Lowlands (West Derby Community Association) and attached boundary walls and gate piers

Lowlands is a mid-19th-century villa, now a community centre, located on Haymans Green. It stands as a substantial example of the type of mansion built for Liverpool's mercantile elite during that period. The building underwent alterations in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries.

The villa is constructed of stuccoed brickwork with painted dressings and ornamentation. It features chimney stacks with blind arcaded bases and hipped roofs covered with graduated slate.

The building rises to two storeys and attics above a basement, arranged in an irregular rectangular plan with a symmetrical front and long asymmetrical garden elevation. The front elevation comprises three bays with an advanced central bay. The basement displays channelled rustication. Sill courses, a string course beneath the first-floor sill band, and a panelled frieze run horizontally across the facade. The top frieze is decorated with a Vitruvian scroll and a deep modillioned cornice, with some antefixae. Ground-floor windows are wider than those above and feature eared architraves. Window openings contain casement frames. The central first-floor window is particularly distinctive, with paired round-headed lights, panelled angle pilasters, and archivolts with keys. A lunette dormer sits above this window. The entrance is contained within a loggia of three round-headed openings with groin vaults. Paired half-glazed doors with panels and a clear fan occupy the central opening, while flanking arches have balustrades. Balconies of 20th-century concrete blocks are attached to side windows. The garden elevation follows similar detailing and features a tall advanced gable at its south-west end.

A substantial brick boundary wall encloses the garden, with flat stone coping that is ramped at the approach to the street frontage. The wall varies in height between 1.5 and 2.5 metres and incorporates a pair of rusticated gate piers with ball finials set within a link wall separating the walled garden from the entrance drive. Stone street frontage walls are linked to this arrangement. The main entrance gateway to the right features tall square-section stone gate piers with moulded caps, from which extend a quadrant wall of rock-faced sandstone with lower terminal piers. A masonry wall of regularly coursed squared sandstone extends the full length of the street frontage, interrupted by a secondary opening at its centre. Late 20th-century railings are also present.

Interior

The original plan form has been little disturbed. An entrance vestibule with a barrel-vaulted ceiling provides access to the main stair hall, which is dominated by an elaborate double return stair. The staircase features moulded and ramped handrails with scrolled terminals, panelled newel posts with inset panels and pyramidal caps, and barleysugar pattern balusters. A balustraded gallery overlooks the first floor, with a secondary access stair to a cantilevered upper gallery supported on deep decorated brackets. Above this rises an elaborately decorated lantern with clerestorey arcading, set upon a coved base with decorative plaster panelling. The enrichment extends to the soffits of the cantilevered galleries, doorways with ornate panelled doors, moulded architraves and crested lintels. The principal reception rooms retain considerable decorative plasterwork, including cornices and wall panelling, original hearths, and panelled window reveals with shutters.

History and Significance

The building was formerly the residence of Thomas Randles Withers, chairman of the Liverpool Stock Exchange in the late 19th century. It became the headquarters of the West Derby Community Association in 1957. The attic floor was partially converted into a coffee bar in the early 1960s, which became a meeting place for rock bands associated with the 'Mersey Sound'. The 1960s decorative finishes and fixtures in this space remain intact.

The building is of special architectural interest as a substantial and well-preserved example of a mid-19th-century villa built for Liverpool's mercantile elite. It has been little altered internally and retains much high-quality interior detail, including an opulent staircase and stair well. The building and its gardens are enclosed by a substantial boundary wall incorporating gate piers and quality masonry. The survival of such a well-preserved ensemble is increasingly rare.