CHAP.
II.

land.

still further increase. I have mentioned elsewhere that at the close of the eighteenth century Mr. John Leigh, an attorney in Mr. Leigh's Liverpool, and a member of the Town-Council, made very extensive purchases of land round the town, and especially in the northern districts, to such a degree as greatly to cripple Lis resources. That he had a keen foresight beyond most of has contemporaries into the coming greatness of Liverpool there can be no doubt, but the actuality far exceeded his most sanguine anticipations. The railway demands formed an element altogether outside of his calculations, however shrewd. He did not live to realise the result of his speculations, and his son, Mr. John Shaw Leigh, had to struggle for many years; but at length the tide came

Progress of bunding

Railway

stations

Which taken at the flood led up to fortune.

The first purchase, for the Liverpool and Bury line, to k land from Mr. Leigh to the amount of £250,000, and enhanced materially the value of the other portions which have since cone into the market for commercial purposes, extensions of the railways, and general use, opening a mine of wealth to the fortunate proprietor.

By the year 1851 the docks had been completed as far as the boundary of the old borough and beyond; and the locality between the docks and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal had been pretty nearly covered with building, with the exception of those portions purchased and reserved by the Dock Board for future use. The great features of the quarter are the docks, the railways and stations, the manufacturing establishments, and the warehouses. The docks I have treated of in a separate chapter. The railway accommodation has for many years been panting behind the wants of commerce and never able to overtake the m1. The Lancashire and Yorkshire line was the first to penetrate the district, which it cuts through at a high level as far as the Exchange station for passengers. The goods stations of the company are very extensive. On the east side of Great Howard Street the station occupies nine acres, including the site of the old Borough Gaol. Between Regent Road and Great Howard Street another station covers seventeen acres, besides a branen to a high level, with coal shipping staiths, along the cast end of the Wellington and Bramley Moore Docks, East of the canaį at the Southport Junction, there are also extensive stations and works,

CHAP.
II.

North

The London and North-Western Waterloo Station covers eight acres between Waterloo Road and Great Howard Street, municating by the Victoria Tunnel with the main line at London and Engell. The Regent Road Station covers seven acres, besides Western Line acres of land for future extension. This is approached by Railway. a branch running round the north-eastern suburbs to the main line at Edgehill. A new station occupying twenty-two acres is about to be constructed at Bootle.

Concurrently with dock and railway extension, warehouses Warehouses. for the reception of imported produce have arisen to a great extent in this neighbourhood. These are principally developed in Waterloo Road and the streets leading therefrom, and along both ales of Love Lane, Manufacturing industry also prevails to a Manufac considerable degree, in the form of gas-works, engine and boiler tures. works, corn and rice mills, oil mill, saw mills, etc.

The population, as might naturally be expected, is exclusively Population. of the artisan class, squeezed in amongst the commercial buildings wherever space could be found. A considerable proport. n are Irish. There is not a large amount of squalid poverty: genera:ly speaking the inhabitants are in the receipt of good wages, being principally connected with the docks and the shippig interest; but most of the habitations were erected in the pre sanitary period, and are huddled up in confined courts and a.ry», prejudicial to the free circulation of air, and hostile to deceny and refinement. The church accommodation is very Churches. 1.ted, consisting of three churches only, St. Augustine's (Ruan Catholic), Great Howard Street; St. Albans (Roman Cati. lies, Athol Street; and St. Matthias's (Church of England, Great Howard Street. The only public institution is the Northern Hospital, in Great Howard Street.

character.

As a whole the district under consideration, lying between the Canal and the docks from east to west, and extending from Titlebarn Street northwards to the boundary of the old borough, has a very marked and decided character. It is Liverpool in- General tens.feel, in its commerce, its manufactures, its prosperity, and its neglect of every pursuit beyond the mere means of existence. It is true this is not the case with all Liverpool. There are elsewhere aspirations after the "true and the beautiful," but in tis quarter all remains earthy, commercial, and prosaic, "Sweetness and light" have scarcely penetrated the hard envel peng crust of surrounding associations. Let us hope a time w..come when the intellectual torpor will be thawed, and

VOL II.

E

CHAP.
II.

Progress.

knowledge and culture penetrate the industrial masses who here contribute so largely to the progress and prosperity of the port.

The completion of the Huskisson Dock in 1852 and the Canada Dock in 1859, drew forward the business and population northward. Beacon's Gutter, the ancient boundary, the rubicon of Liverpool, was soon overleaped, and building rapidly pushed on through the township of Kirkdale, and created a new town and borough in Bootle. A portion of this I have treated of in another chapter. The rapidity of this progress is almost unexampled. In 1825, with some trifling exceptions, all beyond the Prince's Dock was open shore westward, and green fields eastward. An enterprising Liverpool youth leaving home, as many have done, for the east, and returning after forty-five years' absence, would have found, in 1870, such a metamorphosis as is seldom met with, except in the United States. The rural glades in which he had disported, the quiet shore where he had got a view of the distant town and watched the sun set far away in the ocean, he would search for in vain. In their stead he would find forests of masts, mile upon mile of dock walls and quays, labyrinths of densely crowded streets resounding with the clink of the hammer and the busy hum of active industry, a population

as bees

In spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides,

Pour forth their populous youth about the hive,
In clusters.

Let us hope that on the whole he would find the sum of human happiness increased, and some impulse given to the great ultimate result of the designs of Providence,

CHAPTER III.

CHAPEL STREET AND TITHEBARN STREET, NORTHWARD.

CHAP.
III.

WE will commence our survey at the bottom of Water Street. The narrow lane called Prison Wient,' running along the west side of Tower Buildings, was originally the terrace flanking Prison the walls of the old tower, up to the edge of which flowed the

tile.

Wient.

Nicholas's

The waste between the tower and the shore was called "Salton's Rocks." In 1669 a portion of this was granted to Samuel Fazakerley, on which he erected some buildings. The remainder continued open ground down to the middle of the eighteenth century. At the end of this alley we pass through a gate and enter the churchyard of "Our Lady and St. Nicholas." St. Let us pause a moment and look around. There is nothing very Church. inviting in the aspect of the immediate surroundings. The Old churchtrees, whose umbrageous foliage once spread a grateful shade yard. around, have long since disappeared. The quiet Sabbath calm which should distinguish the house of prayer has departed never to return. Even the names and years of the past generations Lere gathered to their fathers, are already for the most part ilegible, and will ere long be entirely obliterated by the passing tread of the busy multitude. The churchyard is now in one part a crowded thoroughfare, and in another a lounge for the itle and unemployed, the roar of commerce rising up and surging round the enclosure as if grudging the small space left unappriated to its all-devouring instincts. And yet, allowing all 11s and more which might be said, there are many thoughts of a deeply interesting character to a reflective mind, which are

The term "Wient," applied to a narrow street or alley, is equivalent to the Scottish “Wynd,” and is, I believe, in England peculiar to the esty of Lancaster. It is probably derived from A.S. Winden, to wind er twist, from the tortuous crooked nature of such passages in general.

CHAP.

yard.

suggested by the church and its precincts. In any commercial town, but more especially in Liverpool, where the aspect of Old church everything is modern, and where buildings, streets, and localities are undergoing perpetual change, it is extremely difficult to realise any connection with antiquity. The buildings which our fathers looked upon with such a familiar aspect, are things of the past. The houses where they dwelt have departed with their occupants; the streets where their daily life was spent, are pulled down, widened, or improved away. An impassable gulf seems to yawn between the ideas, thoughts, and feelings of even a few generations ago and the present time. We have no common measure, no mutual ground of identity. But the churchyard, "God's acre," as our ancestors, with a fine natural feeling of poetry, termed it, partially bridges over this chasm of separation, and preserves the continuity of the past with the present. The churchyard before us, shorn of its rural accessories, squalid, vulgarised, desecrated, is still a tangible inheritance of the past. For at least five hundred years, it has remained undisturbed, receiving the frail relics of humanity age after age, and now this duty being no longer required, it is still an enclosure protected from secular appropriation, contributing to the health and amenity of the town. Access to the riverside, once almost at the door of every inhabitant, has gradually become in the course of time so shut out and fenced off, that the churchyard of St. Nicholas is now the only open space fr. m whence a glimpse of the salt water and of the country beyond can be seen. Even this is beginning to be grudged, and mutterings are heard of vast schemes of so-called improvement, which are to result in leaving the churchyard no longer an existence, except in the pages of such histories as this. My readers, I am sure, will devoutly join in the aspiration, “ A Dieu no plaise,”

It has been common in the histories of Liverpool to assign to this church a degree of antiquity, which it would be found very difficult to substantiate. One authority says, “St. Nicholas's Church or Chapel, it is conjectured, was erected soon after the Conquest." Another informs us that "the first mention of the Chapel of Our Lady, we find about the date of 1050, but it is believed to have been erected long previous to that period." A third states that "the original Chapel of Our Lady is suppored to have been built at, or a little before 1 Gore's Ammy's

↑ Lacey's Putorial Handbook, p. 252.