"I can't find out if the Liverbirds are responsible for the name Liverpool... the city is actually quite a recent one...built as a port to replace Chester which was silting up."
It would be hard to imagine Liverpool without the Liverbird. What would replace the city's emblem on our footballer's shirts, on numerous council and higher education buildings and on countless litter bins and bollards city wide? This omnipresent fowl of uncertain ornithological merit, has in fact got a very proven pedigree. When King John decided to favour Liverpool with a royal charter in 1207 the city, as we know it today, was little more than a fishing village. Originally the bird in question was probably the eagle of St. John, the apostle. When the seal was destroyed in a fire in 1387, a crude copy gave birth to the bird we know today, the Liverbird, born out of fire like another mythical bird, the phoenix.
A wee bit more for Jane
AD 1331, Lyrepole, The earliest-known appearance of Liverpool on the map, in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, from the time of Edward III (1327-77), in whose reign Liverpool (having been founded by King John's Royal Charter in 1207) began to flourish.
1572 :- Lerpoole, (map of). A 19th century reconstruction from "ancient sources" not specified in the original. Owners of land in and around the town are shown a common practice in old maps. Liverpool at this time of only a few principal streets, running roughly in the shape of an H whose upper half diverges outwards. This basic H-plan has survived to the present day. Other salient points are St Nicholas's church, the pool of Liverpool (later partly filled in to become Liverpool's first dock), the stone quarry (later St James's Cemetery, now the site of the Anglican Cathedral), the road to Prescot - an important turnpike - the lone straight line of Parliament Street (once the city boundary, now boundary of a huge Toxteth area) and the Road to the Park - i.e. Toxteth Park which covers the entire southern half of Liverpool and has given rise to the absurdly misnamed and misused, mythical newsman's district "Toxteth". The road is now Park Lane.
1598 Lerpoole Haven, (map of), Drawn by William Smith in the second half of the 16th century (British Museum) and shows the Hundred of West Derby, or which Liverpool was at that time merely a "berewick" - the ancient name for a homestead or village, a "Hundred" being a sub-division of a County or Shire having its own court. Liverpool does not appear on the 1086 Doomsday Survey, although Crosebi, Fonebi, Liderlant, Torboc, Stochestede (Tosteth) and Spec (Speke) were all important enough for inclusion(see the scouse press packet "Prehistoric and Roman Merseyside" as well as Saxon and Norman Merseyside in preparation). Notice the names of land owners: Norris of Speke, and the Blundells, Molineux, Hesketh etc. Toxteth (also Tockseath) was still an enclosed deer-park, though it was soon to be "disparked" for farming and leased to the earl of Derby and Sefton, and later acquired by Liverpool Corporation: see also the corresponding pair of maps of 18th century modern Toxteth.
(Extract from Tony McKenna)
Regards
Malky