The early port - the Fishing Village

When looking at the quaintly peaceful illustrations of the pool, where water gently lapped around sailing ships tied up below the castle, it is hard to imagine that this seventeenth century sheltered fishing hamlet would give birth to one of the greatest ports in the world. It just needed a kick start to get it going.

Yet there had been little growth in the town from the time of the borough foundation down to the mid-seventeenth century. Liverpool, as in its surrounding townships, was too dependant on agriculture and its products for its lively-hood, though there was always fishing and some maritime trade. The same seven streets continued to appear in the taxation lists and even as late as 1660 there were only around 190 houses covering these main routes. Throughout much of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Liverpool was in a state of economic hardship, even decay. The population was ravaged by disease in the 1540s and 50s and a storm did serious damage to the haven in 1561. By 1571 Rauff Sekerston, M.P. petitioned Elizabeth from the “decayed town of Liverpoole” stating,

(above: Liverpool foreshore, Tower, Custom House and Castle c1680, painted by William Herdman in the mid 1800s, based on the view below)

Little help was forthcoming and Elizabeth continued to refuse a new charter. Yet towards the end of the century she did grant letters of marque and privateering statues to Liverpool sailors which despite being licenced piracy, brought a great improvement to the local economy. A key development came in 1647 when Liverpool was made a free and independent port, no longer subject to the Port of Chester.

Rapid expansion was encouraged and in the 1660s and 1670s the principal landowners laid out several new streets, including Lord Street, Moor Street, Fenwick Street, Red Cross Street and St. James's Street. The town's growing status was reflected in many of the new buildings constructed during the period, such as the Town Hall (1673-4) Bluecoat School (1721), the Custom House (1721), St.Peter's (1704) and St.George's Church (1734). Such growth was matched by the sweeping away of many of the buildings which had served the town since the medieval period, notably the Castle, the Crosse Hall, the Townsend Mill and the old Tithebarn. The ancient chapel of St.Mary del Quay lasted until 1814 and the Tower of Liverpool was demolished four years later.

The old Pool which had acted as a magnet to King John's advisors, the early settlers, and generations of merchants and seafarers (not forgetting a mythical bird), was now being reclaimed by the end of the seventeenth century, although not totally, as it would provide the site for the towns' first wet dock designed by Thomas Steers which opened in 1715. The Pool, now known as the 'Common Sewer', had become an eyesore, it was in need of dredging to make it fully navigable and was probably empty at low water. A programme of draining and dumping of earth and rubbish was mounted to create valuable building land on the site.

The opportunity to develop the area had been assisted in 1671 when the Corporation secured rights to the foreshore of the Pool and other privileges from the lord of the Borough, Lord Molyneux. In return, he was granted freedom to build a bridge across the Pool from Liverpool Heath to his new street in Castle Hey ("Lord" Street).

Industry

Industry in Liverpool was relatively minor until the late seventeenth century. Various medieval and post-medieval documents mention brewers, goldsmiths, weavers and smiths, but these were mainly essential crafts to support the local community, as was milling, probably the largest of the industries. A respectable trade in pottery manufactured from local clays continued throughout the post-medieval period. Certain industries expanded as a result of growing trading links with Ireland and the colonies, from which the latter led to the establishment of a sugar refinery in Tarleton's Field c.1670. By the eighteenth century, glass manufacture, iron-working, clock-making and rope manufacture were all well established industries. From the registers of St.Nicholas, twelve watchmakers are known in Liverpool in the 1670's, the first clear evidence that watch cases and springs were being made in the town.

1765

In the rural townships, as in the town, most industries were those which were necessary to the economy and support of the township alone and were almost exclusively agriculturally related. In fact, many of these activities were secondary occupations to supplement farmers’ incomes, especially through the winter. Farm buildings generally encompassed other outbuildings necessary for the additional trades, such a tanning, milling, iron-working or brewing, but later many farmsteads became more specialised, such as Tanhouse Farm and Court House Brewery in Halewood. Most township's had their own quarries, but again this was to satisfy a localised demand, as was the extraction of clay for brick making. The materials for the eighteenth century brick built farms were often locally fired, the sites of which are often betrayed by field names such as 'Kiln Croft' shown on nineteenth century tithe maps.

Watch-making had spread to several townships during the seventeenth century but these were often out-workers supplying tools and parts to the centre of the industry in Liverpool and Prescot. One of the earliest watchmakers in Britain was a 'Mr Aspinwell' who was described as 'an ingenious workman'. He was most likely Thomas Aspinwall, one of the new Puritan settlers in Toxteth Park who died in 1624. There are other references to watchmakers in Aigburth, Halewood, Childwall, Huyton and West Derby. During the early 1980's a workshop was discovered in Paradise Row in Gateacre during renovations. The cottage is of late seventeenth/early eighteenth century construction and further documentary research has revealed the names of at least a dozen inhabitants of Much and Little Woolton involved in the watch-making business between 1694 and 1851.

(left: watch made by E.S. Yates LIverpool in the 19th century)

During the medieval and post medieval period there was a thriving fishing industry in the waterside coves and inlets of the Mersey. In the late seventeenth century, the fisheries had become so extensive that they had become a hindrance to navigation. In 1697, Thomas Patten of Warrington, wishing to make the Mersey navigable to Manchester, believed the river to be over-fished and proposed to suppress the offenders. He wrote to Richard Norris of Speke Hall to complain about the fisheries between his land and Garston Dale,

'You very well know the mischiefs that are done in the River Mercy, or at least have frequently heard what vast numbers of salmon trouts are taken, so as to supply all the country and market townes for twenty miles around; and when the country is cloyed, or when they cannot get sale for them, they give them to their swine. Your brother did formerly take three or four salmon a week at a fishing, in or near Speke; but of late hath taken very few or none, of which he hath complained to me, and he imputes this loss to the destruction of the fry'.

How difficult today to imagine that there were once so many salmon at Garston that they were fed to pigs.

Salt Trade – ‘the Nursing Mother’

The discovery of rock salt in William Marbury’s Cheshire estate in 1670 was to be the catalyst in the development and improvement in communications from the Cheshire salt fields and the Lancashire coal fields to the River Mersey and Liverpool. The Liverpool hinterland was opened up and the rise in the port swiftly followed. Salt has always been a necessity of life, not only for seasoning but also as a preservative for meat and fish, and as the population increased, the growing demand for the commodity made its preparation on a large scale essential. A few miles upstream on the Mersey, near the small hamlets of Oglet and Speke, a small refinery was constructed at Dungeon, where the remains of a small harbour can still be clearly seen. A few cottages lined Dungeon Lane, which housed the salt workers with two Customs and Excise cottages (still standing) close by. The economic importance of salt had quickly been recognised by Liverpool merchants. According to the Liverpool antiquarian John Holt,

'The Salt Trade is generally acknowledged to have been the Nursing Mother and to have contributed more to the first rise, gradual increase, and present flourishing state of the Town of Liverpool, than any other article of commerce'.

Before this discovery of rock salt, brine had to be purified on site, but it was now a simple matter to transport the raw material to more economically sited factories where it could be refined. Three refineries sprouted on or near the Mersey; at Frodsham Bridge (c.1690-4), Liverpool (1696), and Dungeon (1697), all attempting to benefit from a closer proximity to the Lancashire coalfields. The regular supplies of both salt and coal to the refineries continued to be problematic and was the motivation to develop the lines of communication into the salt fields of Cheshire and the coal fields of south west Lancashire.

In 1694 an Act of Parliament was passed to make the River Mersey navigable to Warrington., while the Weaver Navigation constructed to by-pass the River Weaver where it proved un-navigable was completed in 1733. By the early 1700's, salt had become the major export product of the port of Liverpool. It was, for example, an essential commodity of the Newfoundland cod fisheries, from where the salted fish was taken to the West Indies and sold or exchanged for sugar, coffee or fruit. In the coastal trade it was of great importance; it was taken to Cornwall where in return came china clay for the pottery industries of Staffordshire and Liverpool. It was also necessary in other Liverpool industries such as metal and glass working, where it was used as a flux, and later it became integral to the basic growth of the local chemical industry as an ingredient in the manufacture of soda.

By the 1750s, the Weaver Navigation supply route into the salt fields was complemented with a similar operation to the Lancashire coalfields with the opening of the Sankey Brook Canal. Much of the support had come from the merchants and industrialists of Liverpool and the proprietors of the salt works of Northwich and Winsford. The chief agitators from Liverpool were John Blackburne, owner of the Liverpool Salthouse Dock refinery, and John Ashton, now the owner of Dungeon. Ashton, in fact, provided just under half of the capital, owning 51 of the 120 shares in the Navigation, and the completion of the project was mainly owed to him.

(left: Liverpool Salthouse Dock 1897)

The canal opened in November 1757 and its effect on the production of salt was quite remarkable; 14,000 tons in 1752, 40,000 by 1783, 100,000 by 1796 and 186,000 in 1820. When the Dungeon works was inherited by Nicholas Ashton after the death of John Ashton in August 1759, he was quick to secure a regular and economic supply of coal by leasing coalmines at Parr, near St. Helens - in fact, by the early 1830's, every coal proprietor in and around St. Helens owned salt-works in Cheshire. In 1772, Ashton purchased Woolton Hall, having previously resided at Hanover Street (where he was a neighbour of John Blackburne) and Clayton Square in Liverpool. Ashton was still only 30 years old and had already held the office of High Sheriff of Lancashire. However, although the refinery was again passed down from father to son it was no longer a going concern by the mid 1800s, and may not have been able to compete any longer with Blackburne's refinery.

The salt trade is frequently ignored when assessing the factors that contributed to the rapid expansion of the port, yet this was a sizeable trade and quickly gave Liverpool a boost to surge past the declining port of Chester and provide a solid infrastructure to be exploited by those who were to follow.

Further research

Ascott, Diana E., Lewis, Fiona and Power, Michael, Liverpool, 1660–1750: People, Prosperity and Power (Lpool Univ Press 2006)

This is a modern and significant detailed study of the social and political structure of the town during this crucial period, using parish registers, probate material, and town government records to consider the characteristics a fast-growing and mobile population, the occupational structure, family lives and connections of workers in the town, and the political structures and struggles of the period.

www.prescotmuseum.org.uk
Regarding watch making, the Liverpool area was the most important watch making area in the world in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – local research and exhibition is centred at the Prescot Museum .

www.watchmakinginvictorianprescot.co.uk
A local school website is also useful.

Moore, Dennis, British Clockmakers and Watchmakers Apprentice Records 1710-1810 (Prescot Museum).

Salt Trade

Barker,T.C. Lancashire Coal, Cheshire Salt and the Rise of Liverpool, T.H.S.L.C. Vol 103 (1951)

Liverpool and the Dungeon Works (on this site)

www.saltmuseum.org.uk

The Salt Museum in Northwich

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