Frederick Gardiner was born on 22nd August 1850,
the son of Scots-born George Neish Gardiner,
a merchant trading with the Americas. At the time of his birth the
family were living in St Michael’s Aigburth, later addresses including 9 Princes
Park Terrace L8 and ‘Rozell Villa’ 9 Croxteth Road L8 (now demolished).
Making his living as a ship-owner he prospered to the extent
that by the turn of the century, having married Alice Evans from Warrington and
fathering four children, he was living in a large mansion in Woolton and
described himself as retired. The affluence he enjoyed allowed him to devote himself
full-time to the passion of his life, mountaineering, which he had begun as
early as 1869. Looking back in 1913 he recorded “this season is my
forty-sixth; I made one thousand two hundred ascents during eighty-one stays in
the Alps”. Such was the enormity of his climbing record that in 1920 the
famous writer on Alpine matters, W.A.B. Coolidge, published a record in The
Alpine Career of Frederick Gardiner 1868-1914. Whilst the length and scope
of his climbing ‘career’ was prodigious he was also involved in some notable
feats. In 1873 He was a part of the expedition which made the first ascent
of the eastern summit of Mount Elbrus in
the Caucasus and involved in the first ascents on a number of Alpine peaks. His
name is remembered in Mount Frederick Gardiner, a peak in New Zealand, not far
from Mt. Cook.
He involved his daughter Kate Gardiner in climbing forays from
age 10 and she became a pioneering woman climber in the 20th
century.
The mansion in Woolton, which was his family home from at
least 1891 until his death, was called ‘The Gables’. It stood in Vale Road
until the creation of Menlove Avenue which ‘stole’ the northern section of the
road up to Yew Tree Road. It was standing into the 1870s when it served as St
Joseph’s Prep School alongside St Francis Xavier’s Grammar School, run by the
same Catholic order.
Frederick Gardiner died on 28th March 1919, aged
68, leaving an estate of £56,128 (about £3.5 million in 2022).
