Gateacre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gateacre is an affluent area of Liverpool, England. It is bordered by Childwall, Woolton and Belle Vale and is a residential area of large detached and semi-detached housing. The name GATEACRE (pronounced gat-acca, not gate-acre) is thought to derive from 'gata' - the way - to the 'acre field' of Much Woolton. Gateacre was never a township in its own right. The village was bisected by the boundary between Much and Little Woolton: 'Much' being centred on Woolton village, and 'Little' being an almost entirely rural area which included Netherley. The present-day Halewood Road and Grange Lane follow the line of an old packhorse trail, which led from the Mersey at Hale to the settlement of West Derby before Liverpool even existed. The crossroads in Gateacre is shown on eighteenth-century maps, and the 'Bull' and 'Bear' would at that time have catered for travellers passing through the district.

The oldest buildings surviving in the village are probably Grange Lodge in Grange Lane (a house which retains some 17th century features), the Unitarian Chapel in Gateacre Brow (built in 1700 for an English Presbyterian congregation) and Paradise Row in Grange Lane (the original inhabitants of which, pre-1750, are thought to have been out-workers producing components for the Prescot watchmaking industry). Around this small cluster of buildings stretched farmland and heathland, which during the nineteenth century proved attractive to wealthy individuals seeking a rural retreat from their everyday business in Liverpool, Warrington or Widnes.

Eighteenth century Gateacre was characterised by buildings and boundary walls of Woolton stone: the local red sandstone which was later used to build Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral. Many of these survive to the present day. In the late nineteenth century, however, a change in architectural fashion led to Gateacre village being associated with the 'black-and-white' or 'mock Tudor' style which makes it such a distinctive enclave today.

Among the wealthy Victorians who moved to Gateacre was Sir Andrew Barclay Walker: the Scottish-born brewer who was knighted in 1877 following his gift of the Walker Art Gallery to Liverpool. Walker settled in Gateacre in the late 1860s, having commissioned the local architect Cornelius Sherlock to rebuild Gateacre Grange on Rose Brow. It was Sir Andrew Barclay Walker who, in 1887, gave the village green to the Little Woolton Local Board of Health (the local council of the day), to commemorate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee. On it he placed a bronze bust of the Queen, sculpted by her nephew Count Gleichen.

Its name may have come from Anglo-Saxon gāt-æcer = "newly cultivated plot where goats are kept".

Gateacre railway station served the area up to the 1970s.

City of Liverpool
Districts
Aigburth | Allerton | Anfield | Belle Vale | Broadgreen | Canning | Childwall | Clubmoor | Croxteth | Dingle | Dovecot | Edge Hill | Everton | Fairfield | Fazakerley | Garston | Gateacre | Grassendale | Hunts Cross | Kensington | Kirkdale | Knotty Ash | Mossley Hill | Netherley | Norris Green | Old Swan | St Michael's Hamlet | Speke | Stoneycroft | Toxteth | Tuebrook | Walton | Wavertree | West Derby | Woolton
City Council Wards
Allerton & Hunts Cross | Anfield | Belle Vale | Central | Childwall | Church | Clubmoor | County | Cressington | Croxteth | Everton | Fazakerley | Greenbank | Kensington & Fairfield | Kirkdale | Knotty Ash | Mossley Hill | Norris Green | Old Swan | Picton | Princes Park | Riverside | Speke Garston | St Michaels | Tuebrook and Stoneycroft | Warbreck | Wavertree | West Derby | Woolton | Yew Tree

Also known as Gateacre Village"" this aflluend area is predomonitley residential with