This purpose built workhouse complex has been renovated and altered from a Union Poorhouse to terraced domestic properties over time. The Poor House occupied the corner of St Helens Road (known as Scarth Hill Lane) and Moor Street from around 1732. There was a Vagrant Ward where itinerants were locked in single cells overnight for their own safety and the towns security. The Vagrant Keeper lived in number 58 at the Eastern end of the row beyond what may have briefly been a silk weaving shed. It would take intervention by a very Royal step-mother to bring these houses back from destruction.
In November 1877 an advert appeared in the Ormskirk Advertiser on behalf of the Charity of George Crane in the township of Lathom. Notice was given by the Charity Commissioners that a proposal had been submitted to them for the sale of the property of the Charity mentioned. This included a dwelling house and three cottages situate in Ormskirk and numbered respectively 50,52, 54 and 56 Moor Street together with a small workshop, coachhouse and garden in the rear, the whole containing 1305 square yards or thereabouts.
The cottages were 200 years old in 1974, derelict, condemned as uninhabitable. Earmarked for demolition, the 3 street fronted cottages had been boarded up and looked to be at the end of their life. The Fearns family, the Halewood sweetshop and the Carr family had resided there for much of the 19th Century and into the 20th Century. 52, 54 and 56 had only the one first floor window then, the interior exposed beams, open wooden stairs and wooden floors were from a long gone era. It was down to the West Lancs. Civic Trust to pull their skills and finances together to help rescue these neglected remnants of old Ormskirk. It took two years of work to bring the project to fruition and in so doing, the West Lancs. Civic Trust put their leader, Richard Clarke and their supporter, Lady Stephenson of Asmall House, firmly in the media spotlight.
In January 1976 the Countess of Dartmouth visited Ormskirk at the invitation of Lady Stephenson, a member of the West Lancs. Civic Trust. For much of her very busy political career, the Countess had been especially interested in environmental planning and ancient buildings. Her credentials in that field took her to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. The Countess was shown the successful renovation project on numbers 50,52 and 54 Moor Street. Numbers 52, 54 and 56 had only 3 rooms originally and the renovations converted them into two cottages with 4 rooms. The Countess was very impressed with the quality of the conversion and how well the buildings had been preserved. Just 6 months later the Countess married her second husband, fellow amateur architectural historian, John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, becoming step-mother to the Viscount's 15 year old daughter, Diana. (Diana, Princess of Wales 1st July 1961 -31st August 1997) (The Right Honourable Raine, Countess Spencer 9th Sept 1929 -21st Oct 2016)
Sukey's Coffee Bar
The curious little addition to Moor Street in the late 1950s (1957) quickly achieved legendary status. Sukeys Coffee Bar, slotted in between Hesketh & Walker and number 50, had a very modern boarded frontage over a large plate glass window and the tables and chairs were ultra trendy in the 1960s. It might have been a Milk Bar previously, can anyone confirm? Sukeys of Maghull owned by Worthingtons were a busy catering firm in the town.
