Nos 1 & 2 BELLE VALE ROAD (continued)
The occupants in 1841 were, at No.1 Richard Greenough (born c.1796, for whom no wife is shown) and at No.2, Thomas Greenough (born c.1786); by 1851 No.1 was occupied by Wm Greenough (born c.1793) who is recorded as living in Greenough Street, Much Woolton 10 years before, but who now has a son born in L.W. in c.1845 - suggesting the date of his move.

By 1871 the Greenoughs have given way to John Blackburn (born c.1840 in M.W.) at No.1, a beerhouse keeper (and butcher at the back door in Halewood Road). The beerhouse at this address persists until shortly before the first World War, at one time, we are told, called 'The Railway Inn'. In 1851 No.2 was still occupied by Thomas Greenough (c.1786) but by 1871 the occupant was John Williams (born c.1829) with a wife and 8 children.

By 1881 John Blackburn is still at No.1, while at No.2 George Mason (born c.1861) and James Mason (born c.1824) are recorded as living with their two families in separate households, and this house has, within living memory been a 'back to back' house, where those who lived in the front downstairs room slept in the upstairs back, and vice versa.

All the men called Greenough in the above and following notes were stonemasons, with one exception.

This pair of houses, some 32ft frontage x 29ft depth are appreciably larger, higher, and more imposing than the rest of the group - Nos 3 - 9. They share with the group the immaculately 'boasted' ashlar stone on the front elevations, with less meticulously hammer dressed stonework to the sides and rear; the correctly detailed classical cornices, plinths etc., but the front door surrounds of this pair have the triple-roll mouldings with imposts that are also to be seen at No.8 Church Road, Woolton.

The wood surround to the window of No.1 proclaims it a beerhouse. This kind of protruding cornice was first seen in an exhibition stand (in Liverpool) designed by Mackmurdo in 1886 and the long flat arched shape can be seen at St John's Gardens.

They show the general Georgian idiom of 14-22 Church Rd M.W. which were also built before 1835, but the triple-roll moulding around the front door of 8 Church Rd, a house not shown on Bennison's map of 1835, could be - if our tentative dating is correct - copied from Nos 1 & 2 Belle Vale Rd, where this fashion may have been set. (See also Salisbury Terrace, Wavertree).

continued . . .