The Lamb Hotel, Wavertree, Liverpool

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About the Lamb Hotel

The Lamb Hotel was built in 1774 and is a sumptuous grade II listed 3 storey building, first built over 200 years ago and rebuilt to Victorian design, set in the ideal surroundings of Wavertree Village as mentioned in the Doomsday Book. The Lamb Hotel is approximately 3 miles from the city centre, and approximately 6 miles from John Lennon Airport. The Lamb Hotel boasts a doric porch with granite columns.
Wavertree Local History:

 

Wavertree Village

 

The name for Wavertree derives from the Old English words wæfre and treow, meaning "wavering tree", possibly in reference to aspen trees common locally.[1] It has also been variously described as "a clearing in a wood" or "the place by the common pond".[2] In the past the name has been spelt Watry, Wartre, Waurtree, Wavertre and Wavertree, locals however referred to it as Wa'tree, until the 19th century.

 

The earliest settlement of Wavertree is attested to by the discovery of Bronze Age burial urns in Victoria Park in the mid 1880s.[2] The Domesday Book reference is "Leving held Wauretreu. There are 2 carucates of land. It was worth 64 pence". Wavertree was part of the parish of Childwall in the West Derby hundred.

 

The Lock Up (roundhouse)

 

Wavertree also boasts a village lock-up, commonly known as The Roundhouse, despite being octagonal in shape. Built in 1796, and later modified by prominent local resident and architect Sir James Picton, it was once used to detain local drunks. The lock-up was made a listed building in 1952.[3]

 

                 

Lockup thorough the years

 

A similar structure, known as Prince Rupert's Tower, survives in Everton. The village green, on which Wavertree's lock-up was built, is officially the only surviving piece of common land in Liverpool.[3]

 

A town hall was built in 1872 to house the local health board. The motto on the town hall is sub umbra floresco or "I flourish in the shade". Rescued from demolition in 1979,[4] the town hall is now a pub.

 

                       

 

In 1895, the village of Wavertree was incorporated into the city of Liverpool. Wavertree is around 30 minutes walk from Liverpool city centre. The area is highly populated by students of Liverpool's three universities, especially the Smithdown Road area. This road is famous for "The Smithdown Ten" pub crawl even though the number of pubs in business varies year to year.

 

The Picton Clock Tower

           

The Picton Clock Tower - at the junction of Childwall Road and

Church Road North  and the High Street - has been a local landmark for over 100 years. It was presented to the people of Wavertree by Sir James Picton in 1884, having been designed by him as a memorial to his wife Sarah, who had died in 1879 after fifty years of happy marriage. Picton was a prominent local resident. Born in Liverpool, the son of a timber merchant, Picton became a well-known architect and surveyor. He moved to Wavertree in 1848, having designed and built himself a house - Sandy Knowe - in Mill Lane.

 

                     

 

Education

 

There are a number of both primary and secondary schools in this densely populated area of Liverpool. King David which is situated in the area has a primary and senior school. The Liverpool Blue Coat School is also situated in Wavertree, having been built originally in 1708 for fifty poor boys. It is currently a mixed grammar school. Wavertree C of E which was renamed from Trinity District in the 1990s, is situated on

Prince Alfred Road. The school celebrated it's 140th Birthday in September 2007. There is another primary school on West Drive called Our Lady Of Good Help.

 

Wavertree Playground - "The Mystery"

 

The Mystery was one of the first purpose-built public playgrounds in the UK, opened in 1895. It is based on land donated to Liverpool Corporation by an anonymous donor, to be a venue for organised sports, and a place for children from the city's schools to run about in, not a park for 'promenading' in the Victorian tradition.[6]

 

The donor expressed the hope that the City Council "might approve of giving it a fair trial for this purpose... before appropriating it for any other use". The land is currently home to a playground, Wavertree Athletics Centre, with many sports facilities including tennis courts, all weather pitch, bowling green and athletic track with grandstand. Liverpool Harriers & A.C. have based their headquarters at this centre since 1990.

The Lamb Hotel:

 

The Lamb Hotel

 

Was built in 1774 to Victorian design, the 3 storey building boast a Doric porch with Granite columns and was listed on the 14th April 1975 

           

If you look across the High Street at the impressive brick facade of The Lamb Hotel, with its archway leading to a yard and beer garden at the back. Often described as a 'Georgian coaching inn', the present building dates, in fact, from the 1850s. Although Baines's Lancashire Directory of 1825 lists the Lamb Hotel - together with the Coffee House and the Thatched House Tavern - it seems that the pub at that time was relatively small.

 

           

 

The brick archway of the present Lamb Hotel was not used for stage-coaches to pass through, but for William Dilworth's horse-drawn omnibuses which plied between Wavertree and the centre of Liverpool. Bus travel in those days was for the wealthy few. The single fare is said to have been 6d (6 old pence), which was well out of the reach of ordinary people.

 

              

 

In the days when many people were unable to read, pubs often took their name from an easily-recognisable symbol which could be displayed outside. Thus, in the early nineteenth century, township meetings in Wavertree were advertised as taking place 'at the Sign of the Lamb'. Nowadays there are other considerations, like brand image and corporate identity.

 

              

 

In 1996 Allied Domecq, the owners of The Lamb Hotel, proposed to change its name to the Ferry & Firkin, following its transfer to their Firkin Brewery Co. subsidiary. Eventually - after protests by the Wavertree Society and others - the company agreed to allow the traditional name to remain on the front of the building. The new 'sub-title' is the Fold (as in sheep-fold) & Firkin: rather more relevant than the three-mile distant Ferry 'cross the Mersey!

 

              

 

In 2007 the archway to the Lamb Hotel was brought down to the ground, by building works from the building next door, workers undermined the footings of the building, during a prolific bad spell of weather in the area, this caused the collapse of the building. But it was soon back open for business and pictures on the other pages clearly show the rebuild. In 2009 the work to rebuild the lamb Hotel was completed and it looks as good as ever.