From a drawing by W. G. Herdman in the possession of in the possession of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board.
CHAPEL STREET has always been one of Liverpool’s important thoroughfares, and in the early days some of Liverpool’s wealthiest merchants resided there. Laurence Spence, who was Mayor of the town in 1759, had his home in the street, as did William Hesketh, Mayor in 1783. On turning to “Liverpool’s First Directory,” edited by Mr. G. T. Shaw, to which he added for the first time a Street Directory of 1766, we find residing in the street two surgeons, the Collector of Excise, a lawyer, and several merchants; and there was also a boarding school. Picton says: “The cattle market was held in Chapel Street as early as 1571. A relic of this continued to exist down to modern times in the pig market, which was held on the site of the present Rumford Place, until removed to Great Howard Street about 1840, and subsequently discontinued.” Herdman’s drawing is based on one in the Foster Collection, which represents the street as it appeared in 1797. It will be noticed that at that date there were still some of the old picturesque houses standing. Sir Edward Moore, author of “Liverpool in King Charles the Second’s Time,” who had such a shrewd view of the future of Liverpool, and the importance and value of his own property therein, was a freeholder of nine tenements in Chapel Street.
Bibliography
Muir, Ramsay, et al. Bygone Liverpool. Liverpool: Young, 1913. Internet Archive online version of a copy in the University of Toronto Library. Web. 29 September 2022.
Last modified 28 September 2022