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The area has been described as a haven of victorian churches. This includes the Unitarian Church on Ullet Road, St Agnes also on Ullet Road and St Clare's on Arundel Avenue.  The following description of these three churches and nearbye Sefton Park is reproduced from notes provided by the Victorian Society.

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St Clare, Arundel Ave

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Dating from 1888-90, this is an early work of Leonard Stokes (1858-1925), who was to become one of the best and most original British Architects of the early twentieth century. His buildings included All Saints Convent, London Colney, Hertfordshire (begun 1899), the great house of Minterne in Dorset (1903-6), the North Court of Emmanual College, Cambridge (1910-1914) and a number of exchanges for the National Telephone Co. The comparatively few commissions received from the Roman Catholic Church (of which he was a member) included schools and Houses of Nazarith, but his magnificent design for a church at Miles Platting, Manchester 1892, was never built, and a commission for a cathedral at Georgetown, British Columbia, came only in 1921, when he was virtually incapacitated by ill health. Stokes was president of the Architectural Association 1888-91, and of the R.I.B.A 1910-12.  Received R.I.B.A Gold Medal 1919.

St Clare's was built at the expense of the brothers Francis and James Reynolds. The former was Stoke's godfather. Exterior of common brick with stone dressings. A particularly fine effect of grouping formed by Presbytery and Church, with its (liturgically) north transept (actually an organ chamber) and octagonal turret with slender spiralet. 

The Presbytery's particular kind of cottagey simplicity is unusual for so early a date as are the art nouveau tendencies of the drip mould of the east window and, particularly noteable, the heavy termination of the Presbytery door drip mould. Tracery of the Gothic windows is, however, quite Bodlein, and there is little hint of Stoke's characteristic mature style of massive and precise Arts and Craft's Tudor. His individual manner of the 1900's is probably most closely foreshadowed in the semicircular nave arches inside. 

A broad nave flanked by narrow vaulted passage aisles which, like the galleries above, cut through internal buttresses. Aisles broaden into chapels at the east end. Chapel windows semi-circular headed, lining in with nave arches. Handling of internal space is here quite effective, and very interesting are the simple arcade mouldings and the manner in which they meet piers. 

Further departures from original design include treatment of east window, which was to have incorporated a cross in its tracery, and Presbytery front, which was to have had bay windows. At one point on north side of nave is a narrow strip of stone, carried up to the roof, apparently the architect's message to posterity as to how he had wished the Church to be built.

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Ullet Road Unitarian Church

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Built to replace Renshaw Street Unitarian Chapel(1811, by William Byrom). William Roscoe had worshipped at Renshaw Street, and indeed many of Liverpool's notable 19th century persons and families were Unitarian--the Rathbones, for example, or the Booths, Brunners, Mellys, and Tates.

Thomas Worthington and Son ---themselves Unitarian--designed the new building. Thomas Worthington, founder of a dynasty of Manchester architects, did the Manchester Albert  Memorial, Minshull Street Magistrate's Courts and Manchester College at Oxford. It seems, however , that his son, Percy Scott Worthington, rather than he himself, was responsible for Ullet Road Church, The buildings, forming three sides of a quadrangle, consists of the Church itself, a hall, and a further block linking the two.

The link contains a Cloister, Library and a Vestry. Church, Library and Vestry date from 1896-9, and the remainder (built at the expense of Sir John Brummer and Henry Tate) was completed 1902. Red pressed brick with red Cheshire sandstone dressings are used outside. Principal interiors of stone, with timber roofs. Interior the church is quiet and sober Gothic, though hardly in the refined and sensitive "Perp" of the period. Indeed, the exterior, with triple arcaded west turret and elaborately treated rose window is quite exuberant. Cloister and Hall (particularly interior of the latter) in more conventional Tudor Gothic. South or outer elevation of Hall block has a fine bay window, and the freely composed two-storey portion should be compared with St Agnes Vicarage(see below). Church has large narthex or vestibule, wide nave with narrow passage aisles and the Communion Table placed at the east end of a chancel containing choir stalls. Despite the layout and general richness, the building is still more recognisably Nonconformist than are almost wholly Anglican-looking Congregational churches built at roughly the same time by the first Lord Leverhulme.

A particularly fine series of stained glass windows designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and made by William Morris's firm. Magnificent art nouveau copper doors by R. Rathbone. Electric light fittings were designed and made for the building. Stone carving by Earp and Hobbs, woodwork by Hatch and Sons of Lancaster, reredos by Martyn of Cheltenham. In the Cloisters are bays to contain monuments.These include that to Mrs Roscoe by John Gibson (brought from Renshaw Street). 

Of considerable importance are the Library and Vestry---glorious interiors with a wealth of art nouveau ornament and ceilings painted (under the patronage of Sir John Brummer) by Gerald Moira. By Moira not only the ceilings ( three bays and barrel vaulted with tympana in the library) but the Library frieze and panel over Vestry fireplace.

Unitarian Church Web Site - Link

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Thomas Worthington -Architect - Description

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Parish Church of St Agnes, Ullet Road

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St Agnes Church Web Site Link ( After use click back rather than close)

Description

St Agnes was built at the expense of H. Douglas Horsefall, a member of a family noteable for participation in local affairs (they included two mayors of Liverpool, one of them an M.P.), and for ecclesiastical patronage. Christ Church, Everton (1848, Shellard of Manchester) and Christ Church, Linnet Lane (1870,Culshaw and Sumners) were built by members of the family, and in furtherance of his Tractarian ideals, Robert Horsefall built St.Margaret's, Smithdown Road (1868-9, G.E.Street). Robert's son Douglas (like his father, both a High Churchman and a stockbroker) founded St Chad's Theological College at Durham, built(besides St Agnes)the chapel of Ease at St. Pancras, Lidderdale Road, St Faith, Great Crosby (1900, Grayson and Ould) and aquired the advowsons of St Catherine, Abercromby Square and St Paul, St Paul's Square. Proceeds from the ultimate sale of the latter church he used to build St Paul, Stoneycroft (1916, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott)

St Agnes, 1883-5, is by Jon Loughborough Pearson, of Truro Cathedral fame and a leading exponent of refined and sensitive late Victorian Gothic. In the book Church Builders of the Nineteenth Century, Basil Clarke wrote of mature Pearson churches that they"are almost all instantly recognisable". That is not to say they are all alike. Each one has something peculiar to itself. But similar features are to be seen in all of them. He goes on to say " His churches are unmistakably late nineteenth century, in spite of the mediaevalism.They remind travelled ecclesiologists of churches in France; but in fact they are not like any and are planned according to the good taste, common sense and deep ecclesiological knowledge of one man"

St Agnes is a very characteristic Pearson work, except in that he had a habit of designing 200' spires which had a habit of not getting built, and here the church was completed as designed with only a central fleche and to east turrets. Exterior of red brick with stone dressings, and everything typical Pearson----bold and dignified vertical massing, unbroken roof line, two west porches, even detailing of capitals and drip moulds is unmistakably his. Interior of stone, (with a surprising contrast to the exterior) and also classic Pearson. Unusually small, however, and illusary sense of size given by sure proportions, spatial effects and two sets of transepts.

Pearsonic features: vaulting ( unusual among Victorian architects in insisting on this wherever possible), apse, with ambulatory, creating complex spatial effects (virtually the only English 19th century architect who could handle an apse well), west gallery narthex, chunky reredos and even more lumpish pulpit. Every single moulding unmistakedly Pearson, but above all his presence apparent in the cool, clear logic of the whole. Subtle treatment of north aisle of Lady Chapel, which is also south ambulatory, and further spatial delight where organ carried on forest of columns.

Reredos coloured and gilded later than completion of the church, but under Pearson. Carvings in apse by Hitch (sculptor of Truro reredos) 1893-5, and Lady Chapel fitted up at same time. Lady Chapel Screen 1903, by G.F. Bodley. Lady Chapel reredos 1904, Bodley. Grotesque carvings at string course level c.1910. These include a number of amusing and entertaining subjects, e.g. an ear, listening to the organ, and a Horsefall robus (a horse, falling down, immediately left of the organ.

Jon Loughborough Pearson - Description - link   

St Agnes Church Hall and Vicarage

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1887, designed by R. Norman Shaw and built at the expense of Douglas Horsefall's mother.The late Victorian period was a golden age of English domestic architecture, dominated by Norman Shaw. Neither his half timbered tile hung style, nor his brick so-called Queen Anne style are used at St Agnes Vicarage. Period motifs include leaded and stone mullioned windows and Gothic entrance arch and oriel, but the simplicity, not to say starkness is prophetic of much later work and calls to mind the buildings by Edgar Wood and J.H. Sellars in the Manchester region some twenty years later. Excellent massing and proportions of bay windows, gables and chimneys, and relationship of eaves and parapets create an interesting design out of basically cubic shape. The interior largely in the "Queen Anne" manner , and Shaw's brilliant eclecticism ensures the success of this combining of styles. Intended as a clergy house, rather than a family vicarage. A first floor chapel, lit by a Gothic oriel.

Horsefall built a house for himself nearbye, in Ullet Road Merebank, 1886, R.Norman Shaw. In the half timbered and tile hung Wealdon style, but again with a largely classical interior. Horsefall died there 1936. Merebank demolished by Liverpool Corporation 1965.

R. Norman Shaw - Description   

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Sefton Park

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In 1865 Liverpool Council resolved to increase the city's park space, and Parliamentary powers were sought in order to raise money for the purchase of land and the laying out of Sefton and Stanley Parks. At the same time Newsham Park was formed from an estate already belonging to the corporation.

The Sefton Park land (378 acres, very soon increased to about 400) was bought from the Earl of Sefton. a competition for the layout was held in 1876 judged by the fashionable garden designer W.A. Nesfield, and won by Edward Andre of Paris and Lewis Hornblower of Liverpool. Andre had been a pupil of Jean-Alphonse Alphand, (jardinier-ingenieur under Haussmann)and worked with him on Napoleon III's great Paris park schemes. Hornblower, a Liverpool architect had, as a very young man some twenty years previously, been concerned with the design of the entrance lodges Sir Joseph Paxton's Birkenhead Park. the second premium in the Sefton Park competition was awarded to Edward Milner, a former Paxton pupil who had supervised the construction of Prince's Park, Liverpool for him.

The Parisian influence is apparent in the use of circles and ellipses in the planning of the drives and paths, although the layout is completely informal and romantic----the style which Paxton inherited from Repton and which he employed in the 1840's at Birkenhead and Prince's Parks. By mid-victorian times, however, a frequent approach to public park planning was to incorporate a formal, symmetrical layout within a naturalistic overall plan. Paxton did this at Queens Park, Glasgow and People's Park Halifax as, to a lesser extent, Edward Kempe at Stanley Park Liverpool. The original plan for Sefton Park included a formal layout, containing elaborate gardens and many of the intended buildings, but was tightly contained within a segment of an ellipse.This was omitted- a fact not to be regretted, for the Park as executed must be aesthetically superior and more suitable for today's recreational needs than the original design would have been.

An existing watercourse was used in the layout - running from north to south down the length of the park it is now a succession of small pools with a grotto at the head and a large lake at the foot. A second watercourse runs as a stream through a series of waterfalls, rockworks and skilfully designed stepping stones to the head of the lake.

An integral feature of the layout is the incorporation of housing on the perimeter of the park (mostly detached villas). This combination of public park with private residential suburb was a familiar Victorian feature it derives from Nash's Regent's Park, and at Birkenhead and elsewhere the resale of building plots more than paid for the formation of the park. At Sefton Park, some houses are reached from the park drives, some from the outer public roads and at some points in the park houses actually flank both sides of the road (Greenbank Drive,the Livingstone Drives). The disposition differs somewhat from that of the original plan. Most houses possess little or no architectural merit, and the one notable exception was Merebank (now demolished)

The revised plan drastically reduced the number of lodges, gates and gardener's and keeper's cottages and there are, in fact, only two ambitiously designed entrances - at Ullet Road near Princes Park and at the south end of the Park at Aigburth Road, near Fulwood Park.

The gate piers are in heavy High Victorian Gothic, which gets a bit out of hand at the Prince's Park Gate. The lodges are attractive essays in High Victorian picturesque - hard, complex and wuth much decorative timberwork. There are two or three similar houses belonging to the park and the boathouse and various shelters also use a half timbered motif. A good cast iron bridge carries Mossley Hill Drive across a dell at the head of the subsidiary water course.

A glorious feature at Sefton Park is the Palm House, on a site intended by Andre and Hornblower for one of their pavilions. A great domed octagon of iron and glass, presented by Henry Yates Thompson. The date -1896 - is surprisingly late. The work of Mackenzie and Moncur, engineers of Edinburgh and Glasgow. 

At the head of the lake, J.H.Foley's statue of William Rathbone (1874-7). Near the Prince's Park entrance, Samuel Smith memorial, 1909, which is an obolisk designed by Willink and Thickness with sculpture by Charles Allan. This terminates a later avenue quite out of character with the landscape.

In the centre of the park (1928) a copy of Frampton's Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens.Opposite the refreshment room is, even more surprisingly, a copy(1932) of Sir Alfred Gilbert's Shaftsbury memorial (Eros) from Piccadilly Circus. Both these metropolitan importations were the gift of George Audley. 

In recent times, blocks of multi-storey flats have been built around the perimeter of the park, some on the sites of demolished Victorian villas. The result is by no means devoid of merit, and a new and interesting relationship between building and landscape has resulted. However, the original scale and the remarkably effective illusion of open countryside has been lost. A particularly good view used to be that of Mossley Hill Church seen  from between Prince's Park and Croxteth Gates, where nothing was visible but acres of grass and trees, with the church tower on the distant skyline. Flats have not intruded, but the water tank and boiler chimney of the University's Carnatic Halls of residence now share the skyline with the church.

Edward Hubbard  : Victorian Society - Liverpool Group : Visit Notes :  Three Churches and a Park Saturday, 2nd September 1967

Short History of the Ancient Park of Toxteth

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To find these churches please see map below..

St Clares - Corner of York Avenue and Arundel Avenue

Unitarian  - Corner of York Avenue and Ullet Road

St Agnes - Corner of Buckingham Avenue and Ullet Road

Buses - Numbers 60,74,75,75A,76,77,80,80A,stop in Ullet Road

Buses - Numbers 86,86A,86B,86D,186,201,202,204,801,852,877 stop in Smithdown Road