Fazakerly Liverpool -The township
FAZAKERLEY
Fazakerley, 1321; Phesacrelegh, 1333.
Fazakerley is the name of a town and family. It is a very old English name, originating from the county of Lancaster (now Lancashire), just North of the modern city of Liverpool.
Originally, Fazakerley was the name of a piece of land. As was typical of the time, the name was later adopted by the family that settled on the land as their surname.
The name is constructed from three Anglo-Saxon words, faes, acer and leah. Faes means "border", acer means "cultivated land" and the earliest meaning of leah is "clearing in a forest". Faes-acer would be a piece of cultivated land against or defining some border, so faes-acer-leah would be when the same land was extended by woodland clearance.
Fazakerley was not mentioned in the Doomsday Book, so we can assume that no one of importance was living there in the eleventh century. The first mention of the family is in the Assize Rolls of the County of Lancaster concerning a Henry de Fasackerlegh in 1276, so it seems that the family settled on the land some time between 1066 and 1276.
The township was included in the City of Liverpool in 1905.
In the thirteenth century Fazakerley was one of the Walton town fields as the woodlands were cleared, there grew up a hamlet and ultimately a township. Extending about two miles in each direction, this township has an area of 1,709 acres. It is separated from Walton by the brook called Fazakerley or Tue Brook, and from West Derby partly by Sugar Brook up to the point where it is spanned by Stone bridge. At the junction of these brooks Fazakerly borders the town of Kirkby in the north-east.
MANOR
The early history of the manor is obscure, Henry and Richard de Fazakerley, the first of the local family on record, appearing towards the end of the thirteenth century. Richard had three sons— Henry, Richard, and Robert; and Henry's son Robert de Fazakerley was lord of the manor for about forty years. After his death the succession is again uncertain. Robert de Fazakerley, who married Ellen de Walton and claimed her father's manor, obtaining a third part, emerges in the first quarter of the fifteenth century; and later, Thomas son and heir of Roger. The visitations of 1613 and 1664 place on record a few generations. The family adhered to the Roman Catholic faith at the Reformation, and to the king's side in the civil war, Nicholas Fazakerley losing his life in the cause at Liverpool in 1643. The family estates were sold by the Parliament, though probably not much was recovered.
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