Response from Archives

The response as followed:

Thank you for your enquiry. It is difficult to recommend maps on the development of Liverpool, however you may wish to look at the range of maps in the temporary City Library, as a start to your research. They range from copies of early town maps to the Ordnance Survey (25” = 1.mile, 1893 – 1927), and reduced facsimiles of the 1848 OS maps of central Liverpool (originally 5ft = 1.mile).

There are some books which may be of use to you, such as Merseyside Archaeological Society’s “The changing face of Liverpool” (H942.721 MER).

Many of the later plans for the post war redevelopment of Liverpool, such as the inspiring plans of 1947/48 and later proposals such as the Shankland plan should be listed in our on-line catalogue, which can be found here: http://138.253.72.27/liverpool_in_print/

and here: http://archive.liverpool.gov.uk/dserve.exe?dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=Search.tcl

To be able to see if any other development plans would be of assistance we would need to understand what you required. Please be aware that we are also operating temporary services with limited resources and space.

I regret that we do not have maps of the subterranean levels beneath the city. There is a book on the construction of the Mersey Railway, which includes a section drawing of the tunnels and James Street Station. The lines of main tunnels are often drawn on OS maps.

There are some Geological maps including maps of (Corporation) wells, and some maps of gas and electric mains.

I regret that the few maps of sewers are currently unavailable due to the redevelopment of Central Library and Archives. There are some LCWW maps which may be of assistance, depending on what you are trying to achieve or research.

I know I wasn't clear when I was e-mailing them, I just had no idea where to look or the scale of their archives. This has helped a lot and I understand the library won't be open again to next year, until then I may have to make requests for certain books, this is all about knowing what to ask for, a bit more looking into things now and I'll be able to narrow it down.