The stuff I found wasn't particularly 'hidden' or 'lost'. So much stuff is online these days that it's quite easy to do specific searches across vast spectrums of documents from all over the country - an idea that probably seemed fantastical twenty years ago.

I've noticed that many Histories of Liverpool seem to be built on... Histories of Liverpool, i.e. taking the words of previous writes as 'fact', without any actual original research.

It is for reasons such as this that I give local 'historians' (or people who claim to be) a bit of a wide berth. Anyone can pick up William Moss, James Stonehouse, Richard Wittington-Egan, Derek Whale, Mike Royden et al and quote it verbitam - doesn't make you a historian.