Rockwood Mansion

Joseph Shipley built Rockwood between 1851 and 1854 after retiring to Wilmington from a successful career as a merchant and banker in Liverpool, England. A Wilmington native, he hired Liverpool architect George Williams in 1851 to design a house similar to his Victorian country house in England, and he shared Rockwood with his unmarried sisters. After the death of the last sister, Rockwood passed to her great-nephew Edward Bringhurst, Jr., in 1891. In 1857, the Delaware Weekly Republican praised the residence in Brandywine Hundred as one of the finest in the state, saying that within a few years a site once covered with rocks and trees had been transformed into an elegant mansion with a beautiful lawn, flowers, gardens, greenhouses, and surrounding woodland.

Delaware · United States