Exhibition 28 July 2007 to 27 September 2009
Don't ask me about the great city of Liverpool - I'll be here all day! Here are just a few tales from its incredible history. Pay attention - these may help you in the cab driver's challenge quiz.
The Calderstones are a remnant of one of the oldest settlements on Merseyside and a relic from an ancient civilisation.
By about 5000 years ago nomadic hunter gatherers had become farmers and began to settle down. The best local illustration of this is the site of the Calderstones, Allerton. This is a destroyed Neolithic communal burial chamber, which was made of a stone chamber, stone passage and circular mound of earth covering it.
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The six surviving large stones all have curvilinear and spiral motifs pecked into them, which relate to local Neolithic supernatural beliefs and religious/ceremonial rituals. The same spirals are found on stone chambered burial tombs in Anglesey and in eastern Ireland. This shows that people with common beliefs and traditions were in touch with each other around the Irish Sea with the Mersey being an important route into North West England (axe exchange).
Local communities would have used the site to bury their dead with accompanying ceremonies and rituals that would serve to bind the community to each other and integrate them into the surrounding landscape and its natural seasonal patterns.
The skeleton of Leasowe Man was originally thought to be prehistoric, perhaps as old as 4000 BC. However, radiocarbon dating has shown that the skeleton is actually Roman in date. As such it is the only Roman skeleton from Merseyside.
The Huxley hoard is a collection of Viking silver discovered in Cheshire in 2004, believed to date from the late 9th or early 10th centuries AD.
You can read more about Leasowe Man and the Huxley hoard on the Museum of Liverpool's website.
"In West Derby Hundred there King Edward had one manor called West Derby, with 6 berewicks... There is land for 15 ploughs... [and] a forest two leagues long."
Domesday Book
By the Norman Conquest of 1066 the manor of West Derby was the centre of the local 'hundred'. This made it one of the most important settlements in the area.
William the Conqueror gave West Derby to his supporter Roger de Poitou. Roger built a wooden castle and a small town grew around it.
The 'Domesday Book' survey of the area in around 1086 revealed that most settlements were small villages or individual farms and the population was sparse. Liverpool was not mentioned by name in the survey, but it was probably one of West Derby's six outlying 'berewicks' or farms.
Kirkby was first mentioned in 1086, when it was a relatively small settlement known as Cherchebi. The population grew dramatically after it was officially designated as a new town in 1949, to help relieve the housing shortage after the Second World War.
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King John's 'Letters Patent' founded the borough of Liverpool but he probably never visited the town. He granted Liverpool's letters patent to the Steward of West Derby at Winchester on 28 August 1207.
John saw Liverpool as a safe harbour from where troops and supplies could leave to invade Ireland. The new town would also provide him with a source of income from its 'fee farm'. A 'fee farm' was not actually a farm at all, it was a fixed lump-sum rent paid for the whole town. Town officials collected it for the King each year.
For some local people Liverpool offered the chance to start a new life free from the control of local lords. Many settlers made the short 5 mile journey from West Derby to live in the new borough. The better off were attracted by the promise of burgage plots. Paying the King a rent of 12d per year they received land for a house, a place to trade and an acre in the town field.
The new settlers could use the town's mill, a chapel, Saturday market and the annual fair, all granted by John to help kick start Liverpool's growth.
The language spoken by most people in Merseyside until at least the 6th century AD was Celtic, an old form of Welsh. Two places where Celtic survived longest were Woolton and Wallasey.
Norse Vikings settled in the Wirral in the 10th century. Lots of place names there are derived from names given by Viking settlers, such as Irby, Frankby and Roby. Some people from older Wirral families still have Norwegian traces in their DNA today. However, the language was not widely spoken across the region.
Scouse evolved in the late 19th century from a mix of the local Lancashire accent and the Irish, Scots, and Welsh spoken by the many people who came to the busy port.
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The street layout of the city centre was established around 1230 The seven original streets in Liverpool were Dale Street, Castle Street, Milne Street, Tithebarn Street, Water Street, Chapel Street and Juggler Street
They are still recognisable today, although Milne Street became known as Old Hall Street in about 1600.
By the 15th century Liverpool had fallen under the control of the rival local families the Molyneuxs and the Stanleys. Their ownership of powerful offices in the region allowed them to interfere in Liverpool's affairs for the next two centuries.
The Molyneux family saw Liverpool as their town, particularly after they had distinguished themselves in the service of Henry VI and were rewarded with Liverpool Castle.
Liverpool Tower, a fortified residence on Water Street, was built by Sir John Stanley in 1406. It led to tensions with the Molyneuxs that almost exploded into battle through the town's streets in 1424.
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The castle was the largest and most important building in Liverpool for nearly 300 years. Located on a sandstone outcrop overlooking the Pool it was ideally situated to defend the town's harbour.
Built in 1235 by William Ferrers, Sheriff of Lancaster, it provided a base for soldiers travelling to Ireland. Located where modern day Derby Square is, it had four towers, a hall, chamber, chapel, brewhouse and bakehouse.
Liverpool Castle was a symbol to everyone in the area of the military strength of the Crown. Its use as a base for royal fleets and the security it offered encouraged trade and strengthened contacts around the Irish Sea. This was good for local businesses.
The development of gunpowder meant that within 100 years the castle was obsolete and fell into disuse. By the time Royal Inspectors saw the castle in 1559 it was in 'utter ruin and decay... a great defacement unto the town'. Local people used timber, lead and stone from the castle for their own buildings until it was finally demolished in 1720.
"Liverpool is one of the wonders of Britain, heaven knows what it will grow into in time"
Having seen amazing progress on a number of visits to the town in the 30 years after 1680, famed traveller and diarist Daniel Defoe made this comment in 1708.
From the 1670s the discovery and colonisation of the New World had opened up new markets for trade. Liverpool's westerly facing port, combined with the availability of numerous exportable commodities in the town's hinterland, placed Liverpool in an ideal position to exploit these new opportunities.
These opportunities also coincided with the arrival in Liverpool of a new breed of businessmen and women. Entrepreneurs such as Daniel Danvers, John Blackburne and Sarah Clayton were keen to maximise the trading opportunities Liverpool offered in the late seventeenth century.
Such was their success that the city grew rapidly. During the 18th and 19th centuries Liverpool become the second city of the British Empire and one of the world's busiest ports.
In 1715 Liverpool merchants built the first commercial wet dock in the world.
The wealthy merchants who controlled Liverpool Corporation saw an urgent need to improve The Pool. It was at the heart of the town's success but with the Mersey's strong tides and deep mud, it was struggling to cope with the growing level of shipping.
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In 1708 the Corporation employed Thomas Steers, one of the country's leading canal engineers. He used his knowledge of Dutch engineering gained during military service to drain the Pool and build a large stone dock in its place. Completed in 1715, it provided shipping with protection from the sea during loading.
The construction of the dock was a huge risk and it almost bankrupted the Corporation. Its success encouraged a rapid increase in trade through Liverpool. Shipping tonnage rose from 14,600 in 1709 to 450,000 in 1800 making Liverpool the second most important port in Britain after London.
Cheese was one of the most important outward-going cargoes from 18th century Liverpool. Over 1,000 tons of cheese was exported from Liverpool in 1736 alone.
Cotton trading become big business in the city in the following century. The first American cotton was unloaded in Liverpool in 1784, but there were only eight bags. As the trade grew, Liverpool's trading links with America and the nearby cotton mills of Lancashire meant that over 80% of Britain's cotton imports came through the port in the 19th and 20th centuries.
There's more information in the web feature on the former exhibition 100% Cotton.
Liverpool was Britain's most important port in the transatlantic slave trade, transporting almost 1.5million Africans across the Atlantic into slavery. However, very few enslaved Africans actually came to Liverpool, as they were taken from Africa directly to America. The city's part in the trade came in importing goods such as sugar and cotton, which had been produced by slave labour in America and the Caribbean. Goods manufactured in the North West were then exported from Liverpool to Africa, where they were exchanged for people, completing the triangular trade route.
"Should the African trade be abolished... Weeds will grow in the streets of Liverpool"
Colonel Banastre Tarleton, MP for Liverpool, 1792
In Britain the campaign to end the slave trade began in 1787. Liverpool became bitterly divided. The pro-slaving element was strong because the trade helped create the town's commercial wealth.
Banastre Tarleton, the town's Member of Parliament, attacked the anti-slavery petitions delivered to London in the 1790s as "the work of deluded fanatics" - a view shared by Liverpool merchants whose livelihoods were under threat.
In contrast many of Liverpool's citizens actively supported abolition. Most notable was William Roscoe, who defeated Tarleton to represent the town in Parliament.
Find out more about Liverpool's role in the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition in the new International Slavery Museum.
The city's population has fluctuated considerably over the last 800 years. The population of medieval Liverpool was small and was reduced by outbreaks of disease on a number of occasions. By the 1660s the population level had recovered to 1,200 inhabitants.
In the following centuries investment in the town, most crucially in the dock system, led to a dramatic increase in the population figures. Liverpool became the fastest growing port in the country, overtaking its rival Chester in 1699.
However, as a port, Liverpool has always been vulnerable to the import of contagious diseases. An outbreak of the Black Death in 1361 wiped out whole families. The last outbreak of plague in the city was as recent as 1914.
Warfare has also played a part in the changing fortunes of the city. In 1644 Liverpool was besieged by a Royalist army led by Prince Rupert. When the Parliamentarian soldiers defending the town fled, Rupert's men stormed in killing 400 of the townspeople. It was all for nothing though, as he failed to secure the castle's supplies. Within months Parliamentarian forces retook Liverpool by starving the town into surrender.
Centuries later Liverpool became the main departure point for people emigrating in search of a better life in a new world. More than 9 million emigrants left Liverpool between 1830 and 1930. Find out what life was like for emigrants with the Leaving from Liverpool interactive feature.
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In 1861 the average life expectancy in Liverpool was little more than 30, compared with 45 in rural England.
The town had trebled in size since 1800. Liverpool was already overcrowded at the beginning of the 19th century but the arrival of thousands of people escaping the famine in Ireland in the 1840s made conditions much worse.
Most people lived within walking distance of their place of work and the docklands were home to many labouring families. Poverty and poor housing made life a daily battle for survival. Reports suggest that by 1843 nearly half the working population were living in cellar dwellings.
Wealthier families lived on higher ground around the edge of the town. This did not make them immune from epidemics caused by the conditions most people were living in. Liverpool Corporation appointed Dr William Duncan the world's first Medical Officer of Health in 1864 to tackle overcrowding and sanitation.
Here are just a few fun facts to end with.
