Visit Liverpool Places

Welcome to Visit Liverpool Places
The Walkfo guide to things to do & explore in Liverpool

  

Liverpool Places Overview: History, Culture & Facts about Liverpool

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Liverpool history

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Early history

King John’s letters patent of 1207 announced the foundation of the borough of Liverpool . By the middle of the 16th century, the population was still around 500 . The original seven streets were laid out in an H shape: Bank Street (now Water Street), Castle Street, Chapel Street, Dale Street, Juggler Street, Tithebarn Street and Whiteacre Street .

19th century

By the start of the 19th century, a large volume of trade was passing through Liverpool . In 1830, Liverpool and Manchester became the first cities to have an intercity rail link . Britain was a major market for cotton imported from the Deep South of the United States, which fed the textile industry in the country . Liverpool was the only British city ever to have its own Whitehall office .

20th century

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, unemployment peaked at around 30% in the city . During the Second World War, the critical strategic importance of Liverpool was recognised by both Hitler and Churchill . A significant West Indian black community has existed in Liverpool since the first two decades of the 20th century . In the 1960s Liverpool was the centre of the “Merseybeat” sound, which became synonymous with the Beatles .

21st century

Tourism has also become a significant factor in Liverpool’s economy . In 2004, property developer Grosvenor started the Paradise Project, a £920 m development based on Paradise Street . Renamed ‘Liverpool ONE,’ the centre opened in May 2008 . In 2007, the city celebrated the 800th anniversary of the founding of the borough of Liverpool .

Inventions and innovations

Railways, transatlantic steamships, municipal trams, and electric trains were all pioneered in Liverpool as modes of mass transit . The first School for the Blind, Mechanics’ Institute, High School for Girls, council house, and Juvenile Court were all founded in Liverpool . Charities such as the RSPCA, NSPCC, Age Concern, Relate, and Citizen’s Advice Bureau all evolved from work in the city .

Liverpool culture & places

Liverpool is an important cultural centre within the United Kingdom. In 2008, the city held the title of European Capital of Culture. Liverpool has also held Europe’s largest music and poetry event, the Welsh national Eisteddfod.

Music

Liverpool is recognised by Guinness World Records as the World Capital City of Pop . Musicians from the city have produced 56 No. 1 singles, more than any other city in the world . The city is most famous as the birthplace of the Beatles and during the 1960s was at the forefront of the Beat Music movement .

Visual arts

Liverpool has more galleries and national museums than any other city in the UK apart from London . The Tate Liverpool gallery houses the modern art collection of the Tate in the North of England . The Walker Art Gallery houses one of the most impressive permanent collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world .

Literature

Felicia Hemans (née Browne) was born in Dale Street, Liverpool, in 1793, although she later moved to Flintshire, in Wales. Felicia was born in Liverpool, a granddaughter of the Venetian consul in that city. Her father’s business soon brought the family to Denbighshire in North Wales, where she spent her youth. They made their home near Abergele and St. Asaph (Flintshire), and it is clear that she came to regard herself as Welsh by adoption, later referring to Wales as “Land of my childhood, my home and my dead”. Her first poems, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, were published in Liverpool in 1808, when she was only fourteen, arousing the interest of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who briefly corresponded with her. A number of notable authors have visited Liverpool, including Daniel Defoe, Washington Irving, Thomas De Quincey, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Hugh Walpole. Daniel Defoe, after visiting the city, described it, as “one of the wonders of Britain in his ‘Tour through England and Wales'”. Herman Melville’s novel Redburn deals with the first seagoing voyage of 19 years old Wellingborough Redburn between New York and Liverpool in 1839. Largely autobiographical, the middle sections of the book are set in Liverpool and describe the young merchantman’s wanderings, and his reflections. Hawthorne was stationed in Liverpool as United States consul between 1853 and 1856. Charles Dickens visited the city on numerous occasions to give public readings. Hopkins served as priest at St Francis Xavier Church, Langdale St., Liverpool, between 1879 and 81. Although he is not known to have ever visited Liverpool, Jung famously had a vivid dream of the city which he analysed in one of his works. Of all the poets who are connected with Liverpool, perhaps the greatest is Constantine P. Cavafy, a twentieth-century Greek cultural icon, although he was born in Alexandria. From a wealthy family, his father had business interests in Egypt, London and Liverpool. After his father’s death, Cavafy’s mother brought him in 1872 at the age of nine to Liverpool, where he spent part of his childhood being educated. He lived first in Balmoral Road, then when the family firm crashed, he lived in poorer circumstances in Huskisson Street. After his father died in 1870, Cavafy and his family settled for a while in Liverpool. In 1876, his family faced financial problems due to the Long Depression of 1873, so, by 1877, they had to move back to Alexandria. Her Benny, a novel telling the tragic story of Liverpool street urchins in the 1870s, written by Methodist preacher Silas K. Hocking, was a best-seller and the first book to sell a million copies in the author’s lifetime. The prolific writer of adventure novels, Harold Edward Bindloss (1866–1945), was born in Liverpool. The writer, docker and political activist George Garrett was born in Secombe, on the Wirral Peninsula in 1896 and was brought up in Liverpool’s South end, around Park Road, the son of a fierce Liverpool–Irish Catholic mother and a staunch ‘Orange’ stevedore father. In the 1920s and 1930s, his organisation within the Seamen’s Vigilance Committees, unemployed demonstrations, and hunger marches from Liverpool became part of a wider cultural force. He spoke at reconciliation meetings in sectarian Liverpool, and helped found the Unity Theatre in the 1930s as part of the Popular Front against the rise of fascism, particularly its echoes in the Spanish Civil War. Garrett died in 1966. The novelist and playwright James Hanley (1897–1985) was born in Kirkdale, Liverpool, in 1897 (not Dublin, nor 1901 as he generally implied) to a working-class family. Hanley grew up close to the docks and much of his early writing is about seamen. The Furys (1935) is first in a sequence of five loosely autobiographical novels about working-class life in Liverpool. James Hanley’s brother, novelist Gerald Hanley (1916–92) was also born in Liverpool (not County Cork, Ireland, as he claimed). While he published a number of novels he also wrote radio plays for the BBC as well as some film scripts, most notably The Blue Max (1966). He was also one of several scriptwriters for a life of Gandhi (1964). Novelist Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010) was born in Liverpool and raised in nearby Formby. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often set among the English working classes. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996 and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. The Times newspaper named Bainbridge among their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”. J. G. Farrell was born in Liverpool in 1935 but left at the outbreak of war in 1939. A novelist of Irish descent, Farrell gained prominence for his historical fiction, most notably his Empire Trilogy (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip), dealing with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule. However, his career ended when he drowned in Ireland in 1979 at the age of 44. Helen Forrester was the pen name of June Bhatia (née Huband) (1919–2011), who was known for her books about her early childhood in Liverpool during the Great Depression, including Twopence to Cross the Mersey (1974), as well as several works of fiction. During the late 1960s the city became well known for the Liverpool poets, who include Roger McGough and the late Adrian Henri. An anthology of poems, The Mersey Sound, written by Henri, McGough and Brian Patten, has sold well since it was first being published in 1967. Liverpool has produced several noted writers of horror fiction, often set on Merseyside – Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker and Peter Atkins among them. A collection of Liverpudlian horror fiction, Spook City was edited by a Liverpool expatriate, Angus Mackenzie, and introduced by Doug Bradley, also from Liverpool. Bradley is famed for portraying Barker’s creation Pinhead in the Hellraiser series of films.

Performing arts

Liverpool also has a long history of performing arts, reflected in several annual theatre festivals . Notable actors and actresses from Liverpool include Arthur Askey, Tom Baker, Kim Cattrall, Jodie Comer, Stephen Graham, Rex Harrison, Jason Isaacs, Tina Malone, the McGann brothers (Joe, Mark, Paul, and Stephen)

Nightlife

A 2011 TripAdvisor poll voted Liverpool as having the best nightlife of any UK city, ahead of Manchester, Leeds and even London . Concert Square, St. Peter’s Square and the adjoining Seel, Duke and Hardman Streets are home to some of Liverpool’s largest and most famed nightclubs . Mathew Street and the Gay Quarter, located close to the city’s commercial district, are popular nightlife destinations .

Liverpool geography / climate

Environment

Liverpool is located on the Liverpool Bay of the Irish Sea . The city is built across a ridge of sandstone hills rising up to a height of around 230 feet (70 m) above sea-level . The Mersey Estuary separates Liverpool from the Wirral Peninsula .

Climate

Liverpool experiences a temperate maritime climate (Köppen: Cfb), like much of the British Isles, with relatively mild summers, cool winters and rainfall spread fairly evenly throughout the year . Rainfall and Temperature records have been kept at Bidston since 1867, but records for atmospheric pressure go back to at least 1846 .

Human

Liverpool is a core urban element of a green belt region that extends into the wider surrounding counties . The green belt was first drawn up in 1983 under Merseyside County Council and the size in the city amounts to 530 hectares (5.3 km; 2.0 sq mi) The city contains limited portions of protected green belt area within greenfield throughout the borough .

You can visit Liverpool places with Walkfo Liverpool to hear history at Liverpool’s places whilst walking around using the free digital tour app. Walkfo Liverpool has 454 places to visit in our interactive Liverpool map, with amazing history, culture & travel facts you can explore the same way you would at a museum or art gallery with information audio headset. With Walkfo, you can travel by foot, bike or bus throughout Liverpool, being in the moment, without digital distraction or limits to a specific walking route. Our historic audio walks, National Trust interactive audio experiences, digital tour guides for English Heritage locations are available at Liverpool places, with a AI tour guide to help you get the best from a visit to Liverpool & the surrounding areas.

“Curated content for millions of locations across the UK, with 454 audio facts unique to Liverpool places in an interactive Liverpool map you can explore.”

Walkfo: Visit Liverpool Places Map
454 tourist, history, culture & geography spots

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Liverpool historic spots	Liverpool tourist destinations	Liverpool plaques	Liverpool geographic features
Walkfo Liverpool tourism map key: places to see & visit like National Trust sites, Blue Plaques, English Heritage locations & top tourist destinations in Liverpool

  

Best Liverpool places to visit

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Liverpool has places to explore by foot, bike or bus. Below are a selection of the varied Liverpool’s destinations you can visit with additional content available at the Walkfo Liverpool’s information audio spots:

Christ Church, Kensington Christ Church is in the Kensington area of Liverpool, Merseyside, England . The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building .

Everton water tower Everton Water Tower is a Grade II listed water tower situated on Margaret Street in Everton, Liverpool . The water tower is a well-known landmark dating from 1857 and can be seen from most of Liverpool .

Grant Gardens The Necropolis opened in 1825 with buildings by John Foster Jr . It closed in 1898 and was transferred to the council who reopened it as a park in 1914 .

Sacred Heart Church, Liverpool Sacred Heart Church is a Roman Catholic church in the centre of Liverpool, England . It is a Grade II listed building and was opened in 1886 . It was designed by Goldie, Child & Goldie and has an altar piece by Pugin and Pugin .

Rushworth and Dreaper The manufacturer was founded in 1828 by William Rushworth, operating until 2002 . Upon its liquidation, its archives were mostly destroyed, and the Victorian clock in the works tower was removed . The premises are now occupied by Henry Willis & Sons .

Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory The former Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) is based in Brownlow Street, Liverpool, England . It merged with the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) in April 2010 .

Victoria Building, University of Liverpool The Victoria Building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and completed in 1892 . It was the first purpose-built building for what was to become the University of Liverpool . In 2008 it was converted into the Victoria Gallery & Museum .

County Sessions House, Liverpool The County Sessions House is a former courthouse in Liverpool, Merseyside . It stands at the bottom of Islington, to the east of the Walker Art Gallery, which now occupies the building . It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building .

Steble Fountain Steble Fountain stands in William Brown Street, Liverpool, to the west of Wellington’s Column . It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building . It was donated to the city by a former mayor to fill a vacant plot west of the column .

North Western Hotel, Liverpool The Radisson RED Hotel Liverpool opened in 1871 as the North Western Hotel . The building is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building .

Visit Liverpool plaques