‘Liverpool’s best bedroom’? The Development of One Wirral Street, 1840–1950

Abstract

This article explores the historical development of one Wirral street, Stanton Road in Bebington, focusing on its landscape and residents. It traces the road’s development from a track with a single farmstead in the 1840s, to 1950 when it was defined by not only interwar housing but also traces of earlier development. While from the 1850s the road provided a ‘best bedroom’ for a Liverpool gentleman, this microscopic study argues that for most of the first half of the twentieth century the road was suburban not to a city but to a soap works. The article also suggests that seemingly ordinary suburban spaces are worthy of serious historical study.