Liverpool History Shop
Almost all the old maps on this site can be bought as high quality prints, great for framing, and as a present!
There’s also the book – Liverpool: a landscape history, also available to buy from this website.
Old Maps of Liverpool
Zoom and pan around the city from different periods. Get a bird’s eye view, or browse a traditional map from the Victorian era of Liverpool’s heyday.
Interactive maps
An easy way to explore data from official sources like Historic England, or from personal research. Click on a feature and find out more!
Liverpool History Blog
The blog includes everything from book reviews to bits of ‘hidden’ history that can be found in the landscape, plus upcoming events or new developments in the city.
Recent posts from the blog
Film Review: Almost Liverpool 8, a portrait of Toxteth in the 21st century Toxteth. Liverpool 8. Sometimes just running those two phrases together can get people hot under the collar. One thing we… Read more
Liverpool Loses its World Heritage Status Image: EPW003061 ENGLAND (1920). Canada Dock, Huskisson Dock and the Sandon Half Tide Dock, Liverpool, from the south-west, 1920, from… Read more
Liverpool University and its Institutional Landscape Image: Liverpool's institutional landscape in 1892. Note everything from the Philharmonic Hall to the Liverpool Institute and the School of… Read moreLatest book reviews
Most Notorious Pirates… and Highwaymen I thought it would be worth posting at least a short review of this pair of books which came out… Read more
Courts and Alleys by Elizabeth J. Stewart This book is part of the output of the ‘Galkoff's and the secret life of Pembroke Place’ project. (See my… Read more
Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadowplay, by Jeff Young This book is a memoir, and many of those have been published over the years (and a couple reviewed on… Read moreArticles on old maps
Here’s 5 views of Google’s 3D Liverpool you might not have seen It's been all over the news lately: Liverpool is one of the first British cities to be rendered in three… Read more
The historic villages of Liverpool – built to a template? All born-and-bred Liverpudlians (and many more people) will be aware that the city is made up of a collection of… Read more
Lerpoole 1572 This map has popped up twice for me recently, as someone asked me for a scanned copy, an a second… Read moreAll blog posts
Film Review: Almost Liverpool 8, a portrait of Toxteth in the 21st century - Toxteth. Liverpool 8. Sometimes just running those two phrases together can get people hot under the collar. One thing we learn from Almost Liverpool 8, a new documentary from Dartmouth Films is that the name ‘Toxteth’ was hardly heard before 1981, that watershed in the area’s history. I didn’t know this, having got so used …
Liverpool Loses its World Heritage Status - Image: EPW003061 ENGLAND (1920). Canada Dock, Huskisson Dock and the Sandon Half Tide Dock, Liverpool, from the south-west, 1920, from Britain from Above After a long wait, the seemingly inevitable has happened: Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City has been removed from UNESCO’s list of sites of ‘outstanding cultural and natural heritage value’. Of course, there’s no …
Most Notorious Pirates… and Highwaymen - I thought it would be worth posting at least a short review of this pair of books which came out in late 2020 from the British Library. I was sent review copies of both books by the Library, for which I’m very grateful, but this review remains unbiased, and contains all my own opinions! There …
Liverpool University and its Institutional Landscape - Image: Liverpool’s institutional landscape in 1892. Note everything from the Philharmonic Hall to the Liverpool Institute and the School of Art (Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland) The area coming to be known as Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter (how many quarters can one city have?) has distinct landscape characteristics. The university is …
Courts and Alleys by Elizabeth J. Stewart - This book is part of the output of the ‘Galkoff’s and the secret life of Pembroke Place’ project. (See my article on a talk by Liz Stewart, this book’s author). It doesn’t cover the court houses archaeological excavations which took place as part of the project, which will come in a later publication. Court houses …
Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadowplay, by Jeff Young - This book is a memoir, and many of those have been published over the years (and a couple reviewed on this very site). Like some of those other memoirs, it is a series of reminiscences on family and place. But it’s a slightly different beast to the other memoirs. It’s main selling point is that …
Postcards from Edwardian Liverpool - Recently, I was contacted by Monica Lewis who had found a collection of postcards belonging to her grandfather. He was in the Navy in the First World War, and Monica thinks these postcards (amongst many from other parts of the world) were accumulated over the course of his career. She’d like me to share these …
Calder Stones: a new, more accessible, home - The Calder Stones have a troubled history, even for a site that’s about 5000 years old. While it’s escaped complete destruction like many of its Irish Sea cousins, there are many of these Neolithic sites which aren’t doing too badly. Even those completely denuded of their turf, soil and/or cobble mound stand proud in fields …
Mystery: Unique photos of the John Bibby Sons and Co. copper rolling mills, formerly in Window Lane, Garston - This is another of the guest posts on this blog, this time from John Owens. John got in touch hoping that I or you, dear readers, could help identify the source of some photos of a copper rolling works featuring an ancestor of his (see main article). I’ll pass it over to John now, who …
A Liver Bird’s point of view: Royal Liver Building 360 - There isn’t a more iconic Merseyside building than the Royal Liver Building. It sits at the Pier Head, the point at which Liverpool’s wealth flowed into the Victorian and Edwardian town. Its sister buildings embody one of the great shipping companies of Liverpool’s heyday and the Port itself, respectively. And it’s crowned with the two …