Liverpool: A Landscape History E-Book

Martin Greaney

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The landscape has had a huge impact on the history of Liverpool and Merseyside. The ice age glaciers carved out the Rivers Mersey and Dee; the Sefton coast provided a perfect place for the earliest humans to hunt and gather food; and the Pool and the Mersey, and England's position on the coast gave King John the perfect base from which to launch his Irish campaigns. This book explores the landscapes from these earliest times, and charts the changing city right through to the present day. It explains why Liverpool looks the way it does today, and how clues in the modern landscape reveal details of its long history. You'll see how the landscape created Liverpool, and how in turn Liverpool recreated the landscape.

Leseprobe

To Mum and Dad, and my brother Stephen,who have encouraged me every step of the way. To my wife, Sue, for her love and support in everything at which I try my hand. And to the memory of Mr Dewsnap, the best history teacher, bar none.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Prologue

1 From the Earliest Prehistory to the Founding of Liverpool

2 From Liverpool’s Foundation to the Civil War

3 Civil War and the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

4 Living in Liverpool

5 Docks, the Port and Industry

6 Reshaping the City

7 Roads, Rails, Tunnels and Tracks

Epilogue

Bibliography

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Although there’s only one name on the front of this book, a project such as this is more than the work of just one person. There are many who have inspired, advised and otherwise helped me with my writing.

Firstly, for their help in digging photographs from their archives and for their kind permission to reproduce them here, my thanks go to Roger Hull and the Liverpool Record Office and the staff at the National Monuments Record in Swindon (now the English Heritage Archive). I’d also like to thank Dave McAleavy, for permission to reproduce the amazing photo of some of the Formby footprints. For permission to use photos from their archives and from existing publications, my thanks to Jeff Speakman, Rob Philpott and Ron Cowell of the National Museums Liverpool Field Archaeology team, and Dave Roberts of the Merseyside Archaeological Society.

A great big thank you must be given to my family: Mum and Dad who greatly assisted on trips around Liverpool, and held umbrellas while I took the photographs for this book (all photographs, unless otherwise stated, are mine), and my wife Sue who created the fantastic line drawings and maps throughout, and proof-read everything from the very early stages.

Thanks to the staff at The History Press – the editorial staff of Michelle Tilling, Emily Locke and Ruth Boyes, and the countless others who brought this book to fruition.

Thanks must also go to all those who I’ve met in the many years since I started on my historic and archaeological career. They’ve been crucial in keeping up my enthusiasm, as have all those who’ve discussed and commented on my websites Historic Liverpool (http://historic-liverpool.co.uk) and Liverpool Landscapes (http://liverpool-landscapes.net) alongside the related Facebook and Twitter pages.

Of course, all mistakes herein are solely my responsibility.

PROLOGUE

WHAT IS THE LANDSCAPE?

This book is all about Liverpool’s ‘historic landscape’. But it does more than simply discuss the history of the ground on which the city was built. The natural landscape shaped the history of Merseyside long before Liverpool was founded in 1207. The rivers, bogs, hills and valleys dictated where people could settle, and so affected the emerging politics from prehistory into the medieval period. Many of King John’s reasons for establishing a new town on the north-west coast were related to the landscape’s suitability for a sheltered harbour and a castle, as well as proximity to Ireland.

But even in the more modern age, when we think we are in command of nature, the development of the city depends on what has gone before. Old buildings need to come down before new ones can be built in their place. New motorways must cut through existing landscapes. Decisions on planning not only depend on where something needs to go, but also what is there right now. And decisions made about construction now will in turn affect future developments. We are perhaps only now coming to realise that our actions have repercussions for our descendents.

Therefore, this book is not just about the unwinding story of Liverpool and Merseyside, but also about the constant process of reinvention which the city has undergone and must continue to go through to develop and adapt to new circumstances. It tries to reveal why buildings were put where they still stand today, why roads simply peter out on the outskirts or why some shops seem half-buried in the pavement (read about the semi-basements in Chapter 5).

If this book succeeds in its aims, you will see Liverpool in a new light, or at least look at it with an eye for more detail than you did before. When you are next out in the city, look up above the shop fronts to understand the history of the road you are in. When an old wall remains in a new housing estate, follow it to see if its line gives clues as to its original use. Old maps are a great source for this kind of investigation and many are used throughout this volume. The photos I’ve taken for other illustrations go to show how much of this ‘fossilised’ history remains for the observant passer-by.

Even though there are dozens of interesting books out there covering Liverpool’s history, this one differs in that it deals with the history of Liverpool itself, and the city more than the events which played out within it. Of course, it is difficult to write about the buildings, institutions and architectural innovations without mentioning the women and men who were involved, but they take a back seat to descriptions of why Liverpool looks the way it does, why it exists at all, and what was here before it. Because of this, the book can cover much older periods of time; periods for which our only way of investigating is to pull together the scattered clues from archaeological excavation, map analysis, and a little bit of geography, to show what it was like to live in the Merseyside landscape before Liverpool even existed.

The earliest chapters begin in a time when the land itself was being formed, when the bedrock was laid down before being sculpted by Ice Age glaciers. The story continues with the arrival of the first human communities, who left only scant traces in the landscape. These people seemed to look more intently towards their Irish and Atlantic European neighbours – to the sea – more than they did inland.

Later these isles were inhabited by British, Roman, Norse, German and Norman peoples, who added their own layers of history to the landscape, to mingle with those that came before. The landscape of south Lancashire (as it would become) was crucial to the way the medieval manors and farms developed. This is true on both a local and a national scale, and would continue to be so up to and beyond the time King John decided to create a borough here in 1207. When Liverpool was created, the location, the geography and the political situation of the area was crucial to John’s choice to place his new town on the banks of the Mersey. Although this was a ‘new’ town, the landscape was by no means empty: there were farms, manor houses, a castle and power base in West Derby.

This is still an age when most of what we know of Liverpool comes from silent witnesses: archaeological objects and investigations. But, from the time when Liverpool grew in stature from a tiny fishing village into a bustling Tudor town in the sixteenth century, many more resources are available to tell us about this burgeoning urban area. This book will take you through the centuries when Liverpool first came into its own as a port, and became embroiled in the Civil War as a strategic objective. By this time Liverpool was starting to see itself on a par with the other great provincial towns of England: Bath, Ipswich, Bristol and Chester. Its ambitions grew and its landscape reflects these developments, with buildings, roads and fashionable squares aping those of London, Edinburgh and elsewhere. By 1800 Liverpool was a smart town attracting entrepreneurial businessmen, but on the horizon were the revolutionary changes which were sweeping Britain and the world.

Having developed into a port, and staked its future on pioneering wet dock technology, Liverpool suddenly found itself, during the Industrial Revolution, on the doorstep of the great manufacturing districts of northern England, on the main trade route to Europe and the Americas. Once again, geography – landscape – was on Liverpool’s side, and it took advantage. By 1900 Liverpool was at the height of its powers – the biggest port outside London – and faced proudly across the Atlantic at her American cousins to whom she shipped countless souls from Ireland and elsewhere, and untold tonnes of cargo.

However, just as the landscape had been Liverpool’s greatest ally in its rise to prominence, so landscape was its gravest enemy in the twentieth century. As a port it became a prime target for the German air force. After the Second World War manufacturing left Lancashire and Yorkshire; Europe, rather than America, was Britain’s big trading partner. Liverpool was a specialist transport hub but had nothing to transport, and found it hard to adapt. The twentieth century was Liverpool’s darkest but, towards the end, history came to save the city.

In the last twenty years of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, Liverpool’s long and illustrious history and architecture, as well as the music, comedy and drama which emerged from its more infamous corners, came to dominate conversations about the town. It has become the ‘birthplace’ of the Beatles, and the ‘home’ of football. The accent borne of its many immigrants, its age-old global connections via the sea, and its famous sons and daughters from a hundred suburban backgrounds, sold Liverpool to a willing public, who came to love the city again.

So Liverpool was built on landscape foundations, grew strong on its geography and was populated by a people shaped by location. This book maps those changes over time, and reveals where the clues still remain for you to see them. If you live in the city, you may come to see Liverpool’s history anew, but if you’re just a visitor – or even if you’ve never been there – you may look at your own hometown in a new way; at how at every stage the landscape has been as much a historical force as the prime ministers, kings, queens, and ordinary people who have walked through it.

CHAPTER 1

FROM THE EARLIEST PREHISTORY TO THE FOUNDING OF LIVERPOOL

GEOLOGY AND THE LAST ICE AGE

Liverpool’s historic landscape is built upon the geology which underlies it. To understand the history of Liverpool is firstly to understand the rock it was built upon, and from. The very oldest rocks beneath the city are Carboniferous (360 to 300 million years old) which consist of limestone and sandstone, and contain coal. These were formed from the decayed plant material laid down in wide, swampy river deltas, as this area formed part of the coastline at the time.

On top of this sit Triassic rocks (250 to 200 million years old) which were formed at the edge of an arid, desert mountain range. The softer Triassic rocks (such as the characteristic red sandstone of which much of Liverpool’s older buildings are constructed) have been weathered into the Cheshire and Lancashire plains which sit to the north and south of Liverpool, while the harder Carboniferous rocks juts out to either side of the Triassic to form the Welsh uplands in the west and the foothills of the Pennines in the east.

As we’re interested in the geology which influenced later history, it’s worth pointing out that the geology provided many of the raw materials which went into building Liverpool or (via export) its wealth. Sand, clay, building stone, salt and underground water were all exploitable materials present in the ground across the region before Liverpool was founded. Coal could be found in great quantities in Wales and Lancashire to the east and west of Liverpool, but another, smaller, pocket was exposed in the grounds of Croxteth Hall.

These layers of rock form the foundations of the landscape, but relatively recently (in geological terms) this foundation was carved into new shapes. Around 12,000 years ago the whole of northern Europe was covered in ice up to 3 or 4km thick. It took the form of an expanded polar ice-cap which stretched, at its maximum, as far south in Britain as the Bristol Channel. This thick sheet was incredibly heavy, and one of the effects of the weight of ice was to carve out the underlying geology. As the ice gradually flowed from the Irish Sea basin south-east across the future Merseyside, it carved out parallel grooves from north-west to south-east. The largest of these was the channel of the Mersey itself, but the ice also created the valleys now holding the River Dee, the Fender on the Wirral and the River Alt and Ditton Brook on the east bank of the Mersey.

In very rare cases evidence has also been found which shows that the ice eradicated an earlier, slightly warmer period (known as an ‘interglacial’) when the area of Lancashire was covered in pine, spruce and birch. There have even been finds of hippopotamus and hyena in caves on the edge of the Pennines. These animal remains suggest that Lancashire had seen much warmer periods before the coming of the Ice Age.

One of the earliest processes to influence the landscape, the ice sheet which flowed south from the Irish Sea basin carving out the Mersey, Dee, Weaver, Alt and other valleys. Today this results in a series of parallel grooves running north-west to south-east across the region, shaping everything from early human settlement to Liverpool’s major west coastal position. (After Patmore, J.A. & Hodgkiss, A.G., Merseyside in Maps, p8, 1970, Longman, with additions)

Surface geology

Over the top of these geological layers, ground bare by the ice, we find wind-blown sand, known as Shirdley Hill Sand, which makes up the dunes found along the coast from Crosby to Southport. These were also first laid down as the ice retreated, and can form features up to 15m (49ft) tall around Little Crosby and Ince Blundell, while sand forms the base of hills up to 75m (246ft) further inland in the east of the county. Some of the sand in the area has been found to contain thin layers of organic material, demonstrating that conditions changed over time, switching between wind-blown sand depositions and temporary lakes where the organic material was laid on the lake-bed.

The most recent processes were the laying down of peat, clay and silt which formed damp, boggy moorland in hollows and low-lying areas, mostly in the north and west of the county, and near the Shirdley Sand hills. The two largest areas of this are the Simonswood and Chat Mosses, and these dictated the type of wildlife which lived in the area, as well as later settlement.

The shape of Merseyside

Due to this surface geology the lie of the land in Liverpool is one of rising and falling ridges as you move from the edge of the city, near Croxteth and Kirkby, past West Derby, Queens Drive, Tuebrook and Edge Hill. Some of the other higher areas of the region are remnants of this differing erosion; Mossley Hill/Woolton, Everton Brow, Castle Street and Wallasey/Bidston were eroded less as the ice passed over them. Waves of high and low ground can also be traced inland from the Mersey to the north-east between Parbold and Billinge, each valley’s direction reflecting the original course of the glacial flow.

So, the building blocks of Merseyside are the Triassic sandstone layers on which the city, and a large area around it, sit. Beyond this flat area the Carboniferous slopes of the Pennines and Snowdonia have formed a backdrop for millennia. The ice came later and helped carve out the Mersey, Dee and other smaller rivers in the area, but this uneven weathering left higher ground in ridges running parallel to the Mersey. As we shall see, all these processes, large and small, affected the manner in which Merseyside was first inhabited as the ice sheets gradually retreated. Thus the foundations of Merseyside were shaped before humans settled and began to alter the environment for their own ends.

THE EARLIEST PREHISTORY OF MERSEYSIDE – THE MESOLITHIC

The first traces of humans arriving on the banks of the Mersey come only after the ice retreated. Therefore, whereas many other parts of the United Kingdom have thrown up evidence of human activity up to 500,000 years old (from the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age), the remains of the activity of people in the Liverpool area can only be seen in the more recent Mesolithic, or middle Stone Age, around 10,000 years ago.

Movement and settlement

The sea level around this time was around 20m (66ft) lower than it is today. This means that dry land stretched out much further than it does now, with the coastline running from just west of Anglesey to west of Walney Island in Morecambe Bay. A band of now-submerged land around 10-15km (6-9 miles) wide lay between that line and the present coast.

This area was inhabited by small bands of people who moved between residential sites, with smaller locations associated with specialist hunting and gathering activities. These people must have only been seasonal occupants of the land, with a very mobile lifestyle. No evidence has been found for any buildings, but sites at Irby, Tarbock, Crosby and Lathom have revealed toolmaking evidence in the form of microliths – tiny stone tools used as weapons and knives. Ditton Brook was an important location also, and Mesolithic flint tool evidence points to this area being the location of repeated visits by Mesolithic humans. Their tools have been found either on the surface of the boggy layers, or eroding out of the stream bank, and this settlement may have been contemporary with that at Brunt Boggart, where similar evidence for Mesolithic occupation has been found. The pattern which emerges is that of camps along the Sefton and Mersey coast, some of them larger bases from which small groups would move out from. These small groups would form camps where specific activities were carried out, such as toolmaking, foraging or butchery.

Some of the earliest evidence we have for human settlement comes from the Mesolithic era (around 5,000 years ago). There were no permanent settlements – instead, people moved between camps, possibly seasonally, to take advantage of different resources. Archaeological excavations may suggest favoured places which were repeatedly used. (After Cowell, R., 2010, Fig. 16, in Journal of the Merseyside Archaeological Society vol. 13, with additions)

Another centre of activity is the mid-Wirral sandstone ridge. This is one of the ridges less eroded by the ice as it flowed south across the region and was probably drier and better drained than other parts of the peninsula. It was also more suitable for the favoured animals and plants which were hunted and foraged by these early human communities.

The best Mesolithic site in the region is at Greasby, Thursaston. Here the density of finds is at its highest in the county, with over 200 square metres covered in the remains of the flint toolmaking process. Not far away, at Greasby Copse, excavation revealed stone-lined pits (their function uncertain), and fragments of chert, which was the material used to make stone tools. The chert was shown through analysis to have come from North Wales, so even at this early stage, fairly long distance trade was essential for survival in this flint-poor area. The two sites at Tarbock – Ditton Brook and Ochre Brook – produced groups of stone tools between 50 and 250 pieces, and an excavation at Croxteth Park brought up another 500.

Although archaeological evidence for Mesolithic hunter-gatherers has been found around Merseyside, it is only in the later part of the period that we find clues to the activities of people close to what is now the city of Liverpool. Around 7,000 years ago, as the wetlands in the north-west were spreading and expanding, the earliest direct evidence for human occupation near Liverpool was created on the shores at Formby. Here, preserved in ancient sand layers, are sets of human footprints alongside those of deer, showing that humans were using the zone between high and low tides to hunt large animals.

Tools are some of the most common remains of Mesolithic culture. Known as ‘microliths’ these small (less than 10cm) stone flakes were fitted to shafts as arrow heads, or used on their own as scraping or cutting tools. These tools were discovered during an excavation at Croxteth Park. (Trustees of National Museums Liverpool)

A woodland landscape

The Mesolithic landscape was covered in forest up to 500m (1640ft) above sea level, consisting of oak, hazel, lime and elm. Just behind the coastal zones, and in the poorly drained hollows of the inlands and uplands, fens developed. The remains of these wetter areas give us small clues that humans were active in the area at this time. The surfaces of these boggy mires show evidence of burning, suggesting that perhaps the mixed woodland was being cleared deliberately, before being allowed to grow back. Bidston is an area where clearances look to have been at their greatest. While some of the fires would have been natural, humans would have been able to encourage an increase in the diversity of wildlife in the woodlands through partial clearance of small areas.

In general, the landscape at this time consisted of broken woodlands of oak and hazel, with patches of wetland, and the region was subject to frequent flooding. The land immediately on either side of the river would have been slightly more open, with a mixture of oak, hazel, alder, elm and pine, as well as shorter shrub-like vegetation taking advantage of the increased sunlight of the open land near the water. By 5000 BC, however, most of the land around the banks of the Mersey would have become mixed deciduous woodland, with the bogs and mosses mentioned previously breaking up the tree cover in places, in addition to the small areas cleared by humans.

Gathering food

The people here could rely on the well-stocked river, and the birds and plants inhabiting the banks, for food. There is also evidence for the killing of larger animals – wild pig and deer. The tidal Mersey would have encouraged a wide variety of animals for people to exploit, and the streams would have provided a route into the interior of the county before widespread clearance of woodland took place. The streams would also have provided the clean water needed for living, freshwater fish from the streams as well as saltwater fish from the Mersey estuary itself.

There are several sets of prehistoric footprints preserved in the Formby sands north of Liverpool. The earliest are Mesolithic, and give a startlingly vivid portrayal of a moment in time when humans crossed the beach here. Animal footprints have also been found, demonstrating that humans and wild animals existed in close proximity to each other. (Dave McAleavy Images)

The coastal lands, particularly sites at the mouths of the Ditton and the Alt and at Banks near Southport, have proven rich with Mesolithic material. As well as the variety of fish mentioned above, these areas had small amounts of flint washed up from the Irish Sea bed. It follows that areas near the mouth of the Mersey would have been important centres of population at this time, but these sites, if they existed, have been lost in the expansion of the city.

One of the classic signs of the change from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic is the emergence of farming. However, this distinction is no longer seen as black and white, and pollen evidence found in the Merseyside region shows that cereal-like plants were growing in what we might term the Mesolithic. Although the term ‘cereal-like’ doesn’t necessarily indicate farming as we would recognise it today, it does show that by the end of the Mesolithic new technologies were slowly being adopted. However, other parts of the farming ‘package’ – farming, pottery and permanent settlement – were not yet taken up. Coastal locations, such as Flea Moss Wood in Little Crosby, Martin Mere and Hillhouse, have produced such plant evidence. It may be that connections with other communities around the Irish Sea and even down the Atlantic seaboard, which became so important in later prehistory, were already influencing life on the banks of the Mersey.

One thing we know very little about is the range of ritual beliefs and activities of these people. There is evidence on the European mainland of burial rituals as far back as 225,000 years ago, and it may be that the much more recent Mesolithic communities of Merseyside were performing similar activities, but none have left any traces for us to find today.

A ‘NEW’ STONE AGE?

Just as Mesolithic sites show signs of farming, an activity normally assigned to the Neolithic, so the early part of the Neolithic shows some continuity with the era before it. It was once stated that the Neolithic (‘New Stone Age’) brought with it farming, settlement, pottery and larger, much higher quality stone tools. This ‘Neolithic package’ was said to have come across from Europe with invaders or immigrants, along with the idea of building large stone monuments like the Calderstones and its associated burial practices. However, this process is now recognised as having been much more subtle, gradual and varied geographically.

On Merseyside people continued to be largely mobile. It might even have been the case that some groups carried on their lifestyle of moving from camp to camp (Neolithic structures have been excavated at Tatton Park), while others were already building houses and settling down. Excavations on the site of Beeston Castle in Cheshire have been dated to the early Neolithic, but many finds excavated there have a distinctly Mesolithic look to them. What the region lacks are the large, enclosed communal upland sites (called ‘causewayed enclosures’) which are so common in the south of England. This is partly a result of the landscape – there are few suitable locations on Merseyside for a hilltop settlement – and so it may be that smaller stone monuments may have acted as focal points where people would have come, from across the region, to assemble, trade and swap stories. These gatherings may have helped to give the earliest Mereysiders their identities, as well as the chance to gain tools and information to help them in their day-to-day lives. Many of these sites will have been lost to development, although a few are covered in this section.

Compared to some parts of the country, there was little visible difference between the Mesolithic and Neolithic landscape. River mouths and the coast were still popular places to camp, life was still mostly mobile, and tool technology had not changed from the Mesolithic. (After Cowell, R., 2010, Fig. 16, in Journal of the Merseyside Archaeological Society vol. 13, with additions)

Stone for toolmaking – flint and chert

One of the main problems that prehistoric Liverpudlians had to contend with was the lack of local flint. The nearest sources for this essential Stone Age raw material were in Yorkshire, Wales, the Lake District and County Antrim in Ireland. Some small pebbles were probably to be found on the shores of the Irish Sea, washed up from the sea-bed, but not in sufficient quantity as a basis for making a living with. Unfortunately, archaeologists are not sure which of the other sources prehistoric people living on Merseyside got their flint from. It is suggested that it came mostly from the east, from Yorkshire and Derbyshire. For such stone to reach the banks of the Mersey, local communities may have been trading with the people of the Pennines, but it is also possible (perhaps even more likely) that raw material and finished tools travelled more indirectly, passing through the hands of many different owners until eventually they happened to reach the Mersey. As has been said already, many of these tools look similar to those which were created in the Mesolithic, and so local production of tools, using locally found flint, must have continued into the Neolithic.

Woodland clearance and the beginnings of farming

The landscape in which these people moved was at this time beginning to be cleared of trees. Small permanent gaps were appearing in the woodland, more often around the coast and in the central mosslands of south Lancashire than in the rest of the county. Such clearance allowed the bogs and mosses to increase in size, but would also have made the movements of game animals more predictable, aiding hunting.

Pollen evidence shows that farming was becoming more common around 4000 BC, replacing a landscape of open grasslands which had in turn developed in the wake of woodland clearances. People were clearing the forest to give themselves some room to grow the first cultivated cereals. Although this would have been nothing like the vast and dense crop we see across Britain today, these people would have helped plants spread and multiply, in order to gain the advantages of a more reliable food supply than nature would offer alone. Both upland and lowland areas were cleared of their woodland for this reason, from the coastal zone to the higher limestone areas. Knowsley Hall and Park today stand on land first cleared almost 5,000 years ago, and a similar process was occurring right across Britain, including land now covered by the Irish Sea.

However, there is relatively little cereal pollen evidence, so it may be that animal husbandry and hunting was more important. The remains of aurochs (wild ancestors of cattle) as well as red deer have been found in the region pointing to this possibility, and it has been suggested that good-quality livestock may have been the main indicator of wealth in the Neolithic.

Prehistoric religion

The Neolithic period is famous across Britain for the emergence of megalithic monuments. Stonehenge and Avebury are two of the more spectacular, and famous, but thousands dot the British landscape. These monuments give an insight into the world-view of the people who inhabited the region, as the monuments would have reflected their views of life after death, as well as something of the differentiation between members of the society – not everyone was buried in a chamber.

The major evidence of this type in Liverpool are the Calderstones, six megaliths which now stand in a greenhouse in the park which shares their name, and which was once part of the Harthill estate. Unfortunately the stones were removed from their original position in the nineteenth century, to be enclosed by the small wall on the roundabout at the bottom of Druids Cross Road which still stands today. Archaeologically speaking, this is a problem because those studying such monuments have found the landscape setting to be important in decoding their meaning. As no other Neolithic landmarks have made it down to our era, this is a double problem for someone trying to piece together the motivations behind the builders.

Although its function is still a matter for debate, the Calderstones would have taken the form of a mound with a passage from one side leading into the centre, similar to the Anglesey tomb of Bryn Celli Ddu, photographed here. The painting on the left shows the stones in their original position, probably around 20m west of the roundabout at the south end of Druids Cross Road. (Liverpool Record Office, Liverpool Libraries; tpholland, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))

The Calderstones are covered in carvings of spirals, cups, circles and other shapes. It’s been suggested that these remains are some of the most decorated of their kind, and may also have been some of the latest. If those who used the tomb were some of the last of their kind, perhaps they sought to preserve themselves through the elaboration of their tombs. The carved artwork we see today may have been hidden inside, for only the ‘initiated’ to see during ceremonies. (Aerial-Cam (AS-GN) / MAS 2007)