Exceptional Victorian vicarage and hall at risk, society says

A Victorian church's listed vicarage and hall have been added to a conservation society's endangered buildings list, due to them being in "a perilous state".

The Grade II* listed vicarage and the Grade II listed hall at St Agnes and St Pancras in Liverpool were designed by architect Norman Shaw in 1887.

The Victorian Society said the buildings needed "urgent repair to ensure their continued survival".

A Diocese of Liverpool representative, which owns the church buildings, said it was "actively working to provide the best solution".

The society said the "highly original" buildings and associated Grade I listed church on Buckingham Avenue in Toxteth Park represented "one of the most impressive such ensembles in the country".

Commissioned by the Horsfall family, a Liverpool stockbroking dynasty, the vicarage was built between 1885 and 1887.

The hall, built in the Gothic style, is connected to the church by a passage and has lean-to aisles, a horizontal set of windows above head height, and a small lower room on the end with cusped windows.

A society representative said both buildings were now in a very poor state of repair and needed immediate remediation and repair works to ensure they were "secure from weather and intruders".

"These are exceptional works by one of the most distinguished designers of the later Victorian period, and in the longer term, a strategy for their sympathetic reuse is vital," they added.

Society director James Hughes said the trio were "a genuinely remarkable collection of 19th Century buildings".

"It is unbelievable that buildings of the quality and interest of the hall and vicarage should have been allowed to fall into such a serious state of dilapidation," he said.

"Works to make the buildings wind and watertight are required immediately, and in the longer term a solution that will see them saved and put to appropriate use."

In a statement, the Diocese of Liverpool said it had "limited" funds and lacked the "resources to invest into the building in a way that it deserves".

"We would like to reassure people that we are looking for a solution that can keep this historic building in sympathy with the church and the local community," a representative added.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas to [email protected]