Liverpool Castle

Liverpool Castle stood in the centre of the city at the junction of Castle Street and Lord Street, on a plateau above The Pool, the original tidal harbour. The castle’s moat, cut from solid rock, measured eighteen metres across. Four round towers defended the corners, with a fourth added in 1442, and curtain walls linked them. The castle protected King John’s new port and housed a hall, chapel, brewhouse and bakehouse inside its walls. A passage ran beneath the moat to the riverbank, and a dovecot stood below the walls with an orchard stretching east to the Pool. After the Banastre Rebellion in 1315, the castle became a royal stronghold until the Civil War. Today the site lies beneath Derby Square and the Victoria Monument. Excavations in 1976 uncovered the south wall before the Crown Courts were built. A replica castle stands at Lever Park in Rivington, begun in 1912 but never finished.