edge hill, liverpool

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. Edge Hill station was built in 1836. There was a "Moorish Arch" with a stationary engine hauling trains up and down from Lime 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 is the complex of tunnels built by Joseph Williamson in the early 19th century as a 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.

Edge Hill, Liverpool

See also