Originally Posted by
PhilipG
"Toxteth Town Hall" is only a nickname.
With Toxteth never being a
town, this building was never a Town Hall.
The official name was Toxteth Park Public Offices.
Toxteth clearly was outside of Liverpool at
one time and a town in its own right. It was called Harrington at one stage.
"1774 Parliament granted building leases to the 1st Earl of Sefton. The
intention was to develop a rectangle of land bounded by Mill Street to the West, Parliament Street to the north, Northumberland Street to the south and the
river on the fourth side.
The new town was to be called Harrington in honour Countess of Sefton (daughter of the 2nd Earl of Harrington). But the name
Harrington did not come into general use. The new town was laid out by a local builder, Cuthbert Brisbrown on a grid system, with intersecting, wide,
straight streets. The basic grid plan and many of the streets, though not the properties, survive to this day. One of Brisbrown’s earliest buildings was St
James' Church (at the junction of Mill Street, Stanhope Street and St. James' Place). Work started on this brick-built church in 1774 and it opened for
worship in 1775. Although dilapidated, this still stands in 2005."
"1835 Toxteth Park was now bounded by Liverpool and the townships of West Derby,
Wavertree and Garston. Its western side was the River Mersey. It was an extra parochial township and in 1835 under the terms of the Municipal Corporation Act
div>
('An Act to provide for the Regulation of Municipal Corporations in England and Wales'), 9th September 1835, the nearest section of Toxteth Park (from
Parliament Street to the Dingle), closest to the city centre, was incorporated into Liverpool. It is perhaps important to understand that prior to this date
what we now think of as a district, Toxteth, was in fact Toxteth Park, self-contained and distinct, it was in no way a part of Liverpool."
Bookmarks