Lynngarth Brooklands Road Sale Cheshire

William Abercrombie * (1838–1908), born in Bradford, was a Manchester stockbroker and businessman, with literary and artistic interests, a noted patron and collector of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and an enthusiast for Arts and Crafts wood engraving. In 1881 he was living at The Manor House, Ashton-on-Mersey, close to Carrington Moss.

In the 1880s there was a rumour, (correct as it turned out), that a sewage farm was to be built on Carrington Moss and William decided to move.  He had seen a house that appealed to him in Leicester, and appointed the architects of that house, Goddard and Paget, to design a similar one for him.  In August1887 he bought a four-acre plot of land on Brooklands Road, just along the road from the church.  Brooklands Road at this time was very quiet, it being a private road with a toll-bar at one end.  William accepted the final plans for the house in October 1887, and from then until they moved in the house was built and the grounds landscaped, to include a large pond on which the family could go boating.  The house was decorated with the advice of J. Aldam Heaton, who frequently worked with Richard Norman Shaw. Named Lynngarth, the house became the family’s home in 1889 and remained so for the next 14 years.

* Father of Sir Patrick Abercrombie