The History of Spellow House

Spellow House, Walton, Liverpool, was once the home of the Spellow family.
The name Spellow comes a mound of earth used during the Viking invasions as a place of announcement that was named “spell-hoe”, which is Scandinavian for “speech hill”.
In the thirteenth century a family built a mill on the mound and their home by it's side. As was typical of the time the family soon adopted the name of their land as their surname.

Who knows how long the family had lived on the land before the mill was built? Perhaps they were Celt or Anglo-Saxon and had lived there many hundreds of years, or perhaps they were recent invaders from Normandy? We will never know, because one day in the fourteenth century, when the sun rose, instead of the hustle bustle of a working farm, the house lay eerily silent. The family were gone. Grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren, not just a generation but all generations. Every living soul with the name Spellow had vanished. A terrible sadness descended upon Spellow House. For five hundred years the house waited for their return. They never did.
No one knows exactly what happened to the family, but it seems likely that they were wiped out at a single stroke by the Great Mortality of 1347; The Black Death.
The mill burned to the ground in the early 19th Century and the house was demolished a few years later. Such was the relentless march of the nearby City of Liverpool in it's need to expand even the mound was flattened to make way for housing. When the house was knocked down a public house was built nearby and given the name The Spellow, but unfortunately the locals have long forgotten how this name came about, and long forgotten were the original house and hill used to be. With the destruction of the house, the mill, and even the ground from which the name Spellow originated, the Spellow family have been completely wiped from the history books. It is as is they never existed.
Spellow House was named to honour the Spellow family and all other families who's homes and history have been tragically destroyed and forgotten, to the lost souls who now wander aimlessly with no past, no future, no place to rest and little hope of remembrance. My friends, the spirit of Spellow House is still alive. It is still, and will always be, waiting for you to come home.