Frankton Grange was a later nineteenth-century creation for the Robinson family, who made a series of land and property purchases and built themselves a seat within a newly landscaped park. The Robinsons originated from Whitby, Yorkshire, and in the eighteenth century became established in Liverpool as merchants. Nicholas Robinson (1769–1854) went into partnership with his uncle, Stephen Backhouse (d. 1804), trading, as Backhouse & Robinson and, from 1826, as Backhouse, Robinson & Lowe. The company initially apparently began as ivory merchants but then latterly traded solely in corn, with Robinson serving as Mayor of Liverpool in 1828–9, and as President of the Liverpool Academy in 1829. Prior to 1821 he had built himself Sudley House at Aigburth, which still survives as one of Liverpool’s Museums, and in 1834, at the suggestion of a family friend, Thomas Stephen Oswell – of the family associated with the Derwen, Gobowen, and who was working in a Liverpool merchant’s office – he purchased a farm of 215 acres at Frankton in October 1834.

Nicholas Robinson appears to have bought the Shropshire property purely as investment and remained at Sudley until his death, conveying the farm to his son Charles Backhouse Robinson (1806–1894) in 1853, the year before he died. C.B. Robinson did not follow his father in business but, instead, trained as a sculptor. In 1838–9 he travelled to Italy and studied under John Gibson at Rome. On his return to England, Robinson established a studio, from 1845 to 1866, at Myrtle Street in Liverpool. C.B. Robinson had married Euphemia Gray (1812–1900) in 1839 and, two years after his father’s death, the couple were able to buy Frankton Grove with 159 acres to add to their Shropshire property in June 1856. This was bought from William Downes (d. 1863) for £9,500 who had, himself, acquired the property in 1829, gentrifying it with the planting of an avenue along the road that ran through the property in 1844.

The Robinsons renamed the property Frankton Grange – a name that it had reputedly previously borne – and commissioned the building of a new house from the architect George Williams (1814– 1898).