The Calder Stones name refers these days to a group of six megaliths which once stood in a greenhouse, but now have a new home in Calderstones Park. These are the remains of a Neolithic burial chamber which once stood on the edge of the Harthill estate. The Harthill Estate later became Calderstones Park. Before […]
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This red brick and sandstone tower on Blackburne Place is a beautiful ventilation shaft for a railway which once ran beneath it, and could be seen as representing the tunnel and railway in a nutshell. The tunnel itself, Wapping Tunnel, is partly bored through the local natural sandstone, with brick lining above, mirroring the architecture […]
Robin Hood’s Stone (or the Robin Hood Stone) is a Neolithic or Bronze Age standing stone currently to be found within a set of railings on the corner of Booker Avenue and Archerfield Road. It originally stood to the north east in the middle of a field known as Stone Hey, but was moved when […]
In the woods above Woolton lie mysterious remains, amounting to little more than some dry stone walls, in a location reputed to have once held so much more. Camp Hill is a name which suggests a settlement, if only temporary, with perhaps a military usage, and for years it has been assumed that the site […]
In the Victorian period Liverpool was Britain’s second greatest port. So there are hundreds of remnants of Liverpool’s trading golden age dotted around the landscape. We’re all familiar with the scores of warehouses, docks and the odd road bridge seen around town. But there are also tiny details which have survived and which give clues […]
Liverpool has always been a trading port, and so it’s no surprise that features have come and gone in the landscape which sought to make this as easy and safe as possible. Everton Beacon was one such feature, and took advantage of the natural rise in the ground to the north of Liverpool’s centre. All […]
Knotty Ash Village, and Springfield Park, are part of a historic area. They’re on the edge of West Derby and also on the main route between Liverpool and Prescot, and then on to Manchester. The old mail coaches would have flown past in their day, and the tram routes have left their mark in turn. […]
The dock railway was built in Liverpool to solve a challenge which other cities did not face. With dock expansion, ships were docking further and further from the central business district. Places like Manchester and Bristol stood astride their rivers, and twice the mileage of docks fit in each mile of river than in Liverpool. […]
Liverpool is (like so many other places) full of the remains of hidden paths and landscape clues. Blessig’s Style is one such path in West Derby, once the home of ambassadors and merchants. I was reminded of a certain footpath by a short video posted in the Facebook group West Derby Society back in 2014. […]
All sorts of stories are associated with the Sanctuary Stone. Its name conjures up anything from slave-related scenes to cheeky apple snatching medieval urchins. You might never see the same story told twice. The Sanctuary Stone sits on Castle Street in the centre of Liverpool. Of greater certainty is that it marked one of the […]
Liverpool, as a city, is master of reinventing itself. It re-uses parts of its landscape when priorities (and economics) change. The Pier Head area in general has seen many, many changes. The filling of the Pool, and the creation of the first wet dock, is perhaps the most significant. The road sign declaring George’s Dock […]
From The Ancient Crosses of Lancashire by Henry Taylor: The church (dedicated to S. Michael) is of ancient foundation. The ornamentation of the font testifies to the pre-Norman date of the edifice. A handsome cross was erected on the village green, near the south-west corner of the churchyard in the jubilee year, 1897. It replaced […]
From The Ancient Crosses of Lancashire by Henry Taylor: Mr. Cox writes (in 1888): “The base of the churchyard cross still lies opposite the site of the old south porch.” There is, however, some doubt whether this stone is the base of the cross, or the base of a column of the nave arcade of […]
Woolton Cross was put up at the northern end of the original village in around 1350. A second cross, Hunt’s Cross, was erected at the southern end of the township, the pedestal of which still stands, topped with a concrete bollard. Woolton Cross was restored in 1913 by Arthur Mather in celebration of Woolton becoming […]
From The Ancient Crosses of Lancashire by Henry Taylor: These words occur on the six-inch ordnance map at the intersection of roads one-third of a mile south-east from the centre of Gateacre village and about half a mile in a north-easterly direction from Much Woolton Church.
From The Ancient Crosses of Lancashire by Henry Taylor: The words “pedestal of stone cross” occur on the 1848 six-inch ordnance map at “Hunt’s Cross,” close to Hunt’s Cross Station, at the intersection of Hunt’s Cross Lane and Sandy Lane, two miles inland from the river Mersey. The words “Hunt’s Cross House” occur on the […]
From The Ancient Crosses of Lancashire by Henry Taylor: Mr. Cox writes: “The other cross stood below the rock on which was built Garston Hall at the head of the mill-dam, and just opposite to the bridge where the stream entered the pool; its site would be near the present centre of the junction of […]
Brook House Farm is the name given to an Iron Age farmstead site in Halewood. It consists of an enclosure surrounded by two ditches (one large and one small), and was discovered via an aerial photograph in 1990. The site was excavated in advance of the building of the junction between the A5300 and the […]
There is a brass Maltese cross embedded in the pedestrianised pavement of Church Street. It once lay in front of HMV before the building was converted into a passage through to School Lane and Liverpool ONE. The cross is related to St Peter’s Church, which once stood very close by and which gave Church Street […]
Ditton Brook makes up the northern boundary of Halewood, and flows in a south-westerly direction before flowing out into the River Mersey between the town of Ditton and Hale Bank. Along with the River Alt, this river flows down a valley carved out when glacial ice pushed south from what is now the Irish Sea. […]
The River Alt flows north east through Lancashire and Merseyside. It rises in Huyton township at the Hag Plantation, and flows through Croxteth Park, West Derby and Maghull. It then flows out to the River Mersey
From The Ancient Crosses of Lancashire by Henry Taylor: A water-colour drawing in the Binns Collection shows this cross in an open space near a cottage. A church appears in the distance. The head of the cross is gone, but a portion of the square shaft is shown socketted in the customary way into a […]
From The Ancient Crosses of Lancashire by Henry Taylor: The word “cross” in Gothic letters appears on the 1848 map one and a half miles east of Wavertree. Mr. Cox thus describes it in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (volume for 1895): “On the roadside, near Well Lane, stood the […]
From The Ancient Crosses of Lancashire by Henry Taylor: Mr. Hope writes in his Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England: “There is a well here which has the reputation of being haunted, a fratricide having been committed there. It was a haunt of pick-pockets and other disorderly characters. It is now built over, […]
