Introduction (continued)

Maps from the latter half of the C18 show a loose cluster of buildings around the crossroads, and by about 1815 we know from watercolour sketches in the Binns Collection in the Liverpool Record Office that the two pubs were established. The Childwall and Woolton Waste Lands Inclosure Act of 1805 brought the remaining common land into private hands, and on Gateacre Brow especially the making of small allotments defining the frontage resulted in land becoming available for building.

If the crossroads was the focus of Gateacre Village, the first building of significance was the Chapel.

A local board was set up for M.W. on 17th July 1866 and the Minute Books are a fruitful source of local information until, with the Liverpool Extension Order of 1913 both Much and Little Woolton ceased to be self-governing.

The City Council declared the centre of Gateacre a Conservation Area in 1969. In 1975 the D.o.E. revised the List of Buildings of Architectural or Historic Interest with some 114 items listed within the Conservation Area.

GATEACRE CHAPEL - History

From very early days Puritanism was a reforming movement within the English Church, and for about 14 years, from the end of the Civil War (Battle of Naseby, Northants, 1646) and during the Commonwealth, the Established Church in England was Presbyterian in form. At the Restoration in 1660 Charles II himself promised "liberty to tender consciences", but the political reaction to the religious strife that had been a cause of Civil War led to the Act of Uniformity which re-established Episcopacy & the Prayer Book, and required conformity with the ceremonies of the Church of England. So from 1662 the history of Nonconformity is separate from that of the Established Church. Further difficulties were put in the way of Nonconformists three years later by an Act making those protestant dissenters who wished to meet for religious purposes within 5 miles of corporate towns subject to penalties. It was not until the Toleration Act of 1689 in the first year of the reign of William and Mary that protestant dissenters were given the right to worship publicly on condition that they registered their meeting places.

continued . . .