This website provides some information on two books and a number of articles concerning the history of the Pier Head area of Liverpool and the River Mersey's original shoreline.
The contents pages of both books together with a few images and sample pages are provided
to help you to decide whether those publications may be of interest to you.
Reviews of both books can be found on the Liverpool History Society website.
Articles based on some of the chapters appear on the My Planet Liverpool website from issue 38.

Books and Articles

‘Walking on Water Street’, 2nd edition, 2022, 448 pages, ISBN 978-1-915292-48-3. For a review of the book, see the Liverpool History Society website.

‘Walking on Water Street’ articles, on the Liverpool History Society website, published 2012-2019, 12 pdfs, all free to download.

‘In the Footsteps of Peter Ellis’, 2013, 240 pages, ISBN 978-0-9559428-3-9. For a review of the book, see the Liverpool History Society website.

‘The Signatures of Peter Ellis’, supplement to the 2013 book, 66 pages, on the Liverpool History Society website, published 2014, pdf, free to download.

Walking on Water Street

Published originally in 2021 as a complimentary edition for libraries, the book has been reissued in 2022 as a limited edition with a Foreword by Joseph Sharples (author of the Pevsner Architectural Guide to Liverpool).

The image and icon show the plaque that was mounted on the wall outside the Water Street entrance to Tower Building in 2007 as part of Liverpool's 800th anniversary celebrations of King John's creation of his 'free borough on the sea'. The image on the cover of the book shows Water Street in the early 1860s by William Herdman.

Whilst copies remain available, the book can be purchased at the Oriel Chambers coffee shop 'A Small Fish in a Big Pond'.

Liverpool History Society Journals

Each issue between 2012 and 2019 contained one or more Walking on Water Street articles in the Journals themselves and as pdfs on the Society's website (see under the tab 'Local History').

The image shows the memorial to the shipowner Alfred Lewis Jones which stands outside the Royal Liver Building. The icon shows the cover of the 2019 Journal in which the Walking on Water Street article concerning the Will of Alfred Lewis Jones appears. The Will provided gifts for the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and for the construction of a church and a hospital. The website pdf is a longer version in colour.

In the Footsteps of Peter Ellis

Published in 2013 by the Liverpool History Society and written by the author with the research assistance of the late Robert Ainsworth, the book follows Peter's life (1805-1884) during a time of Liverpool's rapid growth from a town into a city. The cover of the book shows a section of Peter's patent for the world's first example of what became known as a paternoster lift. He installed it in Oriel Chambers (icon above) in 1869. Peter Ellis was a pioneer in the use of prefabricated structural units in cast iron, and Oriel Chambers is now a Grade I listed building and 16 Cook Street is Grade II*. This book can also be purchased at the Oriel Chambers coffee shop.

The Signatures of Peter Ellis

Published in 2014 as a pdf on the Liverpool History Society website, this supplement to the 2013 book includes examples of other buildings for which Peter Ellis was the architect - a pair of houses on Catharine Street (1864) (cover to the pdf) and a pianoforte showroom (1873) on Upper Parliament Street which is now the Yuet Ben (icon above).

It also provides evidence of John Wellborn Root's visit to Liverpool in 1886, two years before completion of The Rookery, his Chicago skyscraper which has a staircase strongly resembling the one in 16 Cook Street.