liverpool castle replica, Rivington

Date: September 24, 2018Author: Lancashirepast.com

Lord Leverhulme commissioned a replica of Liverpool Castle to be built on his Rivington estate of Lever Park, near Horwich. He had read a work about the original castle by E.W. Cox written in 1892. The description of the Liverpool castle site struck him as being similar to the promontory of Coblowe within his estate. Coblowe is a rocky area that overlooks the Lower Rivington Reservoir. He concluded that this would be an ideal place to resurrect the lost Liverpool stronghold.
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Liverpool Castle Replica, Rivington near Horwich

Work began in 1912 using locally quarried gritstone. The construction proceeded very slowly with only a few stone masons and labourers being employed on the project. It was never completed as work stopped after Leverhulme’s death in 1925.

However, the replica castle was always meant to look like a ruin, being based not on what Liverpool Castle looked like at the height of its defensive power, but in its damaged state after the Civil War. Now, as plants colonise its walls, we are left with a ruin that reproduces faithfully many of the buildings and features of the original.