I’m more than happy to admit up front that I’m no expert on ancient history or archaeology myself, but fortunately I am quite good at researching, and at jigsaws and logic puzzles, so what follows here is a slight deviation from the rest of my research work. Here is where I’ll take the few known facts of Liverpool pre-Domesday book and first correct some obviously fallacious myths, give you a brief background of the area around Abercromby Square for several thousand years preceding 2015AD, and then release my inner fantasist and speculate wildly.
Okay, so ‘wildly’ may be over-stating the case, but for the remainder of the book the conclusions I draw or explanations I make are closely linked to what we know for definite. As we have very little evidence to draw on about the area before William the Conquerer, and conclusions can’t be more than guesses, this chapter raises a few interesting possibilities about why the Town and City were built, in an area that seems to have had little major strategic or mercantile significance up to the coming of King John. But that’s not to say it hasn’t been occupied, or that it isn’t interesting…