City Centre
History of Liverpool: From 1207 to the Modern City
Liverpool from its 1207 charter through the docks, the slave trade, Irish migration, the Blitz, decline and regeneration, and how each period shaped the city.
History
Liverpool spent five hundred years as a small port before it became a great one, and most of what it built in the century after that has since been pulled down. These are the pieces that cover it: what was here, what happened to it, and what you can still go and stand on.
The city's story
City Centre
Liverpool Castle: The Lost Fortress Under Derby Square
Liverpool Castle stood where Derby Square is now for nearly 500 years. What it looked like, how it was lost, and what still survives under the city.
City Centre
What Was Here Before Liverpool ONE? Paradise Street, the Old Dock and Canning Place
Before Liverpool ONE came the Old Dock, Custom House, Sailors' Home and old Paradise Street. Explore 300 years beneath Liverpool's shopping district.
City Centre
6 Liverpool Buildings That Changed Architecture and Engineering
Six Liverpool buildings that pioneered fireproof warehouses, air conditioning, iron framing, reinforced concrete and road-tunnel engineering.
How Liverpool moved
City Centre
History of the Mersey Tunnels: Queensway to Kingsway
How Liverpool and Wirral were joined under the river: the 1886 railway tunnel, Queensway in 1934 and Kingsway in 1971, and what it took to build each one.
Waterfront
History of the Mersey Ferry: 875 Years on the River
The Mersey Ferry from Birkenhead monks in 1150 to the Zeebrugge Raid, The Beatles, Gerry Marsden and the new Royal Daffodil, plus today's fares and times.
Waterfront
Liverpool's Overhead Railway: The Dockers' Umbrella
Liverpool's Overhead Railway carried dock workers above the waterfront from 1893 to 1956. What it changed, why it closed and what survives today.
South Liverpool
Liverpool John Lennon Airport History: Speke to 5.6m
How Liverpool Airport moved from Speke Hall’s fields to a modern terminal, with key dates, passenger figures and the buildings left behind in Speke.
Buildings, places and legends
Waterfront
Jesse Hartley: The Engineer Who Built Liverpool's Albert Dock
How Jesse Hartley's 1843 fire tests produced Liverpool's Albert Dock: fireproof warehouses, bonded storage, decline, near demolition and its survival.
Waterfront
Royal Liver Building and the Three Graces: How Liverpool Built Its Waterfront Skyline
How the Royal Liver Building, Cunard Building and Port of Liverpool Building transformed Liverpool's Pier Head, with the stories behind the Liver Birds.
City Centre
Liverpool Heritage Trail: Walking the City's History
Follow a practical Liverpool heritage walk from the Pier Head and Royal Albert Dock to the Town Hall, St George's Hall, Bluecoat and two cathedrals.
City Centre
How to Read Liverpool Through Its Buildings
Read Liverpool through its buildings, from the Three Graces and Royal Albert Dock to Oriel Chambers, Hope Street and the Georgian Quarter on foot.
City Centre
Liverpool's Oldest Places to Eat and Drink: Five Historic Pubs Still Trading
Five historic Liverpool pubs, from Hackins Hey to Hope Street, with checked dates, surviving interiors and what food they actually serve today.
Crime, mystery and the unexplained
Anfield
The Liverpool Murder That Began With a Call to a Street That Did Not Exist
In 1931 a caller sent William Wallace to 25 Menlove Gardens East in Liverpool, a street that did not exist. What happened next was never settled.
Hope Street
Three Casks Bound for Scotland: Liverpool’s Hope Street Body Snatchers
Three casks marked Bitter Salts reached Liverpool’s George’s Dock in 1826. What police found led to a locked Hope Street cellar and 33 bodies.
North Liverpool
Walton Jail: 170 Years Inside Liverpool's Victorian Prison
Walton Gaol's history, from Victorian overcrowding and Constance Lytton to the Blitz, George Kelly, final executions and HMP Liverpool today.
News
Liverpool Mysteries: Tunnels, Legends and Strange Stories
The Williamson Tunnels under Edge Hill, a cemetery in a quarry below the cathedral, and the Bold Street time-slip stories: what is documented and what is not.