Wray Castle Wray Castle. The house was built in 1840 for a retired [Liverpolitan] surgeon, James Dawson, who built it along with the neighbouring Wray Church using his wife's fortune. After Dawson's death in 1875 the estate was inherited by his fifteen year old nephew, Edward Preston Rawnsley. In 1877 Edward's cousin, Hardwicke Rawnsley, took up the appointment of vicar of Wray Church. To protect the countryside from damaging development, Hardwicke Rawnsley, building on an idea propounded by John Ruskin, conceived of a National Trust that could buy and preserve places of natural beauty and historic interest for the nation. The house
Octavia Hill up and copied, with her enthusiastic support, in continental Europe and the United States of America. Beatrice Webb said that she "first became aware of the meaning of the poverty of the poor," while staying with her sister, who was a rent collector for Octavia Hill in the East End. Queen Victoria's daughter, Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt, was taken incognito on a tour of some of Hill's properties, and she translated Hill's "Homes of the London Poor" into German. Among those whom Hill trained was her assistant and secretary, Maud Jeffery, who was later engaged by the Commissioners of Crown