Edge Hill, Liverpool
From Free net encyclopedia
Edge Hill is a district of Liverpool, England.
The area was first developed in the late 18th/early 19th century. Only a few of the Georgian houses of the time still survive. The terraces of the Victorian era have also largely been demolished and though some modern housing has been built the area still has a depopulated appearance with many vacant lots and derelict pubs and shops.
In the early Eighteenth Century, it was the site of three railway works. Both the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and the Grand Junction Railway initially set up workshops there, along with the London and Birmingham Railway However the latter soon moved to Wolverton in north Buckinghamshire. With little room to expand as business grew, the Grand Junction Railway moved its locomotive production to Crewe in 1843 followed by the Liverpool and Manchester when the two railways merged in 1845.
Edge Hill station was built in 1836. There was a "Moorish Arch" with a stationary engine hauling trains up and down from Crown Street Station until locomotive-hauled trains were able to cope with the gradient. The station retains its original buildings but is very quiet owing to the sheer lack of population or industry in the area.
Formerly all trains stopped at Edge Hill at the entrance to the tunnel to Lime Street, giving rise to "getting off at Edge Hill" as a euphemism for coitus interruptus.
Edge Hill was the site of huge railway marshalling yards until the 1960s, sorting trains to and from the docks via the Victoria Tunnel and Wapping Tunnel tunnels to Park Lane and Waterloo goods stations on the dockside.
The main tourist attraction of the area are the Williamson's tunnels, a complex of tunnels built by Joseph Williamson in the early 19th century (possibly as a philanthropic scheme to generate employment in the depression following the Napoleonic Wars).
The stables in Smithdown Lane once housed Roy Rogers' horse Trigger in his retirement.
See also
| Districts of North West England | Image:Flag of England.svg |
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Allerdale | Barrow-in-Furness | Blackburn with Darwen | Blackpool | Bolton | Burnley | Bury | Carlisle | Chester | Chorley | Congleton | Copeland | Crewe and Nantwich | Eden | Ellesmere Port and Neston | Fylde | Halton | Hyndburn | Knowsley | Lancaster | Liverpool | Macclesfield | Manchester | Oldham | Pendle | Preston | Ribble Valley | Rochdale | Rossendale | St Helens | Salford | Sefton | South Lakeland | South Ribble | Stockport | Tameside | Trafford | Vale Royal | Warrington | West Lancashire | Wigan | Wirral | Wyre | |
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Counties with multiple districts: Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside |
