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Rose Hill, Northenden
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Rose Hill, Northenden
Rose Hill is a Grade II* listed mid-19th-century Victorian villa on Longley Lane in Northenden, a suburb of Manchester, England. Originally a private residence associated with the Watkin family, including the transport entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin, it was later adapted for institutional use and in the late 20th century operated as a children's home. The house has since been converted into flats.
Although the official listing dates the existing building to the mid‑19th century, the property at Rose Hill was acquired in 1832 by the cotton merchant Absalom Watkin (1787–1861). Watkin was a social and political reformer, an anti corn law campaigner and a diarist, recording life in early Victorian Manchester.
The house was inherited by Absalom's son, Edward Watkin, a noted transport entrepreneur who made his fortune as the managing director of nine separate railway companies during the major expansion of the railways in mid-Victorian Britain. Described as a "railway king and cross-channel visionary", he drove the expansion of the Metropolitan Railway into the rural areas outside London and founded the Channel Tunnel Company in 1875, which undertook the first large-scale attempt to link England and France. He also began construction of the "Great Tower of London", a proposed structure larger than the Eiffel Tower on the site of the present Wembley Stadium, but the project was abandoned after reaching a height of 155 feet (47 m). Rose Hill was later extended and remodelled around 1900.
In the 20th century, Rose Hill ceased to be a private dwelling. In 1915 it was purchased by the Manchester Poor Law Union for use as a residential school for children suffering from ophthalmia. It was later used as a children's convalescent home and a nursery school, before being taken over in 1955 by Manchester Corporation as a children's home and juvenile remand home. The childcare facility closed in the 1990s and was subsequently the subject of a wide-ranging investigation into child abuse in Manchester's care homes from the 1960s to the 1980s.
In 1979 a major landscape painting by the American artist Frederic Edwin Church was discovered at Rose Hill. The Icebergs had been bought by Sir Edward in the 1860s and, following his death, was subsequently forgotten. The painting is now in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas.
On 10 April 1991, the house was designated a Grade II* listed building.
Rose Hill was converted into flats in 2003, and most of the grounds were built over with private housing.
Another house named Rose Hill in Didsbury, approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) north-east of the Northenden house, was the home of the broadcaster Olive Shapley, who founded the Rose Hill Trust for Unsupported Mothers and Babies.
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Rose Hill, Northenden
Rose Hill is a Grade II* listed mid-19th-century Victorian villa on Longley Lane in Northenden, a suburb of Manchester, England. Originally a private residence associated with the Watkin family, including the transport entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin, it was later adapted for institutional use and in the late 20th century operated as a children's home. The house has since been converted into flats.
Although the official listing dates the existing building to the mid‑19th century, the property at Rose Hill was acquired in 1832 by the cotton merchant Absalom Watkin (1787–1861). Watkin was a social and political reformer, an anti corn law campaigner and a diarist, recording life in early Victorian Manchester.
The house was inherited by Absalom's son, Edward Watkin, a noted transport entrepreneur who made his fortune as the managing director of nine separate railway companies during the major expansion of the railways in mid-Victorian Britain. Described as a "railway king and cross-channel visionary", he drove the expansion of the Metropolitan Railway into the rural areas outside London and founded the Channel Tunnel Company in 1875, which undertook the first large-scale attempt to link England and France. He also began construction of the "Great Tower of London", a proposed structure larger than the Eiffel Tower on the site of the present Wembley Stadium, but the project was abandoned after reaching a height of 155 feet (47 m). Rose Hill was later extended and remodelled around 1900.
In the 20th century, Rose Hill ceased to be a private dwelling. In 1915 it was purchased by the Manchester Poor Law Union for use as a residential school for children suffering from ophthalmia. It was later used as a children's convalescent home and a nursery school, before being taken over in 1955 by Manchester Corporation as a children's home and juvenile remand home. The childcare facility closed in the 1990s and was subsequently the subject of a wide-ranging investigation into child abuse in Manchester's care homes from the 1960s to the 1980s.
In 1979 a major landscape painting by the American artist Frederic Edwin Church was discovered at Rose Hill. The Icebergs had been bought by Sir Edward in the 1860s and, following his death, was subsequently forgotten. The painting is now in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas.
On 10 April 1991, the house was designated a Grade II* listed building.
Rose Hill was converted into flats in 2003, and most of the grounds were built over with private housing.
Another house named Rose Hill in Didsbury, approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) north-east of the Northenden house, was the home of the broadcaster Olive Shapley, who founded the Rose Hill Trust for Unsupported Mothers and Babies.
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