Mere Brook's History

Mere Brook House was built in 1897-8 by John Orrell a Liverpool brewer. Prior to occupancy of Mere Brook he lived next door in “The Foxes” and during the building he supervised operations from a wicker chair in the open air. Although John Orrell died in 1905 the house remained in his family and was occupied by Thomas, John’s son and Thomas’s niece until 1918. The house was then empty for two years before being purchased by Cass an accountant for Lever at Port Sunlight.

He divided the house into two and let the coach house. He subsequently sold off land on which he had built a pair of semi detached houses and a bungalow. Around 1928 he went to live in one of the semi detached houses and sold Mere Brook to the Englen family, two brothers and two sisters who turned the house back into one residence.

The Englen sisters sold the house to a Mr Nickson in 1937. In 1941 it was bought or rented by Ann Davidson (and her husband) famous as the first woman to cross the Atlantic single handed.

In her book “Last Voyage” she describes Mere Brook House as “an uninspired stucco villa, the outside belying an interior of pleasantly proportioned rooms” but “desolate, neglected and overgrown”.

The Davidsons had two ponies, goats, hens and ducks and she mentions going everywhere on horseback or pony and trap and selling the orchard apples in Birkenhead. The family stayed three years and Ann Davidson comments in her book : “In some ways these few years at Mere Brook were the happiest in our lives”.

The house was purchased in 1944 by Mrs Jackson who in turn sold it in 1949 to Dr Mc Gibbon and his wife Betty. The Mc Gibbons progressively restored and repainted to as high a standard as possible in the light of post-war shortages. Fortunately good timber was still available.

The panelling in the dining room came from John Mc Gibbon’s consulting rooms in Rodney Street, Liverpool (where he had originally had it installed when saved from a Hertfordshire house being demolished). Sotheby’s date it around 1650.

The fireplace in the hall was a bedhead in Betty Mc Gibbon’s family home which they, as children, had always been told had belonged to Prince Llewelyn. Betty Mc Gibbon’s daughter sent a letter in 1987 to the previous owner stating “Well, we all loved Mere Brook. We kept pigs in the sties – kindly built by the German POW’s – lots of chickens and Chinese Geese which we gave to Chester Zoo”. She added that having seen a recent photograph of the house it looked exactly the same as when she lived there.

Mr and Mrs David Aicken purchased the house from Mrs Mc Gibbon in 1960. Mr Aicken was a naval architect…. Donald and Lorna Tyson purchased Mere Brook House in 2002 when the Aickens decided to move to a smaller house in Caldy. The Tysons let the property to a South African family and then a Dutch family before embarking on a renovation and extension programme in 2006 in preparation for developing a bed and breakfast business.