The name GATEACRE (pronounced gat-ick-er, 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.