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Liverpool

England, United Kingdom

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BY The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica | Last Updated: Oct 6, 2021 | View Edit History

Liverpool, city and seaport, northwestern England, forming the nucleus of the metropolitan county of Merseyside in the historic county of Lancashire. The city proper, which is a metropolitan borough of Merseyside, forms an irregular crescent along the north shore of the Mersey estuary a few miles from the Irish Sea.

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool, England; designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd (constructed 1962–67).

© Alex Yeung/Shutterstock.com

The first significant date in the history of Liverpool is 1207, when King John of England granted a charter for a planned new town there. The town’s medieval growth was slow, but in the 18th century it expanded rapidly as a result of profitable trade with the Americas and the West Indies and became the second most important port in Britain. A major element in the general trading pattern was the Liverpool Triangle—the exchange of manufactured goods from the Mersey hinterland for slaves in West Africa who were in turn traded for sugar, molasses, spices, and other plantation crops in the West Indies.

The first dock in Liverpool was built in 1715. By the end of the century, four other docks had been established along the Mersey, so that the port outranked even London in dock space. In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first in England to link two major cities, was opened. A rail network providing easy and cheap access to all major British industrial centres was soon created, and steam ferry links between Liverpool and the Wirral, across the Mersey estuary, were established. This growth was accompanied by high levels of immigration from surrounding areas and from Ireland, especially during and after the Irish Potato Famine (1845–49).

map of Liverpool c. 1900

Map of Liverpool (c. 1900), from the 10th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Liverpool had become the centre of 7 miles (11 km) of docks extending along the Mersey from Hornby (1884) in the north to Herculaneum (1866) in the south. Additional improvements were made to the docks, but after World War II Liverpool declined as an exporting and passenger port. That change can be attributed mainly to the decreasing significance, in the economic life of Britain, of Liverpool’s industrial hinterland and its traditional trade with the United States and West Africa. Low capital investment and unemployment in the docks intensified the situation.

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Liverpool continues to exert a great degree of dominance over the surrounding metropolitan region. Although the traditional activities of transport, communication, distribution, and shipping have declined, they are still important in the economic life of the city. The port, in addition to handling general cargo, has developed as a major facility for containerized shipping, and in 2012 it became a terminus for cruise ships. The docklands and several areas of the historic centre of the city collectively were named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004. However, that designation was rescinded in 2021 because of developments that have caused “the irreversible loss of attributes.”

Paramount among Liverpool’s important contributions to 20th-century popular culture were the Beatles, who emerged from the Cavern (a nightclub that was part of the city’s musical scene in the 1960s) to become the world’s best-known rock group. Local “performance” poets such as Roger McGough, Adrian Henri, and Brian Patten helped popularize poetry in the 1960s. And from the heyday of the music hall to the radio comedy of Tommy Handley in the 1940s, Liverpudlians contributed to the British comedy tradition. Tourism has grown in importance and includes a rise in interest for visiting locations associated with the Beatles.

Architectural landmarks include the 18th-century Town Hall and the 19th-century St. George’s Hall; the Neo-Gothic Anglican cathedral, founded in 1904 and completed in 1978; and the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral (1967), of strikingly modern design. Tate Liverpool (a branch of the national Tate galleries), Merseyside County Museum and Library, the Walker Art Gallery, the Picton Library, the International Slave Museum, and the University of Liverpool (chartered 1881) are among the many cultural institutions. Liverpool also has a well-known symphony orchestra, and the city is home to two world-class professional football (soccer) teams (Everton and Liverpool FC). Area 43 square miles (112 square km). Pop. (2001) city, 439,473; urban agglom., 816,216; (2011) city, 466,415; urban agglom., 864,122.