Woolton Hall is a former country house located in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool, England. Built in 1704 and extensively renovated in 1772 by the influential architect Robert Adam, the building is praised as the finest example of Adam's work in the North of England. Throughout its first 200 years, the building was the residence of a number of notable figures, including the Earl of Sefton and Liverpool shipowner Frederick Richards Leyland. During the 20th century, the building went through a number of uses, eventually becoming a school in the 1950s, and later being abandoned with plans for its demolition. A campaign against its destruction was successful and the hall was made a Grade I listed building in 1982. However, in 2021, the building was declared at "immediate risk" by Historic England. History Early records indicate that the land of Woolton Hall had been occupied since 1180 when the area of Much Woolton (now simply Woolton) came under the lordship of the holy Catholic order of the Knights Hospitaller who held the land for almost 360 years until the English Reformation. In the 16th century, Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries suppressed the Knights Hospitaller leading the land being confiscated but then later restored by Mary I. The land was permanently confiscated from the order in 1559 under Elizabeth I and was kept by the crown until 1609. Eventually, the land came under ownership of the Brettarghs of Holt who were reputed to have acquired it from an ancient family named "de Woolton". On the death of William Brettargh in 1609, the land was described as being home to a cottage. Sometime between 1700 and 1704, the house and surrounding estate was sold to politician Richard Molyneux, 1st Viscount Molyneux, who built the northern block of the hall. In 1772, Woolton Hall was acquired by Nicholas Ashton, a former High Sheriff of Lancashire, whose father was one of the original undertakers and the principal financier of Sankey Canal, the first canal of the British industrial revolution. Shortly afterwards, Ashton commissioned the noted architect Robert Adam to remodel and expand the building extensively. Nicholas Ashton died in 1833 leaving the house to his son Joseph Ashton who in turn left it to his son Charles Ellis Ashton. Charles Ellis later sold the house in 1865 to James Reddecliffe Jeffery who was the owner of Liverpool's largest department store, Compton House, located