The Great Fire - Woolton Hall

On the evening of the 19th August 2025, I received a couple of messages to say that there was smoke coming from the direction of Woolton Hall. There are many people in Liverpool who know I’ve campaigned on this building for years and I was the first point of contact when it came to the hall.

We had seen numerous ‘near misses’ with Woolton hall over the last few years. A fire in 2019 in the newer separate building at the rear of the Hall, a couple of the outbuildings near the main drive had been attempted, but thankfully Woolton Hall had remained untouched.

However, with the smoke gaining pace, and various messages from local residents who had sent me images, it was clear, sadly, that Woolton Hall was on fire – although I still thought that it would escape and perhaps it was another section of the estate was on fire. How wrong I was. Scanning the socials for anything for Woolton Hall, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the TikTok video of the drone footage. Woolton Hall was not just on fire in one section, but the entire building had gone up. I genuinely couldn’t believe what I was seeing for two reasons.

Firstly, to see this building go up in flames was heartbreaking. It was Liverpool’s finest history. This wasn’t a late Victorian building that had suffered previous fire damaged, I need to make it clear exactly what was on offer.

A Grade ONE building. Constructed in 1704 for the noted Molyneux family. Built on top of an earlier structure with walls pre-dating 1704, this fine building was remodelled internally by the noted architect Robert Adam. The building was described as Robert Adam’s finest work in the north of England!

My phone was inundated with messages across the entire city once this drone footage hit the socials. Everyone wanted to know my thoughts and yet, I could only watch, helpless, from north Liverpool to find any further information on the fire. However, it was clear that seeing the drone footage, that Woolton Hall was already ‘lost’. The following day, I was asked my opinion on the fire by the world’s media. To say that this was a stressful day was an understatement considering I was starting a new job, and I had to hastily prepare a statement while travelling to work!

What was apparent, was that Woolton Hall was lost. 300 years of history had literally gone up in flames. Sadly, it was no surprise. It was only a matter of time before Woolton Hall was fired, in the same way as Sandfield Tower and Eddesbury in West Derby. It won’t be the last building to be fired but perhaps this very building is at the very top of what we could ill afford to lose to a fire. Perhaps, this is what the people of Liverpool saw the following day when they stepped out and saw the Liverpool Blitz. Their church blitzed, their homes gone and countless noted buildings still on fire. And yet, this could have all been avoided.

Many national newspapers contacted me, the local Liverpool newspapers and socials contacted me, but I also had correspondence from Save Britain’s Heritage and Historic England expressing their sadness at the news. Let us turn our attention back to the previous night. A statement from Merseyside Fire and Rescue service provided the following statement (after the event):

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service:

Fire crews have been called to a fire at Woolton Hall, Speke Road, Woolton, Liverpool this evening. Crews were alerted at 8.09pm and on scene at 8.16pm, with five fire engines and an aerial appliance in attendance.

Crews arrived to find a three storey stone built building fully involved in fire around 40 by 30 metres in size.

UPDATE: 9.30PM

There are now eight fire engines and an aerial appliance in attendance. The historic building, measuring 100 by 100 metres in size is well alight and the roof has collapsed. The incident has been divided into sectors and an MFRS service drone is being deployed to gain situational awareness from height. The aerial appliance is in use suppressing the fire and efforts are being made to protect an adjacent building from becoming involved in the fire. The incident is ongoing.

UPDATE: 11.30PM

There are currently nine fire engines and an aerial appliance on scene with the aerial appliance and main jet hoses in use fighting the fire to the exterior of the building. A multi-agency meeting has taken place with Police and a building surveyor, who has assessed the building and advised it would be unsafe to commit firefighters to the interior of the building. The incident continues and will do for some considerable time.

UPDATE: 11.55PM

The incident is ongoing and there will be firefighters and fire engines at the scene for some time. However, firefighters have made good progress, and this means that the incident can begin to be scaled down shortly.

UPDATE: WEDNESDAY 20 AUGUST 7.00AM

Fire crews continued to fight the fire overnight although having made good progress yesterday evening resources were scaled down to four fire engines and an aerial appliance. Crews damped down the scene with main branch hoses and hose reel jets. The main body of fire was extinguished just before 2.00am this morning and damping down and checking for hot spots continued throughout the night. Three fire engines and an aerial appliance remain at the scene.

The following day, it was plain to see that the building was a shell. Early drone footage had gone up and we all saw the very worst. The entire building apart from the main structure was lost. The roof had crashed down into the upper floors, taking out the upper floors which then crashed through the original Robert Adam ceilings and settled on the ground floor. Images later on would show 3ft of 300 years of history sitting on the ground floor. Every part of the building that wasn’t physical stone was lost.

And there we have it. A building in which I had campaigned on for years, shouted from the rooftops to have this building at the very least protected from being broken into, had fallen on deaf ears. As you will see throughout this website, I begged Liverpool City Council to task the owner in to securing this building completely.

I did not ask them to compulsory purchase the building; I simply wanted it completely locked down so that no one could gain access. How much would it have cost to have bricked up the entire ground floor and first floor windows, or installed metal shutters just to protect this building while something was done about it in the future? The images below were sent to me a few days after the fire by an urban explorer. I have added a ‘side by side’ view of exactly what we have lost and it is devastating.

1/1

The images side by side are devastating. It is still impossible to believe that we have lost this building through sheer negligence where it was common knowledge that the front door would be open and that anyone could simply walk in. How could we let this happen when the City Council visited twenty three times and stated that no urgent works notices were needed?

1/2

As someone who has a large pictorial archive on Woolton Hall, both externally and internally, it was absolutely clear that parts of this building were rotten. Serious water ingress from parts of the flat roof had got into many of the rooms and seeped through the internal brickwork. All of the left-hand side rooms and servants’ quarters had extensive mould on their ceilings, walls and peeling walls. I have the physical images.

There were multiple leaks across all upper floors where parts of the floors were spongy to walk on, and there are numerous images showing water ingress from the roof structure all the way down even into the Grand Hall. The basement was once flooded when the mains pipe was cut, and this soaked the entire basement of the building which never really dried out properly. It was safe to say that this building was rotten on the inside. And these were the parts you could see.

Something on this fire doesn’t add up in the slightest. There are various youtube videos of people exiting grounds of Woolton Hall once the fire started. The outcome of this fire was supposed to have been ‘kids with matches’ yet I find this impossible to believe. With no furniture or readily available combustible items to start a fire off, this was not ‘kids with matches. Anyone can see that.

The drone footage that was put up shortly after the fire started showed a ferocious blaze across all three floors minutes after the building was set alight, and before the fire service had gained access. So, how had a substantially built brick building, yet heavily waterlogged across many areas simply gone up this quickly?

Let us take a more recent fire at Eddesbury (West Derby). I have campaigned on this building for years and now, thankfully, it is being restored to its former glory, yet this building was broken in to multiple times and this was a load of kids gaining access multiple times to try and set small fires in the building.

In a similar story to Woolton Hall, this was fired and burnt throughout the evening, yet while parts of the attic rooms were lost and inded some of the roof structure, the ground floor and even some parts of the roof structure had been saved. Was this therefore a genuine fire that had been burning for some time and had got through various rooms slowly before taking hold of the attic?

With Woolton Hall, if this was ‘kids with matches’, there must have been hundreds of kids with hundreds of boxes of matches who set fire to each room at the very same time and got the building to burn extra ordinarily quick.

Let us look at the above images again. The solid oak handrail on the staircase completely gone, massive, twisted iron beams from the incredible heat of the fire. This was not kids with matches. To have set fire to one area and force it through the ceiling of the heavy oak floors to the next level? To have set such a fire that even in the grand staircase area, where there was nothing to burn, the entire structure collapsed in on itself and all gone with only physical stonework, iron beams and some iron railings still remaining?

I therefore ask both Merseyside Police and Merseyside Fire and Rescue service for a full independent investigation into this fire. This was NOT kids and matches. What I believe is that this building was (allegedly) doused in accelerant across the entire building, so that when ‘kids and matches’ had turned up, they were setting fire to something small and the accelerant took hold and spread to each and every room in the building.

How did we lose Woolton Hall? We lost it because no one in authority was prepared to task the owner with simple Urgent Works Notices forcing him to secure the building once and for all. It was a free for all for local urban explorers and the city council were constantly told of this building’s situation yet failed to act once over the last five years while visiting the property stating that no urgent works notices needed to be served.

We are now in a position where if the City Council cannot assist in securing a Grade 1 listed building from being set on fire, there is now NO hope for any abandoned Grade 2 listed buildings.

1/1

The response from the City Council over my Freedom of Information Act request on how many times they had visited Woolton Hall in the last five years and how many Urgent Works Notices had been served......