must have been pretty traumatic for those who were impregnated against their will... From what I understand, these homes designed to help unmarried mothers were often incredibly judgemental and cruel too. Babies were snatched up for adoption immediately after childbirth without so much as letting the mother hold them. Needless to say, this sure seems to be an area that required the training of social workers, but I'm not sure how progressive that training would be in 1947.
The memorial college was eventually out-done by the progress of social programs and societies more open-minded approach, and so closed in the 1970s.
In its final years, it reopened as a care home for people with mental health issues between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five, and it remained this way until its closure in 2016. I'm not entirely sure why it closed, but it only had twelve residents by the time it did. There aren't any bad reports, but I do know that management in such places see numbers more than they see people, so it was probably something funding related.
This hallway has a number of bedrooms and a communal bathroom at the end. I am going to assume this was built through some sort of relatively modern renovation, as it doesn't have the same vibe as the rest of the building at all.
These bedrooms are classic care home rooms, with enough room for a single bed, a chest of drawers and maybe a desk.
Onto the best part of any abandoned building, the bathrooms.
Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
And also, I'll briefly touch on the cellar.
The cellar is pretty boring, but at some point had a garish paint job. Apparently there was a small gym down here back when the place was a care home, but all of the equipment has been removed.
The tiled walls would suggest there was a bathroom down here.
There's a copy of the Daily Star from 1995. What was happening in 1995?
"Vampire Rape Beast gets 9 Years."
I love the fact that the article is focusing on the fact that this guy owned a book called "Grisly Trails and Ghostly Tails." Watch out if your son likes ghost stories, folks. The Daily Star says it can be a sign that he's a vampire rapist.
There's a little whiteboard here with a list of names, all of which appear to be Muslim. It could be a list of people who were employed here, or it could even be a list of occupants. Either way, it's pretty bad that confidential information wasn't erased or removed when the place closed.
There's a small elevator down here, which was obviously a later addition during the buildings days as a care home. I somehow forgot to photograph it on all of the other floors, but here it is.
And now onto the roof to chill out as the sun sets.
Over closer to the street there used to be an old coach house attached to this property. It was sadly demolished in 2018, which brings us to an interesting chapter in the buildings history.
There was a planning application to demolish this building and replace it with 72 apartments. This was all the brilliant idea of a chap called Peter de Figuerido, an architectural consultant whose morals go where the money is. He said, in writing, that "Nothing remains of these extravagant and eclectic interiors. The building has been used as a care home for over fifty years, during which time it has been stripped of its historic interiors and converted for institutional use."
Now, as we've seen, this is a flat out lie. This slimy little bugger is trying to justify tearing down this building, which still has much of its gorgeous historic interior remaining. But who was going to check to see if an architectural consultant was lying? Urban explorers, of course!
I'm not sure if it actually was urban explorers who exposed the lie, but there are plenty of interior photos out there now, and the place became popular with urbexers around the same time that the demolition was proposed. After urbexers published their images, people began protesting the demolition of the building, and in 2022 it gained a listed status, saving it from demolition.
At least, legitimate demolition. Listed buildings that developers want do have a tendency to go up in flames for no reason, so we're not out of the woods yet. But even so, this just might be an example of why urban exploring is pretty important. Not only does it document history, but in this case it has played a role in preservation too. That's pretty incredible.
That's all I've got for this place. I'm seriously hopeful that it has a bright future ahead of it, and that something positive can be done. It's going to cost a bomb to fix up, but it would totally be worth it.
I'm still not sure why the mainstream media decided to namedrop Gerald when they mentioned a sliver of the buildings history, and not the guy with the famous coin collection or the guy who worked for King Edward and got to meet Hitler. And I'm not even sure why they didn't even mention that Gerald was anything other than a ship owner, when he played a role in the UKs communication network during the first world war. It's almost as if the mainstream media is shit or something.
Anyway, I enjoyed mooching around this building a lot more than I thought I would, and I enjoyed the rabbit hole of research more than that.
My next blog will be a cinema, and then a huge abandoned chapel. But in the meantime, I'm pretty active on Instagram, Vero, Threads, Reddit, Twitter, and the hub of human misery, Facebook. It's all pretty shit.
Thanks for reading!
Fabulous blog! Such a shame that this once beautiful building is being left to fall into disrepair. Thank you for all the research and this post 🙂
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