An article by Roger Bingham

Stretton Church has a silver memorial plaque to them on the 3^rd pillar on the north side from the entrance to the church.  I periodically polish this as part of my church cleaning duty rota. I looked into who the Owens were, my interest being sparked by memories of Halsall Owen, grandson of William and son of Geoffrey.

All were architects in Warrington and William FRIBA (1846-1910} was the founder of the architects practice William and Segar Owen, who had premises in Cairo Street, and later in Museum Street, where I practiced dentistry from 1960 to1996.

William was born in Latchford in 1846 and died in Appleton in1910. He trained as an architect in Manchester and travelled in Europe, visiting Belgium and Holland as well as France and Switzerland.

He set up practice in Warrington in 1869.In 1896 he took his elder son Segar into partnership and their practice in 1896 was in No 4, Cairo Street Chambers and later in Museum Street.

They designed 28 houses and a factory in Port Sunlight for William’s close friend W H Lever. He accompanied Lever ( later Lord Leverhulme) in his search to find land to build a new soap factory and a Garden Village for the staff. He was the first architect employed by Lever and also designed buildings in Warrington such as  St. Barnabas’s Church ,Bank Quay in 1879,Warrington School of Art in Museum Street in 1883,the Parr Hall in 1895 and Warrington Technical School in 1900-1902  ( now San Lorenzo restaurant), the Mulberry Tree ,Stockton Heath (1907) and other pubs for Greenall Whitley and  various banks for Parr’s Bank (now part of Nat West.}

William married Margaret and had children Segar (1874-1929 ) and Geoffrey (1887-1965) Segar lived at Kelmscott, Firs Lane, Appleton(1906-1914); an Arts and Crafts style house now rebuilt and named “The Foxes”. I surmise that they also designed Stonecroft, Firs Lane and maybe William lived there. Other houses include Garnett House, Penketh (Garnett had a large furniture factory in Warrington) and Birchdale (for Robert Davies, a Warrington solicitor). in Appleton (later the hotel and now demolished and replaced by a block of apartments.)

William died suddenly in Warrington in 1910;He and Margaret are buried in the NE corner of St Matthews Churchyard together with Samuel, ( died 1884) and Halsall (died 1915 aged 34 )

 Segar continued the practice, being joined by Geoffrey and then Halsall, his son. Halsall did some work for me in 1972, including alterations to Hill Cliffe in Windmill Lane and I was always impressed as their practice was described as in “Warrington and London” which no doubt it was at one time .He and a Mr Welsby arranged for the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments to be engraved on the east wall behind the altar in the church.

Geoffrey was educated at Liverpool College and lived in Windmill Lane from 1912 to 1914. I knew him in 1961 as a tall ,elderly (! ) gentleman who had the next garage to mine in Museum Street; he always wiped his Morris Minor down if it was wet before putting it in the garage.

I gathered some of this information from the internet and from David and Margaret Hart, and there are images there of some of their designs, including a house, High Cliffe, Appleton. Where was this very large property? Does anyone know ?

Roger H Bingham