The District of Grassendale, Liverpool in the County of -- Lancashire --

Grassendale today is a residential suburb in south Liverpool, sandwiched between Aigburth and Garston, with the River Mersey as its south western boundary. It lies approximately five miles from the city centre. At the beginning of the 19th century Grassendale hardly existed being a tiny hamlet in the ancient parish of Childwall. As Liverpool’s population began to grow the inner city became overcrowded and the suburbs expanded. Grassendale, with its wide open parkland and riverside location, was the ideal place for wealthy merchants to move out to. Grassendale Park and Cressington Park, two private residential parks built in the 1840's, both consist of a tree-lined grid of roads leading down to a riverside promenade. Detached & semi-detached villas are set in large plots of land. The parks are now a conservation area. Other, more modest, streets also sprang up encouraged no doubt by the opening in 1864 of Cressington & Grassendale station, part of the Liverpool and Garston Railway. The population of St Mary's parish in the 1890's was around 2500 and in 1902 Grassendale was incorporated into the City of Liverpool. Grassendale was made into an ecclesiastical parish in 1855 for the church of St. Mary, built in 1853.

Battlecrease House in Riversdale Road the most infamous addresses in Grassendale. This was the home of James Maybrick, who died of arsenic poisoning in May 1889. James' wife Florence was the prime suspect. She went on trial, was convicted of her husband's murder and sentenced to death. This was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment and then, after a review of the case, she was released in 1904 (see the 1870-1892 baptisms register for St Nicholas, Halewood, for further details of the Maybrick family).

References

A Few Interesting Details About Garston & District, R. Saunders Jones, 1919.
Lost Villages Of Liverpool Part One, Derek M. Whale, 1984.
The Liverpool Mercury.