Remembering Liverpool Structures - Liverpool Castle

An image of how Liverpool Castle would have looked, courtesy of Liverpool Record Office

 

King John wanted a port town that he could use as an alternative to Chester and, importantly to him, he where he could build a staging post to launch attacks on Ireland. With the Mersey having an inlet called 'the Pool' which would be a safe harbour for trading and war vessels, he issued a Letters Patents, popularly known as the Royal Charter, to Liverpool on August 28, 1207 at a time when it was just a tiny fishing port. Liverpool Castle was probably built between 1232 and 1235, under the orders of William de Ferrers, the 4th Earl of Derby to protect King John's new port, and was sited at the top of modern-day Lord Street, the highest point in the city which overlooked the Pool. Built from sandstone and designed to be self-supporting in times of siege, it was built on top of a plateau, which had been specially constructed, and a moat measuring 20 yards (18 m) was cut out of solid rock. In 1347 it was set out as a square with circular towers with the main building and a great gatehouse surmounted by two flanking towers to the barbican, ten feet square, standing at the north-eastern corner looking down Castle Street. A strong surrounding wall connected the South West 'Prison' tower with the North West Great 'Keep' tower protecting the buildings inside the castle. Within the walls were a hall, a chapel connected to the south-western tower, a brewhouse, a bakehouse and a covered well for drinking water. A causeway from the gatehouse ran over the moat and into Castle Street. A further south-east tower 'the New Tower', lying to the east of the chapel was added at a later date in 1442-3. Four curtain walls connected these three towers with the square flanking towers and the northern and southern walls recessed to allow them to be commanded from the towers. There was also a passage which ran under the moat toward the edge of the river. The courtyard was divided by a wall built running from the north wall to the south wall. Underneath the castle walls stood a dovecot, a herb garden and an orchard which ran from the castle to the Pool in the east. It was out of this orchard that Lord Street was cut in the 17th century. The Dovecot was a detached building which stood on the south side of the castle outside the walls. The keeping of doves was an ancient manorial privilege, and dove-cots were appended to castles, monasteries and manor houses, and were important buildings.

Restored from authentic plans and measurements by Edward W Cox

In 1323 King Edward II himself visited Liverpool, staying for a week in the castle between the 24th and 30th of October. In preparation for him the castle was thoroughly repaired and victualled and the sum of 1s.8d ( 8p ) was expended in mending the roof of the hall. In 1327 the constable of Liverpool Castle was ordered to receive within the castle men fleeing from the invading Scots. The constable did not usually reside in the castle, but in a house just outside of its gate In normal times there was no standing garrison in the castle, and the permanent paid staff seem to have consisted of a watchman and a doorkeeper. There were however several houses within the castle where there may have been permanent rent-paying residents, though they may have been reserved for the use of the officers of the forces which constantly passed through the town. In 1446 Sir Richard Molyneux and his son Richard were appointed to office of Constable of the Castle.

It was during the Civil War that the Castle witnessed some of the most dramatic scenes in Liverpool's history when royalist and parliamentarian forces vied for control. Liverpool was a divided town with most of its citizens Protestant and sided with Parliament, while the Catholic controlling Molyneux and Stanley families, housed in the Molyneux Castle and the Stanley Tower, sided with King Charles I. The Stanley's Lord Strange seized and held the town magazine ammunition store for the Royalists and a Royalist garrison was placed in the town but in May 1643 Liverpool was captured by Parliamentarians. They set up huge mud wall barricades, strengthened the town gates and put cannons around the castle and on ships in the harbour. All this did not prevent the king's nephew Prince Rupert from attacking and wining the town back for the crown in 1644 but only after a week of fighting and the loss of 1500 of his men. Rupert took up his quarters in the castle, and the town was given over to sack. He then had elaborate plans drawn up by the defence architect, Bernard de Gomme, to upgrade the defences of the castle. These designs were never realized and the next year the parliamentarian John Moore regained possession of the castle when its Royalist past proved to be its death warrant. Once the last Constable had died in 1701 the Corporation of Liverpool petitioned Queen Anne for the lease, with a request to use the site for a church. The castle had now fallen into disrepair and local vagrants were squatting in the towers before bailiffs succeeded in forcibly evicting them and they ordered its demolition. Initially only sections of the walls and gatehouses were taken down until, in 1726, the last of the remains were pulled down so that the new church dedicated to St George could be built with the bricks recycled for other buildings. St George’s Church was built there in 1734 and stood on the site until 1899

In 1976 excavation of the site of the new Crown Courts uncovered a ditch which was believed to have formed part of the Civil War defences. Today the Castle is commemorated by a plaque on the side of the Queen Victoria monument. Local legend says that tunnels led through the sandstone from the castle to the river through which Parliamentarian soldiers escaped from the castle during the Civil War. 

 

Although nothing now remains of the castle there is still a way to get a sense of what it would have looked like in its later ruined days as Lord Leverhulme commissioned a replica of Liverpool Castle to be built on his Rivington estate of Lever Park, near Horwich. Work began in 1912 using locally quarried gritstone but with only a few stone masons and labourers being employed on the project it was never completed as work stopped after Leverhulme's death in 1925. However the incomplete ruin reproduces faithfully many of the buildings and features of the original castle.

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/09/remembering-liverpool-structures_29.html