Liverpool ONE was not built on an empty patch of city centre.
Its 42-acre footprint covers streets that had existed for centuries: the remains of Liverpool's original tidal creek, the Old Dock that helped turn the town into an international port, Canning Place, the lost Custom House, the Sailors' Home, warehouses, a churchyard, post-war offices, a bus station and an earlier version of Chavasse Park.
The oldest surviving part is underground. More than 300 years after ships entered the Old Dock, sections of its brick and sandstone walls still stand beneath Liverpool ONE and can be visited today.
The short version
- The footprint: Liverpool ONE covers 42 acres linking the retail core around Church Street with the waterfront.
- The Pool: Paradise Street and Whitechapel follow the natural contour of the tidal creek that gave Liverpool its name.
- The Old Dock (1715): The world's first commercial enclosed wet dock was built here by Thomas Steers, allowing ships to load and unload regardless of the tide.
- Transatlantic slavery: Slave ships operated from the Old Dock as Liverpool grew into Britain's dominant slave-trading port during the 18th century.
- The Custom House (1828): After the dock was filled in 1826, John Foster Jr's vast neoclassical Custom House was built directly over the basin. It was bombed in the Blitz and demolished after the war.
- Sailors' Home: Canning Place housed maritime offices and the ornate Sailors' Home (1851). Its restored gates now stand on Paradise Street.
- Preserved archaeology: Major excavations in 2001 to 2005 uncovered the dock walls and thousands of artefacts, preserved beneath the modern shopping streets.
Liverpool ONE replaced several different versions of the city
Asking what stood here before Liverpool ONE does not produce one simple answer because the district repeatedly changed function over three centuries.
At different points, the exact same ground held:
A tidal creek → an enclosed wet dock → warehouses and merchant housing → major government customs buildings → hostels and facilities for sailors → post-war relief roads and offices → today's open-air retail, dining, residential and park streets.
Liverpool ONE was designed around surviving street alignments rather than as an enclosed indoor shopping mall. Paradise Street, College Lane, Peter's Lane and Hanover Street kept their historic names and routes, connecting modern shoppers with older paths through the town.
Before the shops there was the Pool
The oldest layer predates Liverpool's constructed docks. A tidal creek known as the Pool extended inland from the River Mersey and is widely recognised as the natural feature behind Liverpool's name.
Archaeological studies place the Pool beneath the modern city centre, curving along the line of modern Paradise Street and Whitechapel before meeting the old township boundary. Excavations around Chavasse Park uncovered water-laid silt deposits associated with the creek.
An 1808 guide to Liverpool described how the former tidal inlet had defined the edge of the early town. Before dock walls were built, the area around modern Paradise Street was an active, muddy shoreline directly exposed to the Mersey tides.
The Old Dock changed what Liverpool could do
As Liverpool's merchant trade grew in the early 18th century, the open tidal creek became inadequate for heavy cargo ships. In 1708, the Liverpool Corporation hired engineer Thomas Steers to design an enclosed dock.
Construction began in 1710 and the dock opened in 1715. By using lock gates to retain water at low tide, ships could stay afloat continuously, reducing loading and unloading times from weeks to days. It was the world's first commercially successful enclosed wet dock.
Construction cost roughly £12,000, placing heavy initial pressure on council finances, but it triggered a boom in maritime trade. The dock became known as the Old Dock only after newer docks were built north and south along the waterfront.
The Old Dock and the transatlantic slave trade
The commercial expansion made possible by the Old Dock was directly tied to Liverpool's central role in transatlantic slavery. Historic England records that slave ships departed from the Old Dock, and Sir Thomas Johnson, the Liverpool MP who promoted the dock's construction, financed early slave-trading voyages and traded in goods produced on plantations by enslaved people.
By the late 18th century, Liverpool had become Britain's pre-eminent slave-trading port. Wealth generated through the trafficking of enslaved Africans financed city institutions, civic architecture and further dock expansion. The Old Dock represents both groundbreaking civil engineering and the infrastructure of transatlantic slavery.
The Custom House was built inside the former dock
By the 1820s, Liverpool had outgrown its first dock. Larger vessels struggled to navigate the approach channel, and newer, deeper basins lined the river. The Old Dock closed in 1826 and was filled in.
In 1828, work began on a vast new Custom House designed by John Foster Jr. Archaeological surveys confirmed that roughly 95 per cent of the building sat inside the footprint of the Old Dock, using the original 1715 dock walls as foundation retaining structures.
The massive classical building featured a central dome and grand ionic porticoes, housing customs officials, excise offices and the dock management. During the May Blitz of 1941, the Custom House was heavily damaged by incendiary bombs. Despite calls to preserve the surviving masonry shell, the building was demolished between 1946 and 1948, leaving Canning Place largely cleared.
