What County is Liverpool In?
Liverpool is a brilliant city to spend time in, whether you’re heading along to watch some of the football played at Anfield, Goodison Park or the Hill Dickinson Stadium, you’re looking to enjoy the culture that is on offer or you simply want to have a few drinks with friends.
Getting there is generally quite an easy process, especially if you’re getting the train, which was one of the first to open in the country. If you’re driving, you can head along the M62, depending on where you’re coming from.
One question you might want the answer to, though, is what county it is in.
Liverpool, Merseyside
The port city of Liverpool is located in the county of Merseyside, which borders Lancashire, Cheshire, Greater Manchester and Flintshire. The urbanised county covers an area of 249 square miles, with Liverpool being the largest settlement in terms of population.
The county of Merseyside is actually constructed of five metropolitan boroughs, at least as far as local government is concerned, with Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton and the Wirral all joining Liverpool itself in making up Merseyside. Until the industrial revolution, what has become Merseyside was largely a rural area.
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The fact that Liverpool became such an important port allowed the city to expand, but it still took until 1899 for the word ‘Merseyside’ to be used, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It was another 75 years before Merseyside was created as a county, bringing together areas that had previously been part of Lancashire and Cheshire.
The county is effectively split into two by the Mersey Estuary, putting the Wirral Peninsula on one side and the rest of it on the other. They are linked by the Mersey Tunnels, for cars, as well as the Wirral Line of Merseyside and the Mersey Ferry.
What it Used to Be
Given the fact that Merseyside wasn’t formed until 1974, you might well wonder what county Liverpool was part of prior to the Local Government Act of 1972 reformed the local government of England and Wales. The answer comes in the form of Lancashire, which was founded in the 12th century.
Many of the parts that would come to make up the county were part of Yorkshire and Cheshire in the Domesday Book of 1086. The county was something of a backwater that was comparatively poor until the Early Modern period, being revolutionised by industrialisation.
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It was in 1889 that Lancashire was turned into an administrative county, in spite of the fact that numerous different areas were outside the control of the county council. This included Blackburn, Bootle, Liverpool, Oldham and St Helens, amongst other places.
It was the most populous of counties outside of London, boasting a population of more than two million when the census was carried out in 1961. A decade later and this figure had increased to over five million, which obviously shrank in the wake of the formation of Merseyside in 1974.
Other Parts of Merseyside – And Those That Aren’t
Whilst Liverpool is obviously the biggest and arguably most important city within the county of Merseyside, it is far from the only place that you are likely to have heard of. Aintree, for example, is where the Grand National is held every year, whilst the beach at Crosby is famous thanks to the Antony Gormley statues that stand in the sea at Crosby Beach.
Then there are other areas of the wider Liverpool region, such as Wavertree, Prescot and Vauxhall, that will boast certain name recognition. The large town of St Helens is a standout, as is Southport and Speke, where Liverpool John Lennon Airport is located.
Outside of the areas that you will no doubt have heard of located within Merseyside, there are numerous others that feel as though they should be part of the county because of their proximity to the city of Liverpool, but which aren’t. These include Warrington, Widnes and Runcorn, all of which are actually in Cheshire.
Stockport and Wigan could also be considered to be in the same sort of bracket, but the two of them are actually part of Greater Manchester. The fact that some people puzzle over what areas are part of Merseyside and which parts aren’t is largely due to the original makeup of Lancashire.
