Croxteth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Croxteth | |
  Croxteth shown within Merseyside |
|
| OS grid reference | |
|---|---|
| Metropolitan borough | Liverpool |
| Metropolitan county | Merseyside |
| Region | North West |
| Constituent country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | LIVERPOOL |
| Postcode district | L11 |
| Dialling code | 0151 |
| Police | Merseyside |
| Fire | Merseyside |
| Ambulance | North West |
| European Parliament | North West England |
| List of places: UK • England • Merseyside | |
Croxteth is a suburb of Liverpool, Merseyside, England and a Liverpool City Council Ward. Although housing in the area is predominantly modern, the suburb has some notable history. It is known locally as "Crocky".
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[edit] Description
Croxteth is in the L11 postcode which is also the same postcode for neighbouring Norris Green and Gillmoss. Other area's surrounding Croxteth include Fazakerley and Kirkby.
The area is serviced by three secondary schools (11-18); St. John Bosco (Catholic Girls), De La Salle (Catholic Boys) and Croxteth Community Comprehensive (Mixed).
In recent years Croxteth has become synonymous with gang violence, as reported in local[1] and national[2] press. Indeed, Merseyside police's Staysafe campaign[3] was in response to anti-social behaviour and gang violence in Croxteth as well as neighbouring Norris Green and Clubmoor.
In January 2008, Shelagh Fogarty, a BBC Radio Five Live presenter from Liverpool had a gun pointed at her whilst filming a TV documentary in Croxteth. [4]
[edit] History
The name is believed to derive from a contraction of Crocker's Staithe, or the landing place of Crocker, which is a likely reference to a Viking landing via the River Alt, which passes through Croxteth and at the time of the Viking invasion of Britain was navigable through the area. The similar root is also possible for Toxteth.
Prehistoric tools were found on a site in Croxteth in 1992, though there were no signs of any permanent settlement. Since then the land has been developed.[5]
The suburb is adjacent to Croxteth Hall, the former home of the Earl of Sefton, and close to West Derby, another suburb that predates Liverpool, being recorded in the Domesday Book. The "Dog and Gun" Public House (closed, 2005) is a historic hostelry, likely associated with the hunt from Croxteth Hall.
The first tranche of housing in Croxteth was built to rehouse families from the Scotland Road area of the City that was subject to mass demolition during the construction of the second Mersey Tunnel. Within the past twenty years very large areas of the Croxteth Hall estate and a City Council playing field have been sold for housing development to create a huge housing estate, noted for its lack of local amenities.
From the A580 road (the Liverpool-East Lancashire Road, abbreviated to and known commonly as East Lancs Road) passing Malpas Road to St. Swithens including the much talked about haunting of Gillmoss School Croxteth was one of the first "suburbs of Liverpool". Croxteth Park, a development area, came many years later.
The first houses in the Croxteth estate were in fact built in the immediate postwar period to house skilled workers from Slough and Rugby who had been brought in to the English Electric and Napier factories on the East Lancs Road), and families from the dock area wards who had lost their homes through bombing and slum demolition. The second tunnel came much later. The first families arrived in 1951 to live in an estate that was without roads, pavements, shops, pubs or buses. However, in the wake of World War II during the late 1940s and early 1950s, massive residential extensions at Croxteth, alongside similar and indistinguishable development of neighbouring Norris Green, resulted in what together, are now regarded as the largest municipal housing estate in Europe.
[edit] Croxteth Park (Estate)
The Croxteth Park estate is a large residential suburb of Liverpool. It is in the L12 postal code and was built on the edge of Croxteth Country Park.
On 22 August 2007 an 11-year-old boy, Rhys Jones, was fatally shot in the car park of the Fir Tree public house.[6] on the Croxteth Park Estate. The shooting has not yet been directly attributed to gang violence. For more information on this crime, please see Murder of Rhys Jones
[edit] Notable residents
Manchester United and England footballer Wayne Rooney and his future wife Coleen McLoughlin both grew up and met there, Sheffield Wednesday footballer Francis Jeffers also lived in Croxteth from an early age. Both footballers attended De La Salle School.
[edit] References
- ^ Quick, quick, give us the phone, I’ll get the boys up here to pop them.... Liverpool Echo newspaper (12 June 2007). Retrieved 23 August 2007
- ^ Under Yob Rule. The People newspaper (3 September 2007). Retrieved 23 August 2007
- ^ Staysafe Initiative. Merseyside Police. Retrieved 23 August 2007
- ^ Gun aimed at BBC radio presenter. BBC News (28 January 2008). Retrieved 28 January 2008
- ^ "Prehistoric Liverpool", Liverpool Museum
- ^ Boy, 11, dies after pub shooting. BBC News (23 August 2007). Retrieved 23 August 2007
[edit] External links
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