Chapter 5 - moving

Until the mid 1700s the roads to Liverpool were impassable to anything but riders and packhorses. Until 1760 the nearest a coach could get to Liverpool was Warrington – then passengers had to find other means of travelling on to the port. Packhorses carried goods between the port and inland towns, along muddy lanes and moorland tracks. It was a slow, cumbersome and expensive process – no wonder that Liverpool didn’t really start to develop as a port until overland transport improved. After much badgering from frustrated merchants, Parliament finally gave permission to
local councils to build roads and collect tolls, and the network of turnpike roads grew.
The first in this area was from Liverpool to Prescot, opened in 1725; it was more than 25 years before the road was extended to Warrington to join the road network. Turnpike committees were corrupt, tolls were high and the state of the roads still poor. As late as 1788 a train of 70 packhorses set out daily from Dale Street to Manchester, trailing along Edge Lane, over Old Swan Hill, through Oak Vale and over Broad Green Moor.
It must have been an exciting moment when, on 1st September 1760, the first stage coach – the Flying Machine – left the Golden Fleece in Dale Street. Then it took four days to get to London but before long the competition drove down the journey time, and by 1785 coaching inns were advertising Liverpool to London trips in 26 hours.
The first mail coach service was run that year, on 25th July, leaving for London from the Golden Lion at 4am. The advertisement said: ‘To go in 30 hours: fare £3 13s 6d.’ Mail coaches carried only four passengers, the coachmen and an armed guard to fend off highwaymen…..

Henry Booth was an engineer and part of one of Liverpool’s big merchant families; he had no doubt by 1824 that the railway was the future. Opposition to the railway was fierce, even vicious – surveyors planning a rail route to Manchester had to be protected from the angry locals by hired bruisers, and Liverpool’s pro-railway lobby was mugged at every turn by influential canal owners, road trustees and landowners. A declaration was signed by 150 Liverpool men – including a Rathbone, a Gladstone, and a Ewart, that ‘new means of communication were indispensable’.
Booth’s foresight was remarkable, but even he was probably astonished at the speed and spread of the radical changes in society that the railway age was to bring….

The 2,000-acre Port of Liverpool is busier now than ever, and one of the fastest-growing in Europe. Liverpool is the largest UK importer of grain, the largest exporter of scrap metal, and the leading timber port since about 1283 (when timber from Gill Moss forest was taken to Wales by pyckard boat to build Caernarvon Castle). 400 years ago, however, there was only the Pool – no harbour wall, no quayside, and no decent transport to and from the town – although there was a water bailiff as early as 1551 to stop congestion on the waterside.
The Mersey was once described as a ‘wild raging beast of a river’. It is not an ideal waterway, with a six-knot ebb-tide and constantly shifting sandbanks. It had a naturally deep harbour, but ships with cargoes to unload had either to anchor in the Pool in the lee of Liverpool Castle, or out in mid-river. In the Pool, ships would keel over at low tide unless propped up; anchored in mid-river they had to ferry loads back and forth from ship to shore…

Chapter 4 - import-export

Who were the original Scousers? The Neolithic Boat People can probably claim the title in Liverpool’s prehistory; on marsh and heathland they created scattered settlements of fishers and farmers. The Romans weren’t impressed, although they did build a road through here, they stuck to Chester and other less boggy parts of the North West. (Chester’s Roman name was Deva; our name for it derives from the Latin word castra, or camp: hence Man-, Rib-, Win-, Chi-, Dor-chester, etc.)
Saxons drifted in, building small settlements and churches; Vikings, who had been raiding the west coast sporadically for a while, eventually started to settle and built more churches. Place names and a few archaeological finds are all that’s left of these early settlements.
The Normans, auditing their newly acquired kingdom in 1086, didn’t bother to note down Liverpool in the Domesday Book. Toxteth, yes, and West Derby, but not Liverpool. It wasn’t till King John (bad King John, Richard the Lionheart’s naughty younger brother) twigged that Liverpool was a handy point of departure for Ireland that things started to move. For the next 300 years the population grew as soldiers were shipped in and out along the Mersey, traders started to scent a new market and moved in, and the town began to establish itself. Under the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts, Liverpool stagnated; the Civil War and a string of plagues knocked the town for six.
From the late 1600s, though, Liverpool opened up to the world, and the world obliged by turning up to see what was going on. But while strangers from distant parts might have brought a little spice to the town, much of Liverpool’s modern culture was imported from nearer neighbours – Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
The Welsh came to Liverpool in droves; the first Welsh chapel was built in Pall Mall in 1787; the Welsh population grew so large that Pall Mall became known as Little Wales, and in 1788 there was even a Liverpool Welsh penny minted. They may have been here a good deal earlier; place names like Walton and Wallasey (on the Wirral) suggest that Welsh Celts may have made their homes here in the first millennium AD. By 1813 one in ten of Liverpool’s citizenry were Welsh and over the next 40 years the Welsh community grew from 8,000 to 40,000, many of whom spoke no English; in Everton and Kirkdale advertising hoardings and local newspapers were in Welsh. At the end of the 19th century, there were four National Eisteddfodau held in Liverpool – in 1840, 1855, 1884 and 1900.
As for the Scots, they came to prosper. Medics, scholars, engineers and entrepreneurs saw opportunity in Liverpool – famous names such as Gladstone and Laird, for example. By 1837 there were enough Scots to support six congregations (the Scottish church of St Andrews, though ruined, is still in Rodney Street) and they prospered in ship-building, rope-making, engineering, and sugar-refining. The Scottish presence was less obvious than the Welsh or Irish because the community didn’t live in definable areas; the independent Scots weaved themselves into the fabric of Liverpool life in more subtle patterns...............

Chapter 3 - sport

Sport in this city means two things: Liverpool or Everton. Football is genetic here, in the blood, whether it’s red or blue. But beyond the all-pervasive roar of the footie crowd, there is a whole lot of other sport going on, whether to local, national or international standards – or at street level. For heaven’s sake – the world’s single biggest sporting event, watched by over one billion people all over the planet in 2001, is staged in Liverpool each spring. If it’s not immediately obvious, read on. It’s not the Derby which, despite being run at Epsom these days, is named after its founder the Earl of Derby (as in West Derby, Liverpool), owner of Leasowe Castle, who first ran the race in 1780 over the Leasowes. Racing had been going on for much longer: there was horse-racing over Kirkdale sands to celebrate Elizabeth I’s ascension to the throne in 1558, and in 1577 Mr Torbock donated a silver bell for the winner of a race each year on Ascension Day.
Before either Everton or Liverpool Football Clubs were even thought of, Liverpool Rugby Club was going strong; the oldest rugby club in the world, it was founded in 1857; three of the England team in the first ever rugby international match (1871) were Liverpool players, and in 1914 the captains of England, Scotland and Ireland were all Liverpool members. Waterloo RC, incidentally, has produced five England captains.
Smaller, cleaner and more colourful than footballs, snooker balls are made at Clare’s in St Anne Street, and the firm has the world’s only snooker museum. Exhibits include an eight-sided table, and cues used by cavalry officers on India’s North-west Frontier in the 1870s – where snooker was invented. Liverpool lad John Parrott shot to fame when in 1991 he beat ‘the Tornado’ Jimmy White to become world snooker champion.
On wheels, Liverpool has a long pedigree: the Liverpool Self-propelled Traffic Association organised a trial for self-propelled vehicles on Everton Brow in 1896. On two wheels, Liverpool Velocipedes was the first cycling club, and Pete Matthews Cycles in Lower Breck Road was established in the 1930s by cycling expert Jim Soens and bought by Matthews – also a top racer, in 1972. Matthews’ customers come to the crowded little shop from all over Europe to have their bikes quite literally tailor-made for them, down to the last millimetre.
Boxing glory most recently came via John Conteh, world light-heavyweight champion in 1974, but Jem Mace (who died in 1910) had the longest boxing career of all time: 36 years.
Swimming is producing some strong contenders – Catherine Smith was in the first-ever relay team to swim the length of Loch Ness and back, in 26 hours 13 minutes; in the Sydney Olympics 2000, Stephen Parry came sixth in the 200m butterfly, and has his attention fixed on Athens for 2004.
And this being a maritime city, watersports are popular; the biennial Lyver Trophy, organised by the Liverpool and Royal Dee Yacht Clubs, is a 180-mile race from the Mersey and is now a qualifier for the Fastnet race. Sailors don’t have to go into international waters for a thrill – in the first-ever Mersey Regatta (1828) there was a severe thunderstorm.
Although Liverpool hasn’t produced a Scouse Tiger Woods yet, golf is an abiding passion here; there are 34 golf courses on Merseyside, including Royal Birkdale (where the 100th British Open was held,) and Royal Liverpool on the Wirral….

Chapter 2 - performance

Rogues and vagabonds – that’s how actors and theatricals were regarded in the 17th century, and deportation was a distinct possibility. However, the first mention of theatre in Liverpool was a playhouse at the bottom of James Street, in 1649; not quite the theatre as we would recognise it – this would probably be a little less civilised. In the 17th and early 18th centuries actors would perform in old cockpits, assembly rooms or the inns on Dale Street and Water Street. In 1772, the Theatre Royal was opened in Williamson Square, and all the great actors of the day played there, including the Kembles. Charles James Matthews, another of the great actor-managers, was also born during a theatrical tour – in Basnett Street in 1803. By contrast, John Palmer, an untrustworthy character known as Plausible Jack, dropped dead on stage during a performance of The Stranger in 1798.
A number of famous theatrical names played in Liverpool en route to America: Sarah Bernhardt, Beerbohm Tree, Lily Langtry, Grimaldi, General Tom Thumb, and John Julius Booth. Booth, a popular actor in Liverpool, emigrated to America, where his sons were born; one – Edwin – became a famous actor, the other – John Wilkes – also became famous, as President Lincoln’s assassin….

A city that can claim to be the pop capital of the world might not be blessed with a classical tradition as well, but Liverpool boasts a track record of world-class musicians and music-making over several centuries… Liverpool has produced a slew of world-leading musicians, from conductors Adrian Boult and Simon Rattle and jazzman George Melly to the Beatles; from soprano Rita Hunter and heldentenor Alberto Remedios to folk group the Spinners. No surprise, in Music City, that Liverpool University has a thriving music scene, with its own jazz band, brass band, chamber orchestra, renaissance music group, wind orchestra, university choir, university singers, and the Liverpool University Symphony Orchestra…

Chapter1 - timeline

Hard to imagine, perhaps, but 100, even 50 years ago Liverpool looked very different to the city we know today. One of the world’s most famous waterfronts was only built in the first dozen years of the 20th century, after all, and the May Blitz destroyed so much of the city centre that photos of Liverpool in the 1930s are often hard to recognise as today’s city. But go back in time some 4,000 years and there wasn’t even the River Mersey. In the Neolithic period, about 2000 BC, this area was marshland and forest stretching miles alongside a big lake that extended about 30 miles from Warrington to Bootle (as we know them now). A primeval forest of oak, pine and birch stretched from Freshfield south-west across the top of the Wirral; some ancient oak tree stumps have been uncovered – a piece of oak from Leasowe has been carbon-dated to about 1740 BC….

The earliest evidence we have of a settlement is the Calder Stones, now in the park named after them to the south of the city centre. The very rare megalithic tomb, older than Stonehenge, was composed of a dozen or more sandstone blocks that made up the burial chamber at the heart of a sand tumulus. Some of the stones were carved with cup and spiral markings – the only examples in England. In 1840 the stones themselves were moved when the road was widened, and lay in a local farmer’s field acting as cattle rubs till Joseph Walker set six of them in a circle in front of his house. Only in 1954 did the Liverpool Corporation move the stones into a greenhouse within Calderstones Park, where they remain…..

It is not Liverpool that gets the first mention in records, but Halewood – part of the little village of Hale to the south of Liverpool; the Wood of Hale appears on the map in 1001 AD according to the Domesday Book. Next on the roll comes the River Mersey, mentioned in a document of 1004 during the reign of Ethelread II. In the Domesday Book (1086) there is still no mention of Liverpool itself, although Smithdown, Toxteth and West Derby are named. The very first mention of Liverpool is in a deed signed by Prince John in 1190 (while his brother Richard I was off crusading): ‘Know ye that we have granted, and this by our deed confirmed, to Henry Fitzwarine, son of Warine of Lancaster, the lands which King Henry our father gave to Warine his father, that is Ravensmeols, Ainsdale, Litherland, Liverpool and French Lea.’

In 1561 there were 690 people living in 138 cottages in the town’s seven inhabited streets: Chapel Street, Castle Street, Dale Street, Bancke (now Water) Street, Moor (now Tithebarn) Street, Juggler (now High) Street, and Peppard (now Old Hall) Street. Liverpool as yet was not attracting much maritime trade anyway – and this wasn’t helped by the destruction of the haven by the great storm of 1560.


It is said that the coming of the age of steam has been one of a handful of key developments in western civilisation – the beginning of globalisation. Certainly for Liverpool the transformation was radical – after all, it was only in 1760 that the first stagecoaches linked Liverpool and London; 60 years later the trains made Liverpool a gateway between old and new worlds. The speed of change had made a quantum leap.

Now that the first 1,000 years of recorded history are complete, Liverpool is already steaming full ahead into its second millennium. With such an extraordinary history behind it, what must Liverpool’s future hold?