Book reviews
October 10, 2023 / October 10, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 2 Comments on Liverpool Shipping: a short history, by George Chandler
For a website dealing in the history of Liverpool, there’s not much here directly about shipping. My book Liverpool: a landscape history, and this site, both cover trade, and of course the docks themselves. But I’ve never delved deeply into the industry of shipping, or shipping lines. I only know a few illustrious names as […]
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Tourism
April 14, 2023 / July 23, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 3 Comments on An aerial point of view: St John’s Beacon 360
St John’s beacon has been a landmark of the Liverpool skyline since it opened in 1969. Originally designed as the ventilation tower for the new St John’s Market, the architects took advantage of the tall building’s opportunity to add something else. This is a flying-saucer-shaped gallery originally used for a revolving restaurant and later a […]
Landscapes
October 26, 2022 / November 15, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on Parkgate, Wirral
Parkgate is a small town on the western coast of Wirral, facing across the Dee to Wales, and downstream from Chester. It’s popular with people from the region for days out (and home to a famouse ice cream parlour!). But it’s not widely known that Parkgate not only has a history to rival that of […]
Buildings
April 4, 2022 / April 4, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on Hartley Huts, Albert Dock
The Hartley huts are three squat buildings at the entrance to Canning Dock. They were built in 1844 for the ‘gatemen’, those charged with operating the gates to allow ships to enter and leave the docks, some of which would be on their way to the graving docks nearby. The working life of a gateman […]
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Landmarks
February 6, 2022 / November 22, 2022 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Halewood was rather rural in character, before the landscape transformed it in the 20th century. Being on the edge of Liverpool contributed to the preservation of some interesting features. Two of these, once standing close to each other, were the Old Hutt and Wright’s Moat. Wright’s Moat was a mysterious thing. It’s name comes from […]
Hidden History
January 23, 2022 / January 23, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 2 Comments on Cobbles and cottages on Fisher Street
In early 2020 a Twitter user by the name of PhoenixME (@Phoenix1270) got in touch to ask about the ‘Forgotten Street’ (as they put it). This led to a very interesting little journey to discover a road that is blocked off at one end by a gate, and at the other by buildings. But Fisher […]
January 14, 2022 / July 25, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 5 Comments on Five postcards from Georgian Liverpool
A good friend of mine recently sent me a handful of postcards he’d found, showing photos of Liverpool in the first quarter of the 20th century. He’d house-sat for me and noticed my existing collection, in a folder on a bookshelf, and I don’t know whether he checked, but he managed to get some that […]
August 29, 2021 / July 23, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on 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 […]
General
July 21, 2021 / December 6, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 8 Comments on Liverpool Loses its World Heritage Status
After a long wait, the seemingly inevitable happened: Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City was removed from UNESCO’s list of sites of ‘outstanding cultural and natural heritage value’ in July 2021. Of course, there’s no shortage of opinions on whether this was unfair, ‘incomprehensible’, or whether Liverpool needed it at all. For me, it’s raised some interesting […]
January 4, 2021 / November 15, 2022 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
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 […]
September 11, 2020 / November 15, 2022 by Martin Greaney
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 just one resident in a neighbourhood of academic and other institutions. The excellent Building a Better Society (2008, hard copy from Hive; download free PDF) by Colum Giles highlighted these. The […]
August 5, 2020 / January 18, 2023 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Liverpool Castle is one of Liverpool’s greatest lost landmarks, alongside the Customs House and the Sailors’ Home. This page collects aspects of the castle’s history as I find it, updated from time to time. As such, it’s not yet a complete history in its own right. See also: Liverpool Castle, and Leverhulme’s reconstruction Reconstruction in […]
July 31, 2020 / November 24, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 6 Comments on 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 […]
June 20, 2020 / November 15, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 2 Comments on Woolton Hall
When William Brettagh (of Holt) died, he left a cottage that would later become Woolton Hall. It was bought by the Broughton family, who began to extend it, and bring it up to date. By 1700 it was a three-storey building. Traces of an older building still survive in the south west corner. Samuel Derrick […]
June 17, 2020 / December 8, 2022 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Woolton Old School has a date stone showing 1610. There has been a suggestion that the last figure is the result of later restoration, but this can’t change the supposed date of building by much. A gift of £60 was given by Edward Norris in 1606 to pay for a master, so the institution was […]
May 19, 2020 / December 8, 2022 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Edward the Confessor chose West Derby for his hunting lodge, and after the conquest West Derby was given to Roger of Poitou. The castle was probably built around 1100 by Roger, and was sited near St. Mary’s church in Meadow Lane. The site may have been chosen because of its nearness to water (the Alt, […]
May 19, 2020 / December 8, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 5 Comments on West Derby Mill
Mill Lane (Mylngate in documents of 1444 and 1492) is aptly named as the site of the king’s windmill, first mentioned in 1461, along with a horse mill. This stood on the site of the recently built Marks and Spencer building. The windmill was built on the end of one of the NW-SE ridges that […]
The court house was, amongst other things, the place where local copyholders deposited a copy of their freehold lease in a secure chest, and had to renew it once a year. They were bound by the contract to keep their dwelling in good condition. Copyholders were generally “men of substance and employers of labour”. The […]
West Derby Chapel was situated in the centre of the village, a space now occupied by a monument. It was first mentioned in the mid-14th Century, and mentioned again in Edward IV’s reign in relation to a repair, deemed important as the chapel was useful for holding the king’s court (and this was before a […]
May 19, 2020 / November 22, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 2 Comments on Fountain and Lamp Post, West Derby Village
West Derby’s lamp post / drinking fountain is one of those interesting features of the landscape that dozens of people must pass every day, but never take a second glance at. But this landmarks is really interesting, and points to a certain Victorian view on life at the end of the 19th century. The fountain […]
March 20, 2020 / October 3, 2023 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
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 […]
March 1, 2020 / November 15, 2022 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Credit for this goes to Phil Nash, who posted a couple of photos to the Liverpool Hidden History Facebook group. The former Dominion pub (or Dominion Hotel) at the junction of Regent Road and Bankfield Street in Kirkdale is now the Bankfield Enterprise Hub. This, its latest role, represents the early years of a new […]
February 23, 2020 / November 15, 2022 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
A photo of this grid popped up on Facebook in early 2019. I had no idea what it really was, but was intrigued. It looked like something from the William Morris school, which I like for both design and political reasons, so I did a little snooping (i.e Googling about a bit). The metal grid […]
February 4, 2020 / July 25, 2023 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
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 […]
