Lathom’s rich legacy
Modern-day travellers driving through the streets of the new town of Skelmersdale in west Lancashire would undoubtedly be surprised to learn that they were crossing over land that once formed a part of the 4,000-acre Lathom estate, considered to be one of the three top shoots in Lancashire during the late 19th and 20th centuries.
The Lathom estate was initially acquired by Sir Thomas Bootle, MP for Liverpool, who commissioned Giacomo Leoni to replace the existing mansion with a grand Palladian-style country house and engaged Humphry Repton to lay out a landscaped deer park for the old established herd of fallow deer on the property. In 1758, Lathom passed by inheritance to Richard Wilbraham-Bootle, MP
