Natural Features
November 13, 2019 / July 23, 2023 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
The Allerton Oak is a 1000 year old sessile oak that stands in Calderstones Park. It’s surrounded by a double fence to protect its ancient structure, and metal crutches installed in 1907 hold up its branches. Calderstones Park is in Allerton, which was mentioned in the Domesday Book and has a long history of its […]
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Tourism
October 22, 2019 / February 20, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
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 […]
Landmarks
August 3, 2019 / December 29, 2023 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
The Duck Decoy at Hale is an impressive, complex monument, now a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It lies in the lowest part of the landscape, amongst streams and wetlands and close the the River Mersey itself. This part of the manor of Hale was drained in the medieval period, […]
Hidden History
May 30, 2019 / October 11, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 20 Comments on Mystery: Unique photos of the John Bibby Sons and Co. copper rolling mills, formerly in Window Lane, Garston
This is another guest article, 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 takes up the story. If […]
May 15, 2019 / February 10, 2024 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on 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 […]
Archaeology
November 26, 2018 / April 19, 2023 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
This is part of a series of posts based on the talks given at the Recent Developments in Merseyside Archaeology conference. It was held on the 13th October 2018, and took place at the Museum of Liverpool. Mark Adams of RSK Consulting spoke about his site at Mark Rake in Bromborough. The article was updated […]
November 22, 2018 / March 12, 2024 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on The ‘dark’ heritage of Pembroke Place from documents and archaeology
This is part of a series of posts based on the talks given at the Recent Developments in Merseyside Archaeology conference. It was held on the 13th October 2018, and took place at the Museum of Liverpool. Liz Stewart spoke about Pembroke Place, and the different projects which have been going on there. Galkoff’s Place […]
November 13, 2018 / February 16, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
This is part of a series of posts based on the talks given at the Recent Developments in Merseyside Archaeology conference. It was held on the 13th October 2018, and took place at the Museum of Liverpool. This session was slightly different, in that as well as a talk, Jeff Speakman showed attendees pottery excavated […]
November 6, 2018 / November 14, 2022 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
This is part of a series of posts based on the talks given at the Recent Developments in Merseyside Archaeology conference. It was held on the 13th October 2018, and took place at the Museum of Liverpool. This talk was given by Vanessa Oakden, now Curator of Regional & Community Archaeology at the Museum of […]
October 29, 2018 / November 14, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 3 Comments on Fort Crosby: protecting the Mersey coast
The following post about Fort Crosby is based on a talk Alison Burns gave at the Recent Developments in Merseyside Archaeology conference, held in the Museum of Liverpool on 13th October 2018. Alison has also written about the Formby footprints. New research is shedding light on a piece of Mersey defence which has a long […]
October 22, 2018 / November 14, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 2 Comments on Lunt Meadows – update on the Mesolithic site
This is part of a series of posts based on the talks given at the Recent Developments in Merseyside Archaeology conference. It was held on the 13th October 2018, and took place at the Museum of Liverpool. It’s based on a talk given by Ron Cowell, who has excavated at Lunt Meadows for a few […]
Landscapes
September 24, 2018 / February 10, 2024 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on Breathing Spaces, or A Sense of Placed
My interest in landscape is not just restricted to history and archaeology. I’m just as interested in the modern urban landscape (of Liverpool in the case of this blog), because it’s the product of everything that went before. Archaeologists recognise the ‘layers’ of landscape development as truly as they see the ordered layers in the […]
Book reviews
July 6, 2018 / March 10, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
A history of Liverpool's landscape in photographic form. Images taken from Historic England's vast archive.
April 21, 2018 / July 25, 2023 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
This website is all about the historic landscape. It’s about how the landscape shapes what happens in the city, and it’s about the landscapes that we invent by living in it. Just think of the ‘Knowledge Quarter’ and the ‘Cavern Quarter’. Though they’re sickly marketing-gimmick names they do acknowledge some of the character that certain […]
January 30, 2018 / July 23, 2023 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Hale township occupies a spot at the widest part of the River Mersey. Because of this the water slows down significantly. So much so that, at times in the past, a sandbank could once be seen to poke above the level of the water. This, the so-called Hale Ford, was an important crossing point of […]
Buildings
January 29, 2018 / November 14, 2022 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
The River Mersey at Hale Point can be dangerous, as the Hale Ford demonstrates. Conditions change with each tide, and formerly dry land can become swift and deep channels. The opposite is also true: hidden sandbanks can put paid to river trips heading to the manufacturing towns inland or the globally connected docks at Liverpool. […]
January 25, 2018 / November 14, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 9 Comments on Hale Hall
Hale Hall was a quadrangular building, begun in the early 17th century, built of local stone with a red shale driveway. It was altered near the end of the century, and in 1806 John Blackburn added a large south front. This now matched and balanced the existing north front. John also added a lodge to […]
January 12, 2018 / February 5, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 8 Comments on Allerton Hall
Perhaps the most significant of the merchant houses in the history of Allerton is Allerton Hall itself. The wealthy Lathom family built the first house on the site back in the reign of James I. They held the lands of the estate from the 15th to the 17th century, but had them taken from them […]
January 3, 2018 / February 20, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
The thing which inspired this website from the outset was the huge number of historic features in Liverpool that we take for granted every day. The Queensway Tunnel is one of them. Thousands of people use it every day to commute between Liverpool and Birkenhead. It’s part of the furniture. And yet it’s easy to […]
November 11, 2017 / December 7, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on Viking boat at Meols
In 2007, Professor Stephen Harding and a team of archaeologists from the University of Nottingham brought attention to a possible Viking boat buried under the car park at the Railway Inn, Meols. In 1938, workmen laying the car park first spotted the remains. But with the risk that an archaeological dig would delay building work, […]
November 11, 2017 / November 14, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on World War II Grenades found in Kirkby
In 2009, workmen discovered twenty Second World War grenades in Ruffwood Drive, Kirkby, while digging foundations. Police carried out controlled explosions on the grenades. The AW Bombs (manufactured by Albright and Wilson) were too unstable to move, and were originally designed to explode on impact. Later in the week, another two A.W. grenades were found […]
October 23, 2017 / March 10, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
A slightly different take on the Beatles in Liverpool, exploring the locations that played a major part in their rise to fame.
October 15, 2017 / February 19, 2024 by Martin Greaney | 18 Comments on A traveller to the Pool
The town grew up around a ‘dark pool’, from which is took its name. The pool flowed into a wide river which would one day be famous across the globe, almost synonymous with the town. The river in turn empties into the Irish Sea, for a long time an important trading route both east-west and […]
August 15, 2017 / February 16, 2024 by Martin Greaney | 5 Comments on Ridge and Furrow, Medieval farming remains in West Derby
Ridge and Furrow formations are possibly one of the best-known archaeological features which survive into the modern day. You can see these long, sinuous raises beds of earth across Britain. They survive particularly well in Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and Derbyshire, as well as in other counties. The remains of this farming technique are visible in two […]