Liverpool’s First Enclosed Dock

In a subterranean chamber under the massive Liverpool ONE shopping centre is the infrastructure that turned Liverpool from a lacklustre port city into a global powerhouse of shipping.

While the city got it's charter back in 1207 with the intention of it being a port city, it struggled to gain much success. It was overshadowed by nearby Chester and lacked decent infrastructure; Loading and unloading ships was very slow, sometimes taking weeks to unload, as ships would anchor in the deep water of the estuary while small boats would shuttle cargo between them and the city.

In 1710 an ambitious plan was unveiled to completely dam up the tidal estuary running alongside Liverpool and build within it an (at the time) huge enclosed port. By 1715 the new brick-lined dock, approximately 100 by 200 metres, opened to traffic allowing ships to dock, unload and reload in day.

The old dock was superceded by larger docks in the mid to late 18th century and in 1825 the structure was filled in and preserved under a grand new customs house. This was, in turn, destroyed by German bombing in the Second World War and the walls of this original dock was found during the site's redevelopment.