Along with his innovative places of worship, Cragg also played a part in the introduction of iron as a building material in domestic settings. He built six of the earliest houses to be erected at Saint Michael’s in the Hamlet incorporating many features made of cast iron into the buildings, contributing to the suburb’s quaint character and culminating in the area leading down to the Mersey becoming known locally as ‘the Cast Iron Shore’. Cragg owned a house in the hamlet he named ‘Hollybank’, used as his country retreat, whilst also owning a house at St James Walk, the site of which is now incorporated into the Anglican Cathedral estate. Cragg’s churches are of such architectural and historical importance that the two surviving examples, St George’s, Everton (consecrated 1814) and St Michael’s in the Hamlet, Aigburth (1815), are both grade I listed. The third, St Phillip’s (1816), stood on Hardman Street and was partially demolished in 1884, the surviving portions incorporated into the Victorian building that stood on the site until 2017. All three churches had graveyards attached and some of Liverpool’s most prominent slave merchants were buried in the precincts of the respective churches. John Cragg died in 1854, and was buried in St. James’s Cemetery, near to his home on St. James’s Walk.