The lost dock of Liverpool
A Time Team Special
First screened 21 April 2008

Liverpool – Background

Global city
A century ago, in 1908, when work began on one of Liverpool's most famous landmarks, the Royal Liver Building on the city's Pier Head, the 90-metre, 13-storey building dominated the waterfront of Britain's greatest port. It was at the maritime heart of the biggest empire the world had ever seen. At one stage, it is estimated that as much as two-fifths of the world's trade passed through Liverpool – including, during the two decades before its abolition in Britain, three-quarters of the transatlantic slave trade.

Seven miles of docks stretched along the banks of the River Mersey, and the giant liver birds on top of the Royal Liver Friendly Society's headquarters looked down on a wealthy, thriving and truly global city. Local legend has it that one of the birds looks inland to protect the city, the other out to sea to protect its sailors. (Alternatively, it is suggested that one is male, looking to see if the pubs are open, while the other is female, checking out the incoming talent on the ships.)

Seven streets and a muddy pool
Only a couple of centuries earlier, though, Liverpool was a small town of just seven streets (Chapel Street, Water Street, Moore Street, Castle Street, Dale Street, High Street and Peppard Street) on the banks of a 'liver', or muddy, pool. Founded in 1207 at the narrowest point of the Mersey estuary, for the next 500 years it remained a largely insignificant Lancastrian town. A survey early in Elizabeth's reign identified just 138 mainly humble dwellings and a population of barely 700. Its merchants owned a mere dozen vessels and a petition to Elizabeth referred to 'Her Majesty's poor decayed town of Liverpool'.

The harbour was improved and a new quay built during Elizabeth's reign, and in the middle of the 17th century the corporation laid the basis for future development when it purchased the feudal rights from Sir William Molyneux. But it was not until the beginning of the 18th century that its fortunes really began to turn when a frenzy of investment and construction turned this small town into one of the most important cities in the world.

Three major projects
Time Team came to Liverpool for this special documentary as the city celebrated its 800th anniversary in 2007 and prepared for its role as European City of Culture in 2008. Some of the regular team members, including Phil Harding (on unfamiliar urban turf), Helen Geake, Stewart Ainsworth and Jonathan Foyle, joined local experts and other archaeologists to investigate the landscape, explore the buildings that made Liverpool great and, most importantly, follow the archaeology as a series of huge digs took place in advance of three major building projects.

The first of these sites was on the waterfront at the Pier Head, where preparations for a new museum uncovered one of Liverpool's first docks. The second, a little way inland, was being cleared to make way for new development; here archaeologists were looking to explore a long-vanished, early dockside settlement. The biggest prize, though, the site of Liverpool's first dock, lay under the billion-pound, 42-acre Paradise Project. Time Team followed the archaeologists as they investigated the three sites ahead of the new construction work.

 

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