Landscapes
July 18, 2011 / October 3, 2023 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
The ‘Museum of Liverpool‘ is a very fitting name, because this is a museum about the city, and about the people. It’s the largest national museum dedicated to a city in over a century, and opened in a year when the M Shed in Bristol, the Cardiff Story, and Glasgow’s Riverside Museum Project bring similar […]
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July 7, 2011 / July 25, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 2 Comments on Toxteth – redressing the balance
July 2011 marked 30 years since the violence in Toxteth which would hang a cloud over the suburb of Liverpool for decades, at least in the eyes of the public at large. It came to symbolise the economic problems of early 1980s Liverpool, and helped cement the stereotype of inner city, unemployed Scousers which probably […]
Hidden History
June 23, 2011 / September 29, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on Liverpool Heroes 4: Jesse Hartley
Continuing our look at the men and women who have had the greatest impact on the Liverpool landscape, this time we examine the work of Jesse Hartley, dock engineer. Jesse Hartley (1780-1860) is best known as the architect of the Albert Dock. But this was just one of his achievements as Civil Engineer and Superintendent […]
May 3, 2011 / January 19, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 13 Comments on Joseph Williamson’s Tunnels
Joseph Williamson’s Tunnels are the maze-like remains of excavations under Edge Hill. They are the work of Joseph Williamson under the streets of east central Liverpool, constructed in the early part of the 19th Century. Williamson had bought land on Mason Street on which to build houses. He employed a number of men to dig […]
Natural Features
May 3, 2011 / February 20, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Wind dropped Shirdley Hill Sand across a vast swathe of land in the millennia since the last glaciation. The sand lies along the Sefton Coast several kilometres inland, and has created dunes up to 75m (246ft) tall. The sandy Sefton coast has attracted humans for centuries. The beaches on this coast are the location of […]
May 3, 2011 / November 24, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 3 Comments on Merseyside Uplands
The Merseyside Uplands include the higher ground to the east of Croxteth, and strips at Mossley Hill and elsewhere. They have had an important influence on Merseyside and Liverpool throughout the region’s history. During the last ice age, glaciers drove in from the north west and moved south towards the Midlands. As they did so, […]
May 3, 2011 / December 9, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 17 Comments on River Mersey
The valley of the River Mersey was created during the last ice age. Thick glaciers moved inland from what is now the Irish Sea, carving deep parallel iceways. The iceways were later occupied by the Mersey, the Dee, the mid-Wirral channel and the Alt–Ditton valley. The meltwaters of the glaciers formed the rivers which still […]
May 3, 2011 / November 24, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 4 Comments on The Pool, Liverpool’s beginnings
The Pool is arguably one of the major reasons for Liverpool’s existence. King John was looking for a suitable place from which to launch ships to Ireland, and Liverpool fit the bill. The Pool sprang up inland, and flowed down Whitechapel and Paradise Street into the River Mersey. Although completely invisible today, it played a […]
April 6, 2011 / July 25, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on Liverpool Heroes 3: Vikings in Liverpool
OK, so perhaps the Norse are aren’t the first people to come to mind when we think of ‘Liverpool Heroes’. They’re distant in time, left little visible trace in our city, and went about changing society through the delicate application of pointy-horned helmets. But of course none of that is strictly true. There are traces […]
March 8, 2011 / March 10, 2024 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on Liverpool Heroes 2: Kitty Wilkinson
This article was originally inspired by International Womens’ Day, which takes places on March 8th each year) Kitty Wilkinson’s story is classic Victorian Liverpool: born in Londonderry in 1786, Wilkinson moved to Liverpool with her parents when she was just 8 years old. Tragically her father and sister were drowned at the end of the […]
February 24, 2011 / July 25, 2023 by Martin Greaney | 10 Comments on Liverpool Heroes 1: John Alexander Brodie, City Engineer
In writing about the historic landscape of Liverpool, it’s often the case that the people get mislaid, or hidden from the narrative. This post is the first in a series which aims to redress the balance, and ties in (rather loosely) with Liverpool’s Year of Radicals, which was celebrated in 2011. These people weren’t radical […]
General
January 26, 2011 / March 10, 2024 by Martin Greaney | 3 Comments on The Census: History and Research for Liverpool (or, Why fill in the census? A historian’s perspective)
What use is the census? Does it have a role in the modern world and would we lose anything by ditching it?
January 12, 2011 / November 9, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 2 Comments on Woodland on Merseyside and the Mersey Forest
The year 2011 was declared as the International Year of Forests by the UN (see the Echo for some of Liverpool’s plans). The very modern Mersey Forest has seen 8 million new trees planted since 1994. But there’s a much longer and fascinating history of woodland and forest in this area. The origins of the […]
November 28, 2010 / February 20, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Amongst the many things Liverpool is famous for, its long-held cosmopolitan nature is probably one of those which Scousers are less annoyed at being reminded of. Liverpool’s long history of being a world port, along with its notorious role in the African slave trade have perhaps more than any other factors stamped their effects on […]
Book reviews
November 17, 2010 / March 10, 2024 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on Our Liverpool, by J.P. Dudgeon
The psychological landscapes of Liverpool drawn out through oral sources of history, new and archival.
Buildings
August 31, 2010 / November 8, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 2 Comments on Edge Hill – the First Ever Passenger Station
Edge Hill has had two stations. The earlier of these was the first passenger station in the world, along with Liverpool Street in Manchester. The first of the two stations opened in 1830, and sat in a sandstone cutting with three tunnels at one end. The passenger terminal at Crown Street lay at the end […]
August 26, 2010 / February 22, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
The childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney are massively popular tourist attractions. George Harrison’s and Ringo’s homes (like 9 Madryn Street) don’t get so much as a blue plaque. But is Ringo’s birthplace really of any historical merit? It depends on how you judge it, of course. Ringo only lived there for 5 […]
Maps and mapping
August 10, 2010 / March 10, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Dating maps can be tricky, but there are clues you can look for which will give you a rough idea.
July 12, 2010 / December 7, 2022 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
The former site of Liverpool’s historic Garden Festival saw the latest phase of its history in 2010, when work got under way to restore the parkland and kick-restart the building of flats on the site. But the site started life as Knott’s Hole, a little square bay surrounded by cliffs. Knott’s Hole was a real […]
June 19, 2010 / March 19, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
Examining the pre-Ordnance Survey maps which reveal the ancient landscapes of Liverpool.
April 22, 2010 / October 19, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 10 Comments on Lewis’s Department Store
David Lewis founded a small shop selling men’s and boy’s clothing in 1856. The sale of women’s clothes began in 1864, and by the 1870s Lewis’s Department Store was in full swing. There were sections for shoes and tobacco in addition to clothing. Branches were opened in other cities, beginning with Manchester in 1877. Birmingham, […]
February 8, 2010 / March 10, 2024 by Martin Greaney | 4 Comments on Ordnance Survey Maps for Local History Research
Ordnance Survey maps are some of the most well-known sources for local history. Here we find out how to get them.
November 1, 2009 / November 6, 2022 by Martin Greaney | 1 Comment on Liverpool Castle, and Leverhulme’s reconstruction
The Liverpool corporation pulled down Liverpool Castle itself in 1715 and built St George’s Church in its place. However in 1895 E.W. Cox drew a reconstruction for the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. In the first decade of the 20th Century the first Viscount Leverhulme built a reconstruction of the ruins of the castle […]
August 14, 2009 / April 15, 2024 by Martin Greaney | Leave a Comment
A guide to overcoming barriers to amateur research, plus another on a common English house type.