At this point Edward the Confessor was Overlord of the manor and town of West Derby, with a castle allegedly built around 1050AD. By the early thirteenth century in 1227 West Derby was still judged by taxes to be about a third again as large as Liverpool itself, meaning it must have been a sizeable settlement even then. At the time of Domesday it had at least six Berewicks ( dependent settlements), and looking at the geography of the region, with the heavily forested area around described in the ‘Perambulatio de Forestis of 1228, ( and separate listings for Toxteth, Smithdown etc) it is likely one of these Berewisks covered the open area that was to become Liverpool. It would be complex and probably very dull to explain the description of the parameters of every piece of land in the vicinity, and for those interested I highly recommend Sir James Picton’s ‘Memorials of Liverpool’, so I’ll restrict myself to the strip of land immediately around the Moss Lake. We’re fortunate that the listings of the various surveys from 1066 to 1300 give specific details of localities, though, as it helps to identify the Moss Lake ( or Turbary, or West Derby Fen, as it was occasionally known) where Abercromby square would later sit.
Back to reality. By the time of the Domesday survey, and the couple of hundred years that followed, leading up to the drawing up of town boundaries and creation of the first seven streets, we actually know a lot more about the geography around what was to become Abercromby Square.
At this point Edward the Confessor was Overlord of the manor and town of West Derby, with a castle allegedly built around 1050AD. By the early thirteenth century in 1227 West Derby was still judged by taxes to be about a third again as large as Liverpool itself, meaning it must have been a sizeable settlement even then. At the time of Domesday it had at least six Berewicks ( dependent settlements), and looking at the geography of the region, with the heavily forested area around described in the ‘Perambulatio de Forestis of 1228, ( and separate listings for Toxteth, Smithdown etc) it is likely one of these Berewisks covered the open area that was to become Liverpool. It would be complex and probably very dull to explain the description of the parameters of every piece of land in the vicinity, and for those interested I highly recommend Sir James Picton’s ‘Memorials of Liverpool’, so I’ll restrict myself to the strip of land immediately around the Moss Lake. We’re fortunate that the listings of the various surveys from 1066 to 1300 give specific details of localities, though, as it helps to identify the Moss Lake ( or Turbary, or West Derby Fen, as it was occasionally known) where Abercromby square would later sit.
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