Croxteth

Croxteth
Croxteth shown within Merseyside
OS grid reference	SJ405961
Metropolitan borough	Liverpool
Metropolitan county	Merseyside
Region	North West
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Police	Merseyside
Fire	Merseyside
Ambulance	North West
European Parliament	North West England
List of places: UK • England • Merseyside

Coordinates: 53°′″N 2°′″W / 53.45827, -2.89757

Croxteth is a suburb of Liverpool, on Merseyside and a Liverpool City Council Ward. Although housing in the area is predominantly modern, the suburb has some notable 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.^[1]

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.

The area is serviced by three secondary schools (11-18); St. John Bosco (Catholic Girls), De La Salle (Catholic Boys) and Croxteth Community Comprehensive (State Mixed).

Manchester United and England footballer Wayne Rooney and Sheffield Wednesday footballer Francis Jeffers have both lived in Croxteth from an early age and both attended De La Salle School.

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, 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 WW2 during the late 40s 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.

In recent years Croxteth has become synonymous with gang violence, as reported in local^[2] and national^[3] press. Indeed, Merseyside police's Staysafe campaign^[4] was in response to anti-social behaviour and gang violence in Croxteth as well as neighbouring Norris Green and Clubmoor. On 22 August 2007 an 11-year-old boy, Rhys Jones, was fatally shot in the car park of the Fir Tree public house^[5] on the Croxteth Park Estate. The shooting has not yet been directly attributed to gang violence.

References

External links

• Council Ward profile

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