Speke () is a suburb of
Liverpool
Liverpool is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the List of English districts by population, 10th largest English district by population and its E ...
. It is southeast of the city centre. Located near the widest part of the
River Mersey, it is bordered by the suburbs of
Garston and
Hunts Cross, and nearby to
Halewood,
Hale Village, and
Widnes. The rural area of
Oglet borders its south.
History
The name derives from the
Old English ''Spec'', meaning 'brushwood' or from Middle English ''Spek(e)'', meaning 'woodpecker'.
It was known as ''Spec'' in the ''
Domesday Book'', which gave
Speke Hall as one of the properties held by Uctred. (Today Speke Hall, now a
Tudor wood-framed house, is open to the public.)
In the mid 14th century, the
manor
Manor may refer to:
Land ownership
*Manorialism or "manor system", the method of land ownership (or "tenure") in parts of medieval Europe, notably England
*Lord of the manor, the owner of an agreed area of land (or "manor") under manorialism
*Man ...
s of Speke,
Whiston,
Skelmersdale, and
Parr were held by
William Dacre, 2nd Baron Dacre.
Until the 1930s development by
Sir Lancelot Keay
''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only ...
, Speke was a small village with a population of 400; by the end of the 1950s more than 25,000 people were living in the area. The local
All Saints Church was built by the last resident owner of Speke Hall, Miss Adelaide Watt.
From 1795 until 1921, the Speke estate had belonged to the Watt family; when the family died out, the estate was placed in trust. It was bought by the
Liverpool Corporation in 1928 for £200,000; the corporation's intention was to build a complete self-contained satellite town (at a time when the
garden city movement was underway). The
parish
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...
of Speke became part of the
county borough
County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control, similar to the unitary authorities created since the 1990s. An equivalent t ...
of
Liverpool
Liverpool is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the List of English districts by population, 10th largest English district by population and its E ...
in 1932, having previously belonged to the
Whiston Rural District.
Constructed between 1930 and 1933, by the start of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
,
Speke Airport was the second busiest in the UK. Retention of control by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in London after the war meant that it had lost its leading position in the UK by the 1950s. The industrial rise of Speke continued until the mid-1970s, when an equally rapid decline ensued over the next 20 years, particularly during the recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s. The closure of the
Bryant and May
Bryant & May was a British company created in the mid-19th century specifically to make matches. Their original Bryant & May Factory was located in Bow, London. They later opened other match factories in the United Kingdom and Australia, such ...
match factory in December 1994 was a noted example of these problems, as was the closure of the
Triumph car plant more than a decade before. The area has however retained a cluster of pharmaceutical facilities, with companies operating there including
Eli Lilly and Company
Eli Lilly and Company is an American pharmaceutical company headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, with offices in 18 countries. Its products are sold in approximately 125 countries. The company was founded in 1876 by, and named after, Colon ...
,
MedImmune
MedImmune, LLC was a wholly owned subsidiary of AstraZeneca before February 14, 2019, when it was announced that the MedImmune name and branding would be discontinued in favor of AstraZeneca.
MedImmune was founded in 1988 as Molecular Vaccines, ...
, and
Novartis
Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (global research).name="novartis.com">https://www.novartis.com/research-development/research-loc ...
.
When the
2000 Index of Multiple Deprivation was published, Speke was revealed to be the second most deprived of all 8,414 wards in England and Wales. Only
Benchill in Manchester had a higher level of deprivation.
Community

Speke is known for
Speke Hall, a
Tudor wood-framed house now owned by the
National Trust
The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...
and open to the public. It is also notable as the location of
Liverpool John Lennon Airport, known until 2001 as Liverpool Speke Airport. From the mid-1990s the re-development of the original airport site, enabled by the construction of the new airport complex and runway, had left land available for the construction of a business park. The completion of the
A5001 road
List of A roads in zone 5 in Great Britain starting north/east of the A5, west of the A6, south of the Solway Firth/Eden Estuary
The River Eden is a river in Fife in Scotland, and is one of Fife's two principal rivers, along with the Leve ...
consolidated the rise of the airport and improved communications in the area. Th
Speke Liverpool local history websiteshows a lot of the developments that changed Speke the village into Speke the estate with photographs and documents from the 1870s onwards.
The
New Mersey Shopping Park was re-developed in 1999 from an older retail site. It houses many large retail and textile outlets as well as mainstream restaurants. The New Mersey Retail Estate is situated between Speke and Garston, directly opposite to the Old Liverpool Airport main terminal building, which is now a hotel complex.
The area also features the Mersey Wave, officially opened on 15 December 2003, a and high illuminated sculpture comprising two sets of six
aluminium
Aluminium (aluminum in AmE, American and CanE, Canadian English) is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately o ...
fins. The sculpture, designed by Peter Fink, was removed for repairs within weeks of opening, a problem causing its fins to move dangerously in high winds having been discovered. It was rebuilt in June 2005 and the structure, taller than the
Angel of the North
The ''Angel of the North'' is a contemporary sculpture by Antony Gormley, located in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. Completed in 1998, it is believed to be the largest sculpture of an angel in the world and is viewed by an estimated 33 ...
at
Gateshead, is visible from as far as Winter Hill,
Horwich
Horwich ( ) is a town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England. Prior to 1974 in the historic county of Lancashire. It is southeast of Chorley, northwest of Bolton and northwest of Manchester. It l ...
,
Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tamesid ...
.
In 2011, planning was submitted and subsequently granted for Estuary Banks, a £6 million business park scheme developed by
Capital & Centric Plc and Barnfield Construction. Constructed started on of speculative construction in November 2011. The latest phase (120,000 sq ft) has been completed with 80,000 sold to
Business First in June 2012.
Recent developments in Speke have seen a multimillion-pound
Morrisons
Wm Morrison Supermarkets, trading as Morrisons, is the fifth largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. As of 2021, the company had 497 supermarkets across England, Wales and Scotland, as well as one in Gibraltar. The company is headqu ...
superstore, situated directly next to the A561 Speke Boulevard (locally known as 'The Ford Road'), which is located only metres away from the Mersey Wave. Planning was granted in May 2012 for Speke Business Park on Goodlass Road. It comprises of business units and was developed by Manchester-based developer
Capital & Centric Plc.
Football Club: Speke South Liverpool, a local amateur
football side, was founded at the Austin Rawlinson Sports Centre, Speke. However, late 2005 saw the club relocate a short distance away to Mossley Hill. The leading amateur football club in the area now is St Christophers FC, who are located at Little Heath.
Transport
The main road network in Speke is the ''A561 Speke Boulevard'' which links the area to Garston, Aigburth, Dingle/Toxteth in the West and Widnes and Runcorn in the East. Close by is the
A5300 ''Knowsley Expressway'' which provides links to the
A562 to Widnes and Runcorn, the
M62 motorway
The M62 is a west–east trans-Pennine motorway in Northern England, connecting Liverpool and Hull via Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield; of the route is shared with the M60 orbital motorway around Manchester. The road is part of t ...
and eventually becomes the
M57 at Tarbock Interchange.
The Speke estate was generally built around two notable roads ''Western Avenue'' and ''Eastern Avenue'' which linked to a former shopping parade in Central Way in more recent years this was replaced by an extensive shopping and retail development off Eastern Avenue and Speke Boulevard.
Speke is also approximately 8 to 9 miles away from the western terminus of the
M62, ''Rocket Roundabout'' in
Broadgreen.
Speke has a fairly extensive bus network which use the ''Aigburth Road/Park Road'' and ''Allerton Road/Penny Lane'' corridors in South Liverpool and are mostly provided by
Arriva North West. Services 80/80A, 82/82A, 86A and 500 link Speke to Liverpool City Centre and these services provide links to Dingle, Toxteth, Aigburth, Mossley Hill, Allerton, Grassendale and Garston with the 82A continuing further afield to Widnes and Runcorn. The most notable of these services are the long established 80/80A and 82/82A which have linked Speke to the city centre for many, many years. Other notable bus services in the Speke area the 81/81A (Speke/Liverpool John Lennon Airprot to Bootle) which links the South, East and North of Liverpool via the
A5058 ''Queens Drive''. and 89 (Liverpool John Lennon Airprot to St Helens) which have both operated for many decades. There is also the 3A service which links Speke/Halewood to Huyton the 201 which on an infrequent service links Speke to the
Royal Liverpool University Hospital
The Royal Liverpool University Hospital (RLUH) is a major teaching and research hospital located in the city of Liverpool, England. It is the largest and busiest hospital in Merseyside and Cheshire, and has the largest emergency department of it ...
along with various ''industrial'' and ''school'' bus services which pass through the area too.
Hunts Cross station on the
Merseyrail network is the nearest National Rail station to Speke, roughly a mile apart from each other. Hunts Cross is also served by
Northern and
East Midlands Railway services which run to
Warrington
Warrington () is a town and unparished area in the Borough of Warrington, borough of the same name in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, on the banks of the River Mersey. It is east of Liverpool, and west of Manchester. The populati ...
,
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
and various towns and cities further afield.
Liverpool South Parkway
Liverpool South Parkway station (Formerly Allerton railway station), is a railway station and bus interchange in the Garston district of Liverpool, England. It serves, via a bus link, Liverpool John Lennon Airport in the neighbouring suburb of ...
in nearby
Garston could also be considered a rail and bus link to Speke and this also includes services from
London Northwestern Railway which generally go to the
West Midlands with connections to
London Euston
Euston railway station ( ; also known as London Euston) is a central London railway terminus in the London Borough of Camden, managed by Network Rail. It is the southern terminus of the West Coast Main Line, the UK's busiest inter-city railw ...
via the
West Coast Main Line
The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is one of the most important railway corridors in the United Kingdom, connecting the major cities of London and Glasgow with branches to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh. It is one of the busiest ...
and
Transport for Wales who operate a two hourly service to
Chester
Chester is a cathedral city and the county town of Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Dee, close to the English–Welsh border. With a population of 79,645 in 2011,"2011 Census results: People and Population Profile: Chester Loca ...
along with a single early evening service extended to
Wrexham General. Liverpool South Parkway is also served by bus services 80/80A, 86A, 166, 188, 201 and 786 by Arriva, and also services 82 and 86 by Stagecoach. Some of these bus services also provide links to
Liverpool John Lennon Airport.
Liverpool John Lennon Airport is also located at the base of the Speke estate near the
River Mersey and has undergone growth and expansion in recent years. The airport's strategy is to cater largely for '
low cost' operators and
easyJet
EasyJet plc (styled as easyJet) is a British multinational low-cost airline group headquartered at London Luton Airport. It operates domestic and international scheduled services on 927 routes in more than 34 countries via its affiliate airli ...
and
Ryanair
Ryanair is an Irish ultra low-cost carrier founded in 1984. It is headquartered in Swords, Dublin, Ireland and has its primary operational bases at Dublin and London Stansted airports. It forms the largest part of the Ryanair Holdings family ...
have the lions share of routes at the airport. Services are also provided by
Loganair,
Lufthansa
Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), commonly shortened to Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. When combined with its subsidiaries, it is the second- largest airline in Europe in terms of passengers carried. Lufthansa is one of the five founding ...
and
PLAY and the airport serves various destinations in mainland
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...
with some to
North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in t ...
and the
Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on th ...
/
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...
.
Notable residents
*
George Harrison
*
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. On ...
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-31641377]
*
Les Dennis
Leslie Dennis Heseltine (born 12 October 1953) is an English television presenter, actor, and comedian. He presented '' Family Fortunes'' from 1987 until 2002.
Early life
Dennis was born Leslie Dennis Heseltine on 12 October 1953 in the Liverpo ...
*
Robert Maudsley
See also
*
St Ambrose's Church, Speke
St Ambrose's Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in Heathgate Avenue, Speke, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is an active parish church in the Archdiocese of Liverpool and the Pastoral Area of Woolton and Halewood. The church is r ...
References
External links
Liverpool Street Gallery - Liverpool 24
{{Liverpool
Areas of Liverpool