History of Halewood
Halewood lies between the old course of the Ditton Brook to the north, and Ram’s Brook to the south. Halebank, on the Mersey, is the site of Lovel’s Hall, a large moated house. Several wide, main roads cross the open country. Marshland and mudbanks dominate the banks of the Mersey here.
The fields along the footpath from Speke to Hale are known as Portway fields, and this is probably a reference to the ‘Portway’ occuring in the Much Woolton charters.
Roman remains were found by Ditton Station when a well was sunk.
Transport
The London and North West Railway ran from Liverpool to Warrington and Crewe, stopping at Halebank and Ditton Juntion. The Cheshire Lines Committee Railway from Liverpool to Manchester had a station near Halewood, and to the west a branch ran to Southport.
The Hale to Widnes road ran parallel to the River Mersey, joined by the Liverpool to Woolton road, and then near Halebank Street by the northerly road through Gateacre, running along the western boundary of the township. An old road from Liverpool, through Childwall to Hale, a continuation of the Gateacre road, had degenerated by the start of the 20th Century into a pathway along the boundary between Halewood and Speke, and an existing pathway to between Speke and Hale seems to be the continuation of this old road.
Industry
At the start of the 20th Century there was a small brewery in Halewood village. By the Mersey was the Ditton Brook ironworks, the buildings of which were much later used for a grease factory. A Mr. Willis of Halsnead built a staith, for the unloading of coal, in around 1790.
South Liverpool was one of the areas where new post-war industries grew up (e.g. motor works, light engineering, food processing, chemicals and pharmaceuticals). This was prompted by government schemes and EU money, and the flat open landscape of the banks of the river were well-suited to industries which wanted room for expansion.
Expansion
Halewood was one of the three largest overspill areas after the Second World War. This expansion began in the 1960s, and in the space of four years the “rural idyll of hedges, brocolli and carrots disappeared underneath Liverpool’s bricks and concrete” (Fletcher, in Belchem, 2006: 396).
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