My Great Grandma, Annie Jones (née Weaver), was the housekeeper at Bluecoat, and was possibly the first or the second to hold this position after the school vacated the building and it became an arts centre in 1907. She re-married in 1931 and became Mrs Beck, continuing to work there until 1937. I understand that she had previously held a similar position with the Chevalier di Londini, who was Liverpool University's bursar and a lecturer in Italian.

She lived there with my Great Uncle and my Nan, who said she was born at Bluecoat, on 9 August 1907. As you walk through the front gates, the top row of windows on the right was where she lived. When we visited many years ago, around 1995-97, she knew every inch of the building. She actually chastised a couple of domestic staff and wasn’t happy with how the place looked! Floods of memories seemed to come back to her. She recited the frequency of cleaning various things; what day the brassware was metal polished and when it was buffed up; when the stairs were scrubbed, etc. She remembered the artists' studios in the building and what seemed an exclusive dining club, which would have been on the right hand side of the front courtyard.