Jul 26
This is the new location of the blog formerly known as the Liverpool Times. The name coincided with another website and news source, and I fancied a change! The posts below are the same as those you would have found on the old blog, and the topics I cover will be the same, ie. the changing face of Liverpool and Merseyside. If you’ve been here before, I hope you continue to enjoy it; if not, then welcome!
Martin
Jul 10
This week English Heritage released a list of historic sites, wrecks, parks and landmarks they deem most at risk from demolition, development pressure or vandalism. Numerous sites in Liverpool and the surrounding county feature on the list, as detailed in this Liverpool Echo story
Jul 9
Great plans are afoot to turn Liverpool into a port to rival New York, Dubai and Singapore. The plans take the form of a document stating that – if several current projects are pulled together in the right way – Liverpool could once again enter the “Top League” of international ports. From the Liverpool Echo site:
“The massive plan would see links between:
The huge Post-Panamax container terminal at Seaforth.
A bigger John Lennon airport, with a runway extension and world cargo centre.
An improved Weston Docks with better road and rail links.
A new and improved Port Wirral at the entrance of the Manchester Ship Canal.
The 3MG road and rail depot at Ditton.
The proposed new rail freight terminal at the former Parkside Colliery, St Helens.
A new Port Salford to allow container ships further down the Mersey.
The massive Liverpool and Wirral Waters developments.
The second Mersey crossing.”
The North West Development Agency, Mersey Maritime, Peel Holdings, Merseytravel and Sefton Council have all put their weight behind the plans. However, at this stage such an ambition is very much hypothetical, and it remains to be seen whether Merseyside can overcome the infighting it seems to suffer from when working together, to achieve these grand designs. Of course, Liverpool’s Victorian greatness was built on it’s maritime foundations, and it would be a fitting future to recover that status. Let’s just hope they don’t trash the old stuff in their rush for the new.
In other news, Ringo Starr’s birthplace, 9 Madryn Street, will not be listed, after English Heritage judged the building not worthy of the protection. The house, mentioned in Ringo’s awful song to celebrate the Capital of Culture, is one of a row of Victorian terraced houses. 10 Admiral Grove, the house he grew up in (between the ages of four and 22) is open to the public, who are shown round by the current owner, Margarent Grose. The homes of the other Beatles (inlcuding first drummer Pete Best) are listed or protected in some way.
Jun 26
We’re entering a new era for the website and blog (!) as the site formerly known as Liverpool Landscapes is now called Historic Liverpool, and resides at Historic-Liverpool.co.uk. A lot of work has gone into the site recently, although there’s still a hell of a lot to be done. However, now you can read plenty of information about each township, and how it has evolved over the centuries. This will be improved over the coming months, and there are a handful of pages labelled as ‘Under Construction’. Feel free to explore these, though, as there’s a brief explanation on each as to what you will soon be able to find. At the moment I’m working on the Before Liverpool page [Edit 24/01/09: this has now been replaced with the Prehistoric Merseyside page), which will show all about how the natural landscape was formed, how it affects the way the city of Liverpool looks today, and follows this with the human occupation of the region from the earliest prehistoric periods up to the time of King John, and what influenced him to found a new town.
My favourite new feature of the site is the map background, which has changed from a dull green and blue to a full-featured 1940s Edition Ordnance Survey map. This is made possible by the Web Mapping Service on GetMapping run by Nick Black, using tiles scanned by the New Popular Editions staff. This makes my site look a hell of a lot better, so thanks to them for producing this project.
So keep an eye on Historic-Liverpool.co.uk for more updates soon!
May 26
An examination of Liverpool's gang problem in the Victorian period, and the landscape they roamed and guarded.
May 7
Everton FC’s controversial plans to move to a new stadium in Kirkby are strengthening the case for “line one”, the non-capitalised tram scheme from Liverpool city centre to the outskirts. This follows claims in mid-April that Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly was ready to approve the £328m transport link.
Of course, trams are nothing new in Liverpool, which can trace their history back to 1869, and the 16 horse-drawn trams which were brought into use then. The service stopped on August 14th, 1957, when Liverpool discarded the trams in favour of buses. The network left behind many remnants embedded in the towns fabric, from the central reservations of the suburbs to the cobbles under the tarmac of the city centre streets.
Another thing which stands in favour of recreating the tram system shapes the very city we see today. As I mentioned, many of the wide boulevards which snake through the suburbs, such as Edge Lane, Muirhead Avenue and Queen’s Drive. Hidden under the grass the tracks no doubt still lie there. Of course it wouldn’t make sense to try to re-use the rusty metal, but the long curves of the roads themselves lend well to the three or four carriages which modern tramways like those in Sheffield and Manchester. In fact, if you look at a map of Liverpool, you can see how the tramways of the last century, and the routes people took into work – the financiers, traders and sailors – had an influence on the growth and development – the very shape – of the city in its boom era.
Some news about the main website: I’m releasing all the information on the website under a Creative Commons License, specifically the Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa), which means you are allowed to create works based on my work, as long as it’s not for commercial reasons, and you are willing to share what you’ve created too. It’s all in the spirit of sharing! For more details on what the license means, read the easy and short version, or the longer, legalese-heavy code.
Apr 24
The Liverpool Echo has fun suggesting that last year’s 800th anniversary might have been 15 years too late. Deeds have been donated to the city which show that the area was populated as far back as 1192, over a decade before King John granted his charter. However, the evidence of this old habitation is still to be seen in the landscape, in both Liverpool itself and the surrounding areas. Birkenhead Priory has been in existence since the 12th Century. Evidence of Roman trade has been excavated in parts of southern Liverpool and to the east of the city, in addition to Iron Age evidence on the Wirral. The best evidence is in the place-names of Merseyside. Toxteth and Croxteth are of Viking origin, and indicate places where Toki’s and Croki’s people landed (staith = ‘landing place’). Aintree (the ‘lone tree’) has a name of Saxon origins. The last three letters of Garston, Allerton and Walton give the game away – tun started out to mean enclosure, or even fence, but soon came to include such a feature surrounding a farmstead or homestead. So it shouldn’t surprise you to find that people have been living in this area for a very long time. King John just made it official!
For almost 1000 years people having been looking for ways to cross the Mersey, from the monks of Birkenhead Priory, to the tunnel-builders and 20th Century bridge builders. A Transport and Works Order (TWO – planning permission) is being sought by Halton Council to allow purchasing of the required land, and the re-routing of the local road network, and the charging of tolls. Work could then be started on the latest crossing of the River Mersey.
The Liverpool Echo website has a short but very interesting article on the history of the Liverpool Overhead Railway (the “Dockers’ Umbrella”). I’m not sure why they chose today to write this, but it’s very informative nonetheless, concentrating on its trials and tribulations during the Second World War. The only curious fact is that “The bombings also left about 51,000 people in Liverpool homeless and 25,000 in Bootle”. These were certainly poweful bombs the Luftwaffe dropped on the city…
Apr 16
Although Liverpool is famous for its docks, and (criminally, to a lesser extent) the railways, taking a wider view reveals the interlinking threads which join the two transport systems, and gives a few insights into the buildings nearby. The recently revealed Manchester Dock (once under the car park of the old Museum of Liverpool Life) was one of the earliest docks on the river front, having originally been no more than a tidal basin connected to the river Mersey. The dock was used to hold the barges of the Shropshire Union Canal Company, and later the Great Western Railway, in order to transport goods between Liverpool and the rail terminal at Morpeth Dock in Birkenhead. In this way Manchester Dock played a role as a go-between, from the national rail network (connecting Liverpool – via Lime Street – to the industrial centres of Britain) and further ports of call on the other side of the river. The warehouses standing next to Canning graving docks – until recently the home of the Liverpool Museum field Archaeology Unit – still bear the name Great Western Railway on the canopies at the front.
Time Team are showing a’ Special’ on the Manchester Dock on the 21st April. Although the adverts would have you believe Phil uncovered this crucial piece of Liverpool’s (and indeed the world’s) maritime history, excavations have been taking place for a while. Read Liverpool Museum’s blog to stay up to date. Also check out their Flikr site.
Michael Palin is coming to Liverpool to open an exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery on art and railways (Art In the Age of Steam, Walker Gallery, April 18 – August 10).
Apr 8
As there hasn’t been a lot of landscape-related news involving Liverpool lately, I thought I’d take this chance to discuss the joys and frustrations of creating the Liverpool Landscapes website. The site uses MapServer, a piece of software that draw the maps to show you where the listed buildings and scheduled monuments are, along with other points if interest. Using a series of layers, I can tell MapServer how to draw the maps, and the user – you – can have some control over how those layers are displayed. The points and shapes representing the monuments are free to use and easy to come by on one of English Heritage’s websites. The boundaries of the townships were traced from an old map I found Googling around the ‘Net at Christmas. However, I think the map has limited use until I find decent street-level map. In Britain, mapping is produced by the Ordnance Survey, and that organisation has very protective rules over the re-use of its data, despite opposition to this. Despite the fact that they seem to be creating some more permissive licensing, I’m still a bit wary over how I’m allowed to use any maps I can find, unless I shell out more money than my salary allows. I’m still researching the best way to get MapServer compatible maps of Liverpool to use as a backdrop, without breaking the bank. Considering I’m not making any profit from this site, I’d be fascinated to hear of any suitable ways of getting hold of this data. Meanwhile, the best option looks like New Popular Editions.
Anyway, apart from the problems of creating the maps, there are the small details that come out when looking at the landscape of Liverpool. Recently looking at the development of Everton, and the Welsh community that grew up in the area during the 19th Century, I came across a row of streets built near Goodison Park by the father and son team Owen and William Owen. Read the initials of the roads starting from Oxton Street, heading north.
More interesting snippets on the way!
Mar 18
Having recently taken ownership of the Beatles Story in the Albert Dock, Merseytravel have added a new Fab Four attraction to their collection: a set of bushes in the shape of the band.
A new Mersey Observatory will replace the radar tower at the mouth of the Mersey, near Crosby. The winning design, by Duggan Morris Architects, was chosen from a shortlist of five from 92 entrants, and will include a viewing tower, cafe, and exhibition centre.
Vasily Petrenko, the conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, has backed plans to move to a new, purpose-built home on the waterfront. The long term ‘dream’ would be “amazing… It could be part of a real cultural hub for the city.” The move would solve increasing problems over lack of space.
Liverpool University has invited researchers from Liverpool, Edinburgh and Lancaster to explore the origins of Liverpool’s unique accent. Dr Andrew Harmer, from the School of English, said “The Merseyside accent was first identified in the late 19th Century, and it has been argued that it came about from a blending of Lancashire and Irish speech varieties. If this theory is correct, we might expect Scouse to have been at its most distinctive at the time when having an Irish background was at its height among the people of Merseyside. This has not been the case, however: instead of becoming less distinctive as our kinship with Ireland decreased, the accent has become stronger.” For more information about the event go to AlphaGallileo.org.
Linen Theme by The Theme Foundry
Copyright © 2026 . All rights reserved.