Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially available. There are also various coffee substitutes. Typically served hot, coffee has the highest sales in the world market for hot drinks.[4]
Coffee production begins when the seeds from coffee cherries (the Coffea plant’s fruits) are separated to produce unroasted green coffee beans. The “beans” are roasted and then ground into fine particles. Coffee is brewed from the ground roasted beans, which are typically steeped in hot water before being filtered out. It is usually served hot, although chilled or iced coffee is common. Coffee can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways (e.g., espresso, French press, caffè latte, or already-brewed canned coffee). Sugar, sugar substitutes, milk, and cream are often added to mask the bitter taste or enhance the flavor.
Though coffee is now a global commodity, it has a long history tied closely to food traditions around the Red Sea. Medieval sources indicate that coffee was first consumed in the ‘Land of Saʿd ad-Din” also known as the Adal Sultanate, which encompassed Somali territories and adjacent areas of the Horn of Africa.[5] Credible evidence of coffee drinking as the modern beverage subsequently appears in modern-day Yemen in southern Arabia in the middle of the 15th century in Sufi shrines, where coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed in a manner similar to how it is now prepared for drinking.[6] The coffee beans were procured by the Yemenis from the Ethiopian Highlands via coastal Somali intermediaries, and cultivated in Yemen. By the 16th century, the drink had reached the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, later spreading to Europe.
The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are C. arabica and C. robusta.[7]Coffee plants are cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in the equatorial regions of the Americas, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Africa. Green, unroasted coffee is traded as an agricultural commodity. The global coffee industry is worth $495.50 billion, as of 2023.[8] In 2023, Brazil was the leading grower of coffee beans, producing 31% of the world’s total, followed by Vietnam. While coffee sales reach billions of dollars annually worldwide, coffee farmers disproportionately live in poverty. Critics of the coffee industry have also pointed to its negative impact on the environment and the clearing of land for coffee-growing and water use.
Etymology
Green coffee describes the beans before roasting.
The word coffee entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, borrowed from the Ottoman Turkish kahve (قهوه), borrowed in turn from the Arabic qahwah (قَهْوَة).[9] Medieval Arabic lexicons traditionally held that the etymology of qahwah meant ‘wine’, given its distinctly dark color, and was derived from the verb qahiya (قَهِيَ), ‘to have no appetite‘.[10] The word qahwah most likely meant ‘the dark one’, referring to the brew or the bean; qahwah is not the name of the bean, which are known in Arabic as bunn and in Cushitic languages as būn. Semitic languages have the root qhh, ‘dark color’, which became a natural designation for the beverage. Its cognates include the Hebrew qehe(h) ‘dulling’ and the Aramaicqahey (‘give acrid taste to’).[10] Although etymologists have connected it with a word meaning ‘wine’, it is also thought to be from the Kaffa region of Ethiopia.[11]
There are multiple anecdotal origin stories which lack evidence. In a commonly repeated legend, Kaldi, a 9th-century Ethiopian goatherd, first observed the coffee plant after seeing his flock energized by chewing on the plant.[6] This legend does not appear before 1671, first being related by Antoine Faustus Nairon, a Maronite professor of Oriental languages and author of one of the first printed treatises devoted to coffee, De Saluberrima potione Cahue seu Cafe nuncupata Discurscus (Rome, 1671), indicating the story is likely apocryphal.[13][14][6] Another legend attributes the discovery of coffee to a Sheikh Omar. Starving after being exiled from Mokha (a port city in what is now Yemen), Omar found berries. After attempting to chew and roast them, Omar boiled them, which yielded a liquid that revitalized and sustained him.[1]
Historical transmission
A 1652 handbill advertising coffee for sale in St. Michael’s Alley, London
The earliest recorded reference to the coffee bean and its qualities appears in a treatise by Al-Razi, which describes the bean—referred to as “bunchum”—as “hot and dry and very good for the stomach”.[1] Medieval sources indicate that coffee was first introduced in the land of Saʿd ad-Din—the heartland of the Adal Sultanate, which encompassed Somali territories and adjoining areas of the Horn of Africa.[15]
Credible evidence of coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the 15th century in the accounts of Ahmed al-Ghaffar in Yemen,[6] where coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed in a similar way to how it is prepared now. Coffee was used by Sufi circles to stay awake for their religious rituals.[16] Accounts differ on the origin of the coffee plant before its appearance in Yemen. From Ethiopia, coffee could have been introduced to Yemen via trade across the Red Sea.[17] One account credits Muhammad Ibn Sa’d for bringing the beverage to Aden from the African coast,[18] other early accounts say Ali ben Omar of the Shadhili Sufi order was the first to introduce coffee to Arabia.[18][19]
16th-century Islamic scholar Ibn Hajar al-Haytami notes in his writings that a beverage called qahwa developed from a tree in the Zeila region located in the Horn of Africa.[16] Coffee was first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen by Somali merchants from Berbera and Zeila in modern-day Somaliland, which was procured from Harar and the Abyssinian interior. According to Captain Haines, who was the colonial administrator of Aden (1839–1854), Mokha historically imported up to two-thirds of its coffee from Berbera-based merchants before the coffee trade of Mokha was captured by British-controlled Aden in the 19th century. After that, much of the Ethiopian coffee was exported to Aden via Berbera.[20]
By the 16th century, coffee had reached the rest of the Middle East and North Africa.[21] The first coffee seeds were smuggled out of the Middle East by Sufi Baba Budan from Yemen to India during the time. Before then, all exported coffee was boiled or otherwise sterilized. Portraits of Baba Budan depict him as having smuggled seven coffee seeds by strapping them to his chest. The first plants from these smuggled seeds were planted in Mysore.
In 1583, Leonhard Rauwolf, a German physician, gave this description of coffee after returning from a ten-year trip to the Near East:
A beverage as black as ink, useful against numerous illnesses, particularly those of the stomach. Its consumers take it in the morning, quite frankly, in a porcelain cup passed around and from which each one drinks a cupful. It is composed of water and the fruit from a bush called bunnu.
— Léonard Rauwolf, Reise in die Morgenländer (in German)
Thriving trade brought many goods, including coffee, from the Ottoman Empire to Venice. From there it was introduced to the rest of Europe. Coffee became more widely accepted after it was deemed a Christian beverage by Pope Clement VIII in 1600, despite appeals to ban the “Muslim drink”. The first European coffee house opened in Venice in 1647.[23]
As a colonial import
A late 19th-century advertisement for coffee essence
A 1919 advertisement for G Washington’s Coffee. The first instant coffee was invented by inventor George Washington in 1909.
The Dutch East India Company was the first to import coffee on a large scale.[1] The Dutch later grew the crop in Java and Ceylon.[24] The first exports of Indonesian coffee from Java to the Netherlands occurred in 1711.[25]
Through the efforts of the British East India Company, coffee also became popular in England. In a diary entry of May 1637, John Evelyn recorded tasting the drink at Oxford in England, where it had been brought by a student of Balliol College from Crete named Nathaniel Conopios of Crete.[26][27] Oxford’s Queen’s Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is still in existence today. Coffee was introduced in France in 1657 and in Austria and Poland after the 1683 Battle of Vienna, when coffee was captured from supplies of the defeated Turks.[28]
When coffee reached North America during the Colonial period, it was initially not as successful as in Europe, as alcoholic beverages remained more popular. During the Revolutionary War, the demand for coffee increased so much that dealers had to hoard their scarce supplies and raise prices dramatically; this was also due to the reduced availability of tea from British merchants,[29] and a general resolution among many Americans to avoid drinking tea following the 1773 Boston Tea Party.[30]
During the 18th century, coffee consumption declined in Britain, giving way to tea drinking. Tea was simpler to make, and had become cheaper with the British conquest of India and the tea industry there.[31] During the Age of Sail, seamen aboard ships of the British Royal Navy made substitute coffee by dissolving burnt bread in hot water.[32]
The Frenchman Gabriel de Clieu took a coffee plant to the French territory of Martinique in the Caribbean in the 1720s,[33] from which much of the world’s cultivated arabica coffee is descended. Coffee thrived in the climate and was conveyed across the Americas.[34] Coffee was cultivated in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) from 1734, and by 1788 it supplied half the world’s coffee.[35] The conditions that the enslaved people worked in on coffee plantations were a factor in the soon to follow Haitian Revolution. The coffee industry never fully recovered there.[36]
Meanwhile, coffee had been introduced to Brazil in 1727, although its cultivation did not gather momentum until independence in 1822.[37] After this time, massive tracts of rainforest were cleared for coffee plantations, first in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro and later São Paulo.[38] Brazil went from having essentially no coffee exports in 1800 to being a significant regional producer in 1830, to being the largest producer in the world by 1852. In 1910–1920, Brazil exported around 70% of the world’s coffee, Colombia, Guatemala, and Venezuela exported 15%, and Old World production accounted for less than 5% of world exports.[39]
Many countries in Central America took up cultivation in the latter half of the 19th century, and almost all were involved in the large-scale displacement and exploitation of the indigenous people. Harsh conditions led to many uprisings, coups, and bloody suppression of peasants.[40] The notable exception was Costa Rica, where lack of ready labor prevented the formation of large farms. Smaller farms and more egalitarian conditions ameliorated unrest over the 19th and 20th centuries.[41]
Rapid growth in coffee production in South America during the second half of the 19th century was matched by an increase in consumption in developed countries, though nowhere has this growth been as pronounced as in the United States, where a high rate of population growth was compounded by doubling of per capita consumption between 1860 and 1920. Though the United States was not the heaviest coffee-drinking nation at the time (Belgium, the Netherlands and Nordic countries all had comparable or higher levels of per capita consumption), due to its sheer size, it was already the largest consumer of coffee in the world by 1860, and, by 1920, around half of all coffee produced worldwide was consumed in the US.[39]
Coffee has become a vital cash crop for many developing countries. Over one hundred million people in developing countries have become dependent on coffee as their primary source of income. It has become the primary export and economic backbone for African countries like Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, and Ethiopia,[42] as well as many Central American countries.
Several species of shrub of the genus Coffea produce the berries from which coffee is extracted. The two main species commercially cultivated are Coffea canephora (predominantly a form known as ‘robusta’) and C. arabica.[43]C. arabica, the most highly regarded species, is native to the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia and the Boma Plateau in southeastern Sudan and Mount Marsabit in northern Kenya.[44]C. canephora is native to western and central Subsaharan Africa, from Guinea to Uganda and southern Sudan.[45] Less popular species are C. liberica, C. stenophylla, C. mauritiana, and C. racemosa.
All coffee plants are classified in the large family Rubiaceae. They are evergreen shrubs or trees that may grow 5 m (15 ft) tall when unpruned. The leaves are dark green and glossy, usually 10–15 cm (4–6 in) long and 6 cm (2.4 in) wide, simple, entire, and opposite. Petioles of opposite leaves fuse at the base to form interpetiolar stipules, characteristic of Rubiaceae. The flowers are axillary, and clusters of fragrant white flowers bloom simultaneously. Gynoecium consists of an inferior ovary, also characteristic of Rubiaceae. The flowers are followed by oval berries of about 1.5 cm (0.6 in).[46] When immature, they are green, and they ripen to yellow, then crimson, before turning black on drying. Each berry usually contains two seeds, but 5–10% of the berries[47] have only one; these are called peaberries.[48] Arabica berries ripen in six to eight months, while robusta takes nine to eleven months.[49]
Coffea arabica is predominantly self-pollinating, and as a result, the seedlings are generally uniform and vary little from their parents. In contrast, Coffea canephora, and C. liberica are self-incompatible and require outcrossing. This means that useful forms and hybrids must be propagated vegetatively.[50] Cuttings, grafting, and budding are the usual methods of vegetative propagation.[51] On the other hand, there is great scope for experimentation in search of potential new strains.[50]
The traditional method of planting coffee is to place 20 seeds in each hole at the beginning of the rainy season. This method loses about 50% of the seeds’ potential, as about half fail to sprout. A more effective process of growing coffee, used in Brazil, is to raise seedlings in nurseries that are then planted outside after six to twelve months. Coffee is often intercropped with food crops, such as corn, beans, or rice during the first few years of cultivation as farmers become familiar with its requirements.[46]Coffee plants grow within a defined area between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, termed the bean belt or coffee belt.[52]
In 2020, the world production of green coffee beans was 175,647,000 60 kg bags, led by Brazil with 39% of the total, followed by Vietnam, Colombia, and Indonesia.[53] Brazil is the largest coffee exporting nation, accounting for 15% of all world exports in 2019.[54] As of 2021, no synthetic coffee products are publicly available but multiple bioeconomy companies have reportedly produced first batches that are highly similar on the molecular level and are close to commercialization.[55][56][57]
Species variations
Of the two main species grown, arabica coffee (from C. arabica) is generally more highly regarded than robusta coffee (from C. canephora). Robusta coffee tends to be bitter and has less flavor but a better body than arabica. For these reasons, about three-quarters of coffee cultivated worldwide is C. arabica.[43] Robusta strains also contain about 40–50% more caffeine than arabica.[58] Consequently, this species is used as an inexpensive substitute for arabica in many commercial coffee blends. Good quality robusta beans are used in traditional Italian espresso blends to provide a full-bodied taste and a better foam head (known as crema).
Coffee leaf rust has forced the cultivation of resistant robusta coffee in many countries.[59]
Additionally, robusta is less susceptible to disease than arabica and can be cultivated in lower altitudes and warmer climates where arabica does not thrive.[60] The robusta strain was first collected in 1890 from the Lomani River, a tributary of the Congo River, and was conveyed from the Congo Free State (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to Brussels to Java around 1900. From Java, further breeding resulted in the establishment of robusta plantations in many countries.[59] In particular, the spread of the devastating coffee leaf rust (caused by the fungal pathogen Hemileia vastatrix), to which arabica is vulnerable, hastened the uptake of the resistant robusta. The pathogen and results in light, rust-colored spots on the undersides of coffee plant leaves.[61] It grows exclusively on the leaves of coffee plants.[62] Coffee leaf rust is found in virtually all countries that produce coffee.[63]
Beans from different countries or regions can usually be distinguished by differences in flavor, aroma, body, and acidity.[64] These taste characteristics are dependent not only on the coffee’s growing region but also on genetic subspecies (varietals) and processing.[65] Varietals are generally known by the region in which they are grown, such as Colombian, Java, and Kona. Arabica coffee beans are cultivated mainly in Latin America, eastern Africa or Asia, while robusta beans are grown in central Africa, southeast Asia, and Brazil.[43]
Coffee can also be blended with medicinal or functional mushrooms, of which some of the most frequently used include lion’s mane, chaga, Cordyceps, and reishi.[66] Mushroom coffee has about half the caffeine of standard coffee.[67] However, drinking mushroom coffee can result in digestive issues and high amounts can result in liver toxicity.[67] There is little clinical evidence for the benefits of mushroom coffee.[68]
Mycena citricolor, American leaf spot, is a fungus that can affect the whole coffee plant. It grows on leaves, resulting in leaves with holes that often fall from the plant. It is a threat primarily in Latin America.[70]
Over 900 species of insect have been recorded as pests of coffee crops worldwide. Of these, over a third are beetles, and over a quarter are bugs. Some 20 species of nematodes, 9 species of mites, and several snails and slugs also attack the crop. Birds and rodents sometimes eat coffee berries, but their impact is minor compared to invertebrates.[72] In general, arabica is the more sensitive species to invertebrate predation overall. Each part of the coffee plant is assailed by different animals. Nematodes attack the roots, coffee borer beetles burrow into stems and woody material,[73] and the foliage is attacked by over 100 species of larvae (caterpillars) of butterflies and moths.[74]
Mass spraying of insecticides has often proven disastrous, as predators of the pests are more sensitive than the pests themselves.[75] Instead, integrated pest management has developed, using techniques such as targeted treatment of pest outbreaks, and managing crop environment away from conditions favoring pests. Branches infested with scale are often cut and left on the ground, which causes scale parasites to not only attack the scale on the fallen branches but in the plant as well.[76]
The 2-mm-long coffee borer beetle (Hypothenemus hampei) is the most damaging insect pest of the world’s coffee industry, destroying up to 50 percent or more of the coffee berries on plantations in most coffee-producing countries. The adult female beetle nibbles a single tiny hole in a coffee berry and lays 35 to 50 eggs. Inside, the offspring grow, mate, and then emerge from the commercially ruined berry to disperse, repeating the cycle. Pesticides are mostly ineffective because the beetle juveniles are protected inside the berry nurseries, but they are vulnerable to predation by birds when they emerge. When groves of trees are nearby, the American yellow warbler, rufous-capped warbler, and other insectivorous birds have been shown to reduce by 50 percent the number of coffee berry borers in Costa Rica coffee plantations.[71]
Originally, coffee was grown in the shade of trees that provided a habitat for many animals and insects.[77] Remnant forest trees were used for this purpose, but many species have been planted as well. These include leguminous trees of the genera Acacia, Albizia, Cassia, Erythrina, Gliricidia, Inga, and Leucaena, as well as the nitrogen-fixing non-legume sheoaks of the genus Casuarina, and the silky oak Grevillea robusta.[78]
This method is commonly called “shade-grown coffee“. Starting in the 1970s, many farmers switched their production method to sun cultivation, in which coffee is grown in rows under full sun with little or no forest canopy. This causes berries to ripen more rapidly and bushes to produce higher yields, but requires the clearing of trees and increased use of fertilizer and pesticides, which damage the environment and cause health problems.[79]
Unshaded coffee plants grown with fertilizer yield the most coffee, although unfertilized shaded crops generally yield more than unfertilized unshaded crops: the response to fertilizer is much greater in full sun.[80] While traditional coffee production causes berries to ripen more slowly and produce lower yields, the quality of the coffee is allegedly superior.[81] In addition, the traditional shaded method provides living space for many wildlife species. Proponents of shade cultivation say environmental problems such as deforestation, pesticide pollution, habitat destruction, and soil and water degradation are the side effects of the practices employed in sun cultivation.[77][82]
Coffee production uses a large volume of water. On average it takes about 140 litres (37 US gal) of water to grow the coffee beans needed to produce one cup of coffee. Growing the plants needed to produce 1 kg (2.2 lb) of roasted coffee in Africa, South America or Asia requires 26,400 litres (7,000 US gal) of water.[88] As with many other forms of agriculture, often much of this is rainwater, much of which would otherwise run off into rivers or coastlines, while much water actually absorbed by the plants is transpired straight back into the local environment through the plants’ leaves (especially for cooling effects); broad estimates aside, consequential margins vary considerably based on details of local geography and horticultural practice. Coffee is often grown in countries where there is a water shortage, such as Ethiopia.[89]
Used coffee grounds may be used for composting or as a mulch. They are especially appreciated by worms and acid-loving plants such as blueberries.[90]Climate change may significantly impact coffee yields during the 21st century, such as in Nicaragua and Ethiopia which could lose more than half of the farming land suitable for growing (Arabica) coffee.[91][92][93] As of 2016, at least 34% of global coffee production was compliant with voluntary sustainability standards such as Fairtrade, UTZ, and 4C (The Common Code for the Coffee Community).[94]
Preprocessing
Coffee berries are traditionally selectively picked by hand, which is labor-intensive as it involves the selection of only the berries at the peak of ripeness. More commonly, crops are strip picked, where all berries are harvested simultaneously regardless of ripeness by person or machine. After picking, green coffee is processed by one of two types of method—a dry process method which is often simpler and less labor-intensive, and a wet process method, which incorporates batch fermentation, uses larger amounts of water in the process, and often yields a milder coffee.[95]
Then they are sorted by ripeness and color, and most often the flesh of the berry is removed, usually by machine, and the seeds are fermented to remove the slimy layer of mucilage still present on the seed. When the fermentation is finished, the seeds are washed with large quantities of fresh water to remove the fermentation residue, which generates massive amounts of coffee wastewater. Finally, the seeds are dried.[96]
The best (but least used) method of drying coffee is using drying tables. In this method, the pulped and fermented coffee is spread thinly on raised beds, which allows the air to pass on all sides of the coffee, and then the coffee is mixed by hand. The drying that then takes place is more uniform, and fermentation is less likely. Most African coffee is dried in this manner and certain coffee farms around the world are starting to use this traditional method.[96] Next, the coffee is sorted, and labeled as green coffee. Some companies use cylinders to pump in heated air to dry the coffee seeds, though this is generally in places where the humidity is very high.[96]
An Asian coffee known as kopi luwak undergoes a peculiar process made from coffee berries eaten by the Asian palm civet, passing through its digestive tract, with the beans eventually harvested from feces. Coffee brewed from this process[97] is among the most expensive in the world, with bean prices reaching $160 per pound or $30 per brewed cup.[98] Kopi luwak coffee is said to have a uniquely rich, slightly smoky aroma and flavor with hints of chocolate, resulting from the action of digestive enzymes breaking down bean proteins to facilitate partial fermentation.[97][98] In Thailand, black ivory coffee beans are fed to elephants whose digestive enzymes reduce the bitter taste of beans collected from dung.[99] These beans sell for up to $1,100 a kilogram ($500 per lb), achieving the world’s most expensive coffee,[99] three times costlier than palm civet coffee beans.[98]
The next step in the process is the roasting of green coffee. Coffee is usually sold in a roasted state, and with rare exceptions, such as infusions from green coffee beans,[100] coffee is roasted before it is consumed. It can be sold roasted by the supplier, or it can be home roasted.[101] The roasting process influences the taste of the beverage by changing the coffee bean both physically and chemically. The bean decreases in weight as moisture is lost and increases in volume, causing it to become less dense. The density of the bean also influences the strength of the coffee and the requirements for packaging.
The actual roasting begins when the temperature inside the bean reaches approximately 200 °C (392 °F), though different varieties of seeds differ in moisture and density and therefore roast at different rates.[102] During roasting, caramelization occurs as intense heat breaks down starches, changing them to simple sugars that begin to brown, which darkens the color of the bean.[103]
Sucrose is rapidly lost during the roasting process, and may disappear entirely in darker roasts. During roasting, aromatic oils and acids weaken, changing the flavor; at 205 °C (401 °F), other oils start to develop.[102] One of these oils, caffeol, is created at about 200 °C (392 °F), and is largely responsible for coffee’s aroma and flavor.[24] The difference of caffeine content between a light roast and a dark roast is only about 0.1%.[104]
Coffee “cuppers”, or professional tasters, grade the coffee.
Depending on the color of the roasted beans as perceived by the human eye, they will be labeled as light, medium light, medium, medium dark, dark, or very dark. A more accurate method of discerning the degree of roast involves measuring the reflected light from roasted seeds illuminated with a light source in the near-infrared spectrum. This elaborate light meter uses a process known as spectroscopy to return a number that consistently indicates the roasted coffee’s relative degree of roast or flavor development. Coffee has, in many countries, been graded by size longer than it has been graded by quality. Grading is generally done with sieves, numbered to indicate the size of the perforations.[105]
Roast characteristics
The degree of roast affects coffee flavor and body. The color of coffee after brewing is also affected by the degree of roasting.[106] Darker roasts are generally bolder because they have less fiber content and a more sugary flavor. Lighter roasts have a more complex and therefore perceived stronger flavor from aromatic oils and acids otherwise destroyed by longer roasting times.[107] Roasting does not alter the amount of caffeine in the bean, but does give less caffeine when the beans are measured by volume because the beans expand during roasting.[108] A small amount of chaff is produced during roasting from the skin left on the seed after processing.[109] Chaff is usually removed from the seeds by air movement, though a small amount is added to dark roast coffees to soak up oils on the seeds.[102]
Decaffeination
Decaffeination of coffee seeds is done while the seeds are still green. Many methods can remove caffeine from coffee, but all involve either soaking the green seeds in hot water (often called the “Swiss water process”)[110] or steaming them, then using a solvent to dissolve caffeine-containing oils.[24] Decaffeination is often done by processing companies, and the extracted caffeine is usually sold to the pharmaceutical industry.[24]
Coffee is best stored in an airtight container made of ceramic, glass or non-reactive metal.[111] Higher quality prepackaged coffee usually has a one-way valve that prevents air from entering while allowing the coffee to release gases.[112] Coffee freshness and flavor is preserved when it is stored away from moisture, heat, and light. The tendency of coffee to absorb strong smells from food means that it should be kept away from such smells. Storage of coffee in refrigerators is not recommended due to the presence of moisture which can cause deterioration. Exterior walls of buildings that face the sun may heat the interior of a home, and this heat may damage coffee stored near such a wall. Heat from nearby ovens also harms stored coffee.[111]
In 1931, a method of packing coffee in a sealed vacuum in cans was introduced. The roasted coffee was packed and then 99% of the air was removed, allowing the coffee to be stored indefinitely until the can was opened. Today this method is in mass use for coffee in a large part of the world.[113]
A contemporary electric automatic drip-coffee makerEspresso is one of the most popular coffee-brewing methods. The term espresso, substituting s for most x letters in Latin-root words, with the term deriving from the past participle of the Italian verb esprimere, itself derived from the Latin exprimere, means ‘to express’, and refers to the process by which hot water is forced under pressure through ground coffee.[114][115]
Coffee beans must be ground and brewed to create a beverage. The criteria for choosing a method include flavor and economy. Almost all methods of preparing coffee require that the beans be ground and then mixed with hot water long enough to allow the flavor to emerge but not so long as to draw out bitter compounds. The liquid can be consumed after the spent grounds are removed. Brewing considerations include the fineness of the grind, how the water is used to extract the flavor, the ratio of coffee grounds to water (the brew ratio), additional flavorings such as sugar, milk, and spices, and the technique to be used to separate spent grounds. Optimal coffee extraction occurs between 91 and 96 °C (196 and 205 °F).[116] Ideal holding temperatures range from 85 to 88 °C (185 to 190 °F) to as high as 93 °C (199 °F) and the ideal serving temperature is 68 to 79 °C (154 to 174 °F).[117]
Coffee beans may be ground with a burr grinder, which uses revolving elements to shear the seed; a blade grinder cuts the seeds with blades moving at high speed; and a mortar and pestle crush the seeds. For most brewing methods a burr grinder is deemed superior because the grind is more even and the grind size can be adjusted.[118] The type of grind is often named after the brewing method for which it is generally used, Turkish grind being the finest, while coffee percolator or French press are the coarsest. The most common grinds are between these extremes: a medium grind is used in most home coffee-brewing machines.[119]
Coffee may be brewed by several methods. It may be boiled, steeped, or pressurized. Brewing coffee by boiling was the earliest method, and Turkish coffee is an example of this method. It is prepared by grinding or pounding the seeds to a fine powder, then adding it to water and bringing it to a boil for no more than an instant in a pot called a cezve or, in Greek, a μπρίκι: bríki (from Turkish ibrik). This produces a strong coffee with a layer of foam on the surface and sediment (which is not meant for drinking) settling at the bottom of the cup.[1]
Drip brewers and automatic coffeemakers brew coffee using gravity. In an automatic coffeemaker, hot water drips onto coffee grounds that are held in a paper, plastic, or perforated metal coffee filter, allowing the water to seep through the ground coffee while extracting its oils and essences. The liquid drips through the coffee and the filter into a carafe or pot, and the spent coffee grounds are retained in the filter.[120]
In a coffee percolator, water is pulled under a pipe by gravity, which is then forced into a chamber above a filter by steam pressure created by boiling. The water then seeps through the grounds, and the process is repeated until terminated by removing from the heat, by an internal timer,[121] or by a thermostat that turns off the heater when the entire pot reaches a certain temperature.
The espresso method forces hot pressurized water through finely-ground coffee.[119] As a result of brewing under high pressure (typically 9 bar),[122] the espresso beverage is more concentrated (as much as 10 to 15 times the quantity of coffee to water as gravity-brewing methods can produce) and has a more complex physical and chemical constitution.[123] A well-prepared espresso has a reddish-brown foam called crema that floats on the surface.[119] Other pressurized water methods include the moka pot and vacuum coffee maker. The AeroPress also works similarly, moving a column of water through a bed of coffee.
Cold brew coffee is made by steeping coarsely ground beans in cold water for several hours, then filtering them.[124] This results in a brew lower in acidity than most hot-brewing methods.
Enjoying coffee in Ottoman Empire. Painting by unknown artist in the Pera Museum.
Once brewed, coffee may be served in a variety of ways. Drip-brewed, percolated, or French-pressed/cafetière coffee may be served as white coffee with a dairy product such as milk or cream, or dairy substitute, or as black coffee with no such addition. It may be sweetened with sugar or artificial sweetener. When served cold, it is called iced coffee.
Espresso-based coffee has a variety of possible presentations. In its most basic form, an espresso is served alone as a shot or short black, or with hot water added, when it is known as Caffè Americano. A long black is made by pouring a double espresso into an equal portion of water, retaining the crema, unlike Caffè Americano.[125] Milk is added in various forms to an espresso: steamed milk makes a caffè latte,[126] equal parts steamed milk and milk froth make a cappuccino,[125] and a dollop of hot foamed milk on top creates a caffè macchiato.[127] A flat white is prepared by adding steamed hot milk (microfoam) to two espresso shots.[128] It has less milk than a latte, but both are varieties of coffee to which the milk can be added in such a way as to create a decorative surface pattern. Such effects are known as latte art.[129]
Coffee is frequently served iced. Popular options include Frappés, Iced lattes, or stronger brewed coffee served with ice.[130]
Coffee can also be incorporated with alcohol to produce a variety of beverages: it is combined with whiskey in Irish coffee, and it forms the base of alcoholic coffee liqueurs such as Kahlúa and Tia Maria. Some craft beers have coffee or coffee extracts added to the beer,[131] although porter and stout beers may have a coffee-like taste solely due to roasted grains.[132]
Many products are sold for the convenience of consumers who do not want to prepare their coffee or who do not have access to coffeemaking equipment. Instant coffee is dried into soluble powder or freeze-dried into granules that can be quickly dissolved in hot water.[133] A New Zealand invention and staple, instant coffee was originally invented in Invercargill in 1890, by food chemist David Strang.[134] It rapidly gained in popularity in many countries in the post-war period, with Nescafé being the most popular product.[135] Many consumers determined that the convenience of preparing a cup of instant coffee more than made up for a perceived inferior taste,[136] although, since the late 1970s, instant coffee has been produced differently in such a way that is similar to the taste of freshly brewed coffee.[137] Paralleling (and complementing) the rapid rise of instant coffee was the coffee vending machine invented in 1947 and widely distributed since the 1950s.[138]
In 2023, world production of green coffee beans was 11 million tonnes, led by Brazil with 31% of the total and Vietnam as a secondary producer (table).
Commodity market
Coffee prices 1973–2022
Coffee retailing
Bag of coffee beans
Bag with ziplock and one-way valve to prevent mold
Coffee is bought and sold as green coffee beans by roasters, investors, and price speculators as a tradable commodity in commodity markets and exchange-traded funds. Coffee futures contracts for Grade 3 washed arabicas are traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange under ticker symbol KC, with contract deliveries occurring every year in March, May, July, September, and December.[140][141][142][143] Higher and lower grade arabica coffees are sold through other channels. Futures contracts for robusta coffee are traded on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange and, since 2007, on the New York Intercontinental Exchange.[144]
Dating to the 1970s, coffee has been incorrectly described by many, including historian Mark Pendergrast, as the world’s “second most legally traded commodity”.[145][146] Instead, “coffee was the second most valuable commodity exported by developing countries,” from 1970 to circa 2000.[147] This fact was derived from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Commodity Yearbooks which show “Third World” commodity exports by value in the period 1970–1998 with crude oil in first place, coffee in second, followed by sugar, cotton, and others. Coffee continues to be an important commodity export for developing countries, but more recent figures are not readily available due to the shifting and politicized nature of the category “developing country”.[145] Coffee is one of seven commodities included in the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free products (EUDR), which aims to guarantee that the products European Union (EU) citizens consume do not contribute to deforestation or forest degradation worldwide.[148]
International Coffee Day, which is claimed to have originated in Japan in 1983 with an event organized by the All Japan Coffee Association, takes place on 29 September in several countries.[149] There are numerous trade associations and lobbying and other organizations representing the coffee industry.[150][151]
Consumption
Coffee consumption (kg. per capita and year)
Nordic countries are the highest coffee-consuming nations when measured per capita per year, with consumption in Finland as the world’s highest.[152]
Finland – 26.45 lb (12.00 kg)
Norway – 21.82 lb (9.90 kg)
Iceland – 19.84 lb (9.00 kg)
Denmark – 19.18 lb (8.70 kg)
Netherlands – 18.52 lb (8.40 kg)
Sweden – 18.00 lb (8.16 kg)
Switzerland – 17.42 lb (7.90 kg)
Belgium – 15.00 lb (6.80 kg)
Luxembourg – 14.33 lb (6.50 kg)
Canada – 14.33 lb (6.50 kg)
United States
An April 2024, National Coffee Association survey indicated that coffee consumption in the U.S. reached a 20-year high, with 67% of U.S. adults reporting drinking coffee in the past day. This is a significant increase compared to 2004 when fewer than half of U.S. adults reported coffee consumption in the past day. Drip coffee remains the most popular brewing method, but espresso-based beverages, particularly lattes, espresso shots, and cappuccinos, gained popularity.[153]
Market volatility, and thus increased returns, during 1830 encouraged Brazilian entrepreneurs to shift their attention from gold to coffee, a crop hitherto reserved for local consumption. Concurrent with this shift was the commissioning of vital infrastructures, including approximately 7,000 km (4,300 mi) of railroads between 1860 and 1885. The creation of these railways enabled the importation of workers, to meet the enormous need for labor. This development primarily affected the State of Rio de Janeiro, as well as the Southern States of Brazil, most notably São Paulo, due to its favorable climate, soils, and terrain.[154]
Coffee production attracted immigrants in search of better economic opportunities in the early 1900s. Mainly, these were Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, German, and Japanese nationals. For instance, São Paulo received approximately 733,000 immigrants in the decade preceding 1900, whilst only receiving approximately 201,000 immigrants in the six years to 1890. The production yield of coffee increases. In 1880, São Paulo produced 1.2 million bags (25% of total production), in 1888 2.6 million (40%), and in 1902 8 million bags (60%).[155] Coffee is then 63% of the country’s exports. The gains made by this trade allow sustained economic growth in the country.
The four years between planting a coffee and the first harvest extend seasonal variations in the price of coffee. The Brazilian Government is thus forced, to some extent, to keep strong price subsidies during production periods.
The concept of fair trade labeling, which guarantees coffee growers a negotiated preharvest price, began in the late 1980s with the Max Havelaar Foundation’s labeling program in the Netherlands. In 2004, 24,222 metric tons (of 7,050,000 produced worldwide) were fair trade; in 2005, 33,991 metric tons out of 6,685,000 were fair trade, an increase from 0.34% to 0.51%.[156][157] A number of fair trade impact studies have shown that fair trade coffee produces a mixed impact on the communities that grow it. Many studies are skeptical about fair trade, reporting that it often worsens the bargaining power of those who are not part of it. The first fair-trade coffee was an effort to import Guatemalan coffee into Europe as “Indio Solidarity Coffee”.[158]
Since the founding of organizations such as the European Fair Trade Association (1987), the production and consumption of fair trade coffee has grown as some local and national coffee chains started to offer fair trade alternatives.[159] For example, in April 2000, after a year-long campaign by the human rights organization Global Exchange, Starbucks decided to carry fair-trade coffee in its stores.[160] Since September 2009 all Starbucks Espresso beverages in UK and Ireland are made with Fairtrade and Shared Planet certified coffee.[161]
A 2005 study done in Belgium concluded that consumers’ buying behavior is not consistent with their positive attitude toward ethical products. On average 46% of European consumers claimed to be willing to pay substantially more for ethical products, including fair-trade products such as coffee. The study found that the majority of respondents were unwilling to pay the actual price premium of 27% for fair trade coffee.[160]
Specialty coffee and new trading relationships
Specialty coffee has driven a desire for more traceable coffee, and as such businesses are offering coffees that may come from a single origin, or a single lot from a single farm. This can give rise to the roaster developing a relationship with the producer, to discuss and collaborate on coffee. The roaster may also choose to cut out the importers and exporters to directly trade with the producer, or they may “fairly trade”, where any third-parties involved in the transaction are thought to have added value, and there is a high level of transparency around the price, although often there is no certification to back it up.[162] This process tends to only be done for high-quality products since keeping the coffee separate from other coffees adds costs, and so only coffee that roasters believe can command a higher price will be kept separate.[163]
Some coffee is sold through internet auction – much of it is sold through a competition, with coffees passing through local and international jurors, and then the best coffees being selected to be bid on. Some estates known for high-quality coffee also sell their coffee through an online auction. This can lead to increased price transparency since the final price paid is usually published.[162]
Although coffee polyphenols, particularly chlorogenic acid, are present in coffee,[166] there is no evidence that coffee polyphenols impart a health benefit or have antioxidant value following ingestion.[167][168] Overall, coffee components do not pose risks to health, and do not provide health effects for adults consuming about 3-4 cups per day, which would supply 300-400 mg of caffeine per day.[167]
Coffee has laxative effects, inducing defecation in some people within minutes of consumption.[172][173][174][175] The specific mechanism of action and chemical constituents responsible are still unknown, but caffeine is likely not responsible.[176]
A 2017 review of clinical trials found that drinking coffee is generally safe within usual levels of intake and is more likely to improve health outcomes than to cause harm at doses of 3-4 cups of coffee daily. Exceptions include possible increased risk in women having bone fractures, and a possible increased risk in pregnant women of fetal loss or decreased birth weight. Results were complicated by poor study quality, and differences in age, gender, health status, and serving size.[177]
Depending on the type of coffee and method of preparation, the caffeine content of a single serving can vary greatly.[178][179] The caffeine content of a cup of coffee varies depending mainly on the brewing method, and also on the coffee variety, such as 40 mg per 100 ml in regular coffee and 212 mg per 100 ml in espresso.[164][165] According to a 1979 analysis, coffee has the following caffeine content, depending on how it is prepared:[178]
Serving size
Caffeine content
Brewed
200 mL (7 US fl oz)
80–135 mg
Drip
200 mL (7 US fl oz)
115–175 mg
Espresso
45–60 mL (1+1⁄2–2 US fl oz)
100 mg
Caffeine remains stable up to 200 °C (392 °F) and completely decomposes around 285 °C (545 °F).[180] Given that roasting temperatures do not exceed 200 °C (392 °F) for long and rarely if ever reach 285 °C (545 °F), the caffeine content of a coffee is not likely changed much by the roasting process.[181]
Coffee is often consumed alongside (or instead of) breakfast by many at home or when eating out at diners or cafeterias. It is often served at the end of a formal meal, normally with a dessert, and at times with an after-dinner mint, especially when consumed at a restaurant or dinner party.[182]
Coffee is an important part of Bosnian culture, and was a major part of its economy in the past.[183]
Widely known as coffeehouses or cafés, establishments serving prepared coffee or other hot beverages have existed for over five hundred years. The first coffeehouse in Constantinople was opened in 1475 by traders arriving from Damascus and Aleppo.[184]
A contemporary term for a person who makes coffee beverages, often a coffeehouse employee, is a barista. The Specialty Coffee Association of Europe and the Specialty Coffee Association of America have been influential in setting standards and providing training.[185]
Break
The coffee break in the United States and elsewhere is a short mid-morning rest period granted to employees. It originated in the late 19th century in Stoughton, Wisconsin, with the wives of Norwegian immigrants. The city celebrates this every year with the Stoughton Coffee Break Festival.[186] In 1951, Time noted that “[s]ince the war, the coffee break has been written into union contracts”.[187] The term subsequently became common through a Pan-American Coffee Bureau ad campaign of 1952 which urged consumers, “Give yourself a Coffee-Break – and Get What Coffee Gives to You.”[188]John B. Watson, a behavioral psychologist who worked with Maxwell House later in his career, helped to popularize coffee breaks within the American culture.[189]
Historically, several religious groups have prohibited or condemned the consumption of coffee. The permissibility of coffee was debated in the Islamic world during the early 16th century, variously being permitted or prohibited until it was ultimately accepted by the 1550s.[190] Contention existed among Ashkenazi Jews as to whether coffee was acceptable for Passover until it was certified kosher in 1923.[191] Some Christian groups, such as Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists, discourage the consumption of coffee.[192][193] Some Rastafarians also generally avoid coffee.[194]
Furthermore, coffee has been prohibited for political and economic reasons. King Charles II of England briefly outlawed coffeehouses to quell perceived rebellion.[31] King Frederick the Great banned it in Prussia, concerned about the price of importing of coffee without production colonies.[195][196] Sweden prohibited coffee in the 18th century for the same reasons.[197] Coffee has seldom been prohibited based on its intoxicating effect.[198]
There are many stories about coffee and its impact on people and society. The Oromo people would customarily plant a coffee tree on the graves of powerful sorcerers. They believed that the first coffee bush sprang up from the tears that the god of heaven shed over the corpse of a dead sorcerer.[199]Johann Sebastian Bach was inspired to compose the humorous Coffee Cantata, about dependence on the beverage, which was controversial in the early 18th century.[200]
In the United States, coffee is sometimes called a “cup of Joe”. The origin of this phrase is in dispute; a common story is that in World War I the US Secretary of the Navy Josephus “Joe” Daniels banned alcohol on navy ships which meant that the strongest drink available aboard the ship was black coffee. Sailors began referring to coffee as a “cup of Joe” in reference to Daniels. However, this story may be apocryphal since the first written account of it was in 1930, some 15 years later. Another explanation is that a formerly popular nickname for coffee, jamoke, from mocha java, was shortened to Joe. A third origin story is that since coffee is such a commonly consumed beverage, it is the drink of the average Joe
Established as a borough in Lancashire in 1207, Liverpool became significant in the late 17th century when the Port of Liverpool was heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The port also imported cotton for the Lancashire textile mills, and became a major departure point for English and Irish emigrants to North America. Liverpool rose to global economic importance at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and was home to the first intercity railway, the first non-combustible warehouse system (the Royal Albert Dock), and a pioneering elevated electrical railway; it was granted city status in 1880 and was moved from Lancashire to the newly created county of Merseyside in 1974. It entered a period of decline in the mid-20th century, but has experienced regeneration since the European Union selected it as the European Capital of Culture in 2008,[a] which was reported to have generated over £800 million for the local economy within a year.[6][7]
Residents of Liverpool are often called “Scousers” in reference to scouse, a local stew made popular by sailors in the city, while “Scouse” is also the most common name given to the local accent. The city’s cultural and ethnic diversity is a result of attracting immigrants, especially from Ireland, Scandinavia, and Wales; it is also the home of a large black and Chinese community, and the first mosque in England.[15]
Toponymy
The name comes from the Old Englishlifer, meaning thick or muddy water, and pōl, meaning a pool or creek, and is first recorded around 1190 as Liuerpul.[16][17] According to the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, “The original reference was to a pool or tidal creek now filled up into which two streams drained”.[18] The place appearing as Leyrpole, in a legal record of 1418, may also refer to Liverpool.[19] Other origins of the name have been suggested, including “elverpool”, a reference to the large number of eels in the Mersey.[20] The adjective “Liverpudlian” was first recorded in 1833.[17]
Although the Old English origin of the name Liverpool is beyond dispute, claims are sometimes made that the name Liverpool is of Welsh origin, but these are without foundation. The Welsh name for Liverpool is Lerpwl, from a former English local form Leerpool. This is a reduction of the form “Leverpool” with the loss of the intervocalic [v] (seen in other English names and words e.g. Daventry (Northamptonshire) > Danetry, never-do-well > ne’er-do-well).
In the 19th century, some Welsh publications used the name “Lle’r Pwll” (“(the) place (of) the pool”), a reinterpretation of Lerpwl, probably in the belief that “Lle’r Pwll” was the original form.
Another name, which is widely known even today, is Llynlleifiad, again a 19th-century coining. “Llyn” is pool, but “lleifiad” has no obvious meaning. G. Melville Richards (1910–1973), a pioneer of scientific toponymy in Wales, in “Place Names of North Wales”,[21] does not attempt to explain it beyond noting that “lleifiad” is used as a Welsh equivalent of “Liver”.
A derivative form of a learned borrowing into Welsh (*llaf) of Latin lāma (slough, bog, fen) to give “lleifiad” is possible, but unproven.
The earliest known image of Liverpool, in 1680A map of Liverpool’s original seven streets (north to the left)Bluecoat Chambers, completed in 1725, the oldest surviving building in Liverpool city centre
Early history
In the Middle Ages, Liverpool first existed as farmland within the West Derby Hundred[22] before growing into a small town of farmers, fishermen and tradesmen and tactical army base for King John of England. The town was planned with its own castle, although due to outbreaks of disease and its subordinance to the nearby Roman port of Chester, the town’s growth and prosperity stagnated until the late 17th and early 18th centuries. There was substantial growth in the mid- to late 18th century, when the town became the most heavily involved European port in the Atlantic slave trade.[23]
King John‘s letters patent of 1207 announced the foundation of the borough of Liverpool (then spelt as Liuerpul). There is no evidence that the place had previously been a centre of any trade. The borough was probably created because King John decided that it would be a convenient place to embark men and supplies for his Irish campaigns: in particular his Irish campaign of 1209.[24][25] The original street plan of Liverpool is said to have been designed by King John near the same time it was granted a royal charter, making it a borough. The original seven streets were laid out in the shape of a double cross: Bank Street (now Water Street), Castle Street, Chapel Street, Dale Street, Juggler Street (now High Street), Moor Street (now Tithebarn Street) and Whiteacre Street (now Old Hall Street).[25]Liverpool Castle was built before 1235, and survived until it was demolished in the 1720s.[26] By the middle of the 16th century, the population was still around 600, although this was likely to have fallen from an earlier peak of 1000 people due to slow trade and the effects of the plague.[27][28][29]
In the 17th century, there was slow progress in trade and population growth. Battles for control of the town were waged during the English Civil War, including a brief siege in 1644.[30] In 1699, the same year as its first recorded slave ship, Liverpool Merchant, set sail for Africa,[31] Liverpool was made a parish by Act of Parliament. But arguably, the legislation of 1695 that reformed the Liverpool council was of more significance to its subsequent development.[32] Since Roman times nearby Chester on the River Dee had been the region’s principal port on the Irish Sea. However, as the Dee began to silt up, maritime trade from Chester became increasingly difficult and shifted towards Liverpool on the neighbouring River Mersey. The first of the Liverpool docks was constructed in 1715, and the system of docks gradually grew into a large interconnected system.[33]
As trade from the West Indies, including sugar, surpassed that of Ireland and Europe, and as the River Dee continued to silt up, Liverpool began to grow even faster. The first commercial wet dock was built in Liverpool in 1715.[34][35] Substantial profits from the slave trade and tobacco helped the town to prosper and rapidly grow, although several prominent local men, including William Rathbone, William Roscoe and Edward Rushton, were at the forefront of the local abolitionist movement.[36]
The 19th century saw Liverpool rise to global economic importance. Pioneering, world first, technology and civic facilities launched in the city to serve the accelerating population which was fuelled by an influx of ethnic and religious communities from all around the world.
By the start of the 19th century, a large volume of trade was passing through Liverpool, and the construction of major buildings reflected this wealth. In 1830, Liverpool and Manchester became the first cities to have an intercity rail link, through the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The population continued to rise rapidly, especially during the 1840s when Irish migrants began arriving by the hundreds of thousands as a result of the Great Famine. While many Irish people settled in the city at that time, a large percentage also emigrated to the United States or moved to the industrial centres of Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Midlands.[37]
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Britain was a major market for cotton imported from the Deep South of the United States, which fed the textile industry in the country. Given the crucial place cotton held in the city’s economy, during the American Civil War Liverpool was, in the words of historian Sven Beckert, “the most pro-Confederate place in the world outside the Confederacy itself”.[40] Liverpool merchants helped to bring out cotton from ports blockaded by the Union Navy, built ships of war for the Confederacy, and supplied the South with military equipment and credit.[41]
During the war, the Confederate Navy ship, the CSS Alabama, was built at Birkenhead on the Mersey, and the CSS Shenandoah surrendered there (being the final surrender at the end of the war). The city was also the centre of Confederate purchases of war materiel, including arms and ammunition, uniforms, and naval supplies to be smuggled by British blockade runners to the South.[42]
For periods during the 19th century, the wealth of Liverpool exceeded that of London,[43] and Liverpool’s Custom House was the single largest contributor to the British Exchequer.[44] Liverpool was the only British city ever to have its own Whitehall office.[45] During this century, at least 40% of the world’s entire trade passed through Liverpool.[46]
As early as 1851, the city was described as “the New York of Europe”.[48] During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Liverpool was attracting immigrants from across Europe. This resulted in the construction of a diverse array of religious buildings in the city for the new ethnic and religious groups, many of which are still in use today. The Deutsche Kirche, Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas, Gustav Adolf Church and Princes Road Synagogue were all established in the 1800s to serve Liverpool’s growing German, Greek, Nordic and Jewish communities, respectively. One of Liverpool’s oldest surviving churches, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, served the Polish community in its final years as a place of worship.
20th century
Liverpool’s Lime Street area pictured from above in 1946
The 20th century saw Liverpool’s established rank as a global economic powerhouse challenged. Its strategic location as an international seaport made it particularly vulnerable in two World wars. Economic depressions (both in the United Kingdom and across the world), changing housing patterns and containerisation in the maritime industry contributed to a downtrend in the city’s productivity and prosperity. Despite this, the city’s influence on global popular culture excelled and by the end of the century, the continuing process of urban renewal paved the way for the redefined modern city of the 21st century.
The period after the Great War was marked by social unrest, as society grappled with the massive war losses of young men, as well as trying to re-integrate veterans into civilian life and the economy. Unemployment and poor living standards greeted many ex-servicemen. Union organising and strikes took place in numerous locations, including a police strike in Liverpool among the City Police. Numerous colonial soldiers and sailors from Africa and India, who had served with the British Armed Forces, settled in Liverpool and other port cities. In June 1919, they were subject to attack by whites in racial riots; residents in the port included Swedish immigrants, and both groups had to compete with native people from Liverpool for jobs and housing. In this period, race riots also took place in other port cities.[49]
The Housing Act 1919 resulted in mass council housing being built across Liverpool during the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1920s and 1930s, as much as 15% of the city’s population (around 140,000 people) was relocated from the inner-city to new purpose built, lower density suburban housing estates, based on the belief that this would improve their standard of living, though the overall benefits have been contested.[50][51] Numerous private homes were also built during this era. During the Great Depression of the early 1930s, unemployment peaked at around 30% in the city. Liverpool was the site of Britain’s first provincial airport, operating from 1930.
During the Second World War, the critical strategic importance of Liverpool was recognised by both Hitler and Churchill. The city was heavily bombed by the Germans, suffering a blitz second only to London’s.[52] The pivotal Battle of the Atlantic was planned, fought and won from Liverpool.[53]
The Luftwaffe made 80 air raids on Merseyside, killing 2,500 people and causing damage to almost half the homes in the metropolitan area. Significant rebuilding followed the war, including massive housing estates and the Seaforth Dock, the largest dock project in Britain. Since 1952, Liverpool has been twinned with Cologne, Germany, a city which also suffered severe aerial bombing during the war. In the 1950s and 1960s, much of the immediate reconstruction that took place in the city centre proved to be deeply unpopular. The historic portions of the city that had survived German bombing suffered extensive destruction during urban renewal. It has been argued that the so-called “Shankland Plan” of the 1960s, named after the town planner Graeme Shankland, led to compromised town planning and vast road-building schemes that devastated and divided inner city neighbourhoods. Concrete brutalist architecture, compromised visions, botched projects and grand designs that were never realised became the subject of condemnation. Historian Raphael Samuel labelled Graeme Shankland “the butcher of Liverpool”.[54][55][56][57]
A significant West Indian black community has existed in the city since the first two decades of the 20th century. Like most British cities and industrialised towns, Liverpool became home to a significant number of Commonwealth immigrants, beginning after World War I with colonial soldiers and sailors who had served in the area. More immigrants arrived after World War II, mostly settling in older inner-city areas such as Toxteth, where housing was less expensive. The black population of Liverpool was recorded at 1.90% in 2011. In the 2021 Census, 5.2% described themselves as black African, Caribbean, mixed white and black African, mixed white and Caribbean or ‘other black’.[58][59]
In the 1960s, Liverpool was the centre of the “Merseybeat” sound, which became synonymous with the Beatles and fellow Liverpudlian rock bands. Influenced by American rhythm and blues and rock music, they also in turn strongly affected American music. The Beatles became internationally known in the early 1960s and performed around the world together; they were, and continue to be, the most commercially successful and musically influential band in popular history. Their co-founder, singer, and composer John Lennon was killed in New York City in 1980. Liverpool Airport was renamed after him in 2002, the first British airport to be named in honour of an individual.[60][61]
Previously part of Lancashire, and a county borough from 1889, Liverpool became a metropolitan borough within the newly created metropolitan county of Merseyside, in 1974. From the mid-1970s onwards, Liverpool’s docks and traditional manufacturing industries declined due to restructuring of shipping and heavy industry, causing massive losses of jobs. The advent of containerisation meant that the city’s docks became largely obsolete, and dock workers were made unemployed. By the early 1980s, unemployment rates in Liverpool were among the highest in the UK,[62] standing at 17% by January 1982 although, this was about half the level of unemployment that had affected the city during the Great Depression some 50 years previously.[63] During this period, Liverpool became a hub of fierce left-wing opposition to the central government in London.[64] Liverpool in the 1980s has been labelled as Britain’s ‘shock city’. Once the acclaimed second city of the British Empire which rivalled the capital city in global significance, Liverpool had collapsed in to its ‘nadir’ at the depths of post-colonial, post-industrial Britain.[65][66] In the late 20th century, Liverpool’s economy began to recover. The late 1980s saw the opening of a regenerated Albert Dock which proved to be a catalyst for further regeneration.[67] In the mid-1990s, the city enjoyed growth rates higher than the national average. At the end of the 20th century, Liverpool was concentrating on regeneration, a process that continues today.
Ongoing regeneration combined with the hosting of internationally significant events has helped to re-purpose Liverpool as one of the most visited, tourist orientated, cities in the United Kingdom. City leaders are focussing on long-term strategies to grow the city’s population and economy, while national government explores the continuous potential for devolution in the city.
In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visited Liverpool to mark the Golden Jubilee. On speaking to an audience at Liverpool Town Hall, the Queen recognised Liverpool as “one of the most distinctive and energetic parts of the United Kingdom”, and paid tribute to the city’s “major orchestras, world-class museums and galleries”. She also acknowledged Liverpool’s bid to become the European Capital of Culture.[68][69] To celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 2002, the conservation charity Plantlife organised a competition to choose county flowers; the sea-holly was Liverpool’s final choice. The initiative was designed to highlight growing threats to the UK’s flower species and also ask the public about which flowers best represented their county.[70]
Capitalising on the popularity of 1960s rock groups, such as the Beatles, as well as the city’s world-class art galleries, museums and landmarks, tourism and culture have become a significant factor in Liverpool’s economy.
Modern developments on the Liverpool Waterfront
In 2004, property developer Grosvenor started the Paradise Project, a £920 million development based on Paradise Street. This produced one of the most significant changes to Liverpool’s city centre since the post-war reconstruction. Renamed as ‘Liverpool One,’ the centre opened in May 2008.
In 2007, events and celebrations took place in honour of the 800th anniversary of the founding of the borough of Liverpool. Liverpool was designated as a joint European Capital of Culture for 2008. The celebrations included the erection of La Princesse, a large mechanical spider 20 metres high and weighing 37 tonnes, which represented the “eight legs” of Liverpool: honour, history, music, the Mersey, the ports, governance, sunshine and culture. La Princesse roamed the streets of the city during the festivities, and concluded by entering the Queensway Tunnel.
Changes to Liverpool’s governance took place in 2014. The local authority of Liverpool City Council decided to pool its power and resources with surrounding boroughs through the formation of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority in a form of devolution. With a devolved budget granted by central government, the authority now oversees and invests in foremost strategic affairs throughout the Liverpool City Region, including major regeneration projects. The authority, along with Liverpool City Council itself, has embarked on long-term plans to grow the population and economy of the city.[74][75][76][77]
By the 2020s, urban regeneration throughout the city continues. Liverpool Waters, a mixed-use development in the city’s disused northern docklands, has been identified as one of the largest megaprojects in the UK’s history. Everton’s new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock was regarded as the largest single-site private sector development in the United Kingdom at the time of construction.[78][79]
Major events, business and political conferences regularly take place in the city and form an important part of the economy. In June 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron launched the International Festival for Business in Liverpool, the world’s largest business event in 2014,[80] and the largest in the UK since the Festival of Britain in 1951.[81] The Labour Party has chosen Liverpool numerous times since the mid 2010s for their annual Labour Party Conference. Liverpool hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2023.
Liverpool has been a centre of invention and innovation. Railways, transatlantic steamships, municipal trams,[82] and electric trains were all pioneered in Liverpool as modes of mass transit. In 1829 and 1836, the first railway tunnels in the world were constructed under Liverpool (Wapping Tunnel). From 1950 to 1951, the world’s first scheduled passenger helicopter service ran between Liverpool and Cardiff.[83]
In 1864, Peter Ellis built the world’s first iron-framed, curtain-walled office building, Oriel Chambers, which was a prototype of the skyscraper. The UK’s first purpose-built department store was Compton House, completed in 1867 for the retailer J.R. Jeffrey.[113] It was the largest store in the world at the time.[114]
Lewis’s department store on Ranelagh Street. In 1879, the Christmas grotto was conceived in the store.
Between 1862 and 1867, Liverpool held an annual Grand Olympic Festival. Devised by John Hulley and Charles Pierre Melly, these games were the first to be wholly amateur in nature and international in outlook.[115][116] The programme of the first modern Olympiad in Athens in 1896 was almost identical to that of the Liverpool Olympics.[117] In 1865, Hulley co-founded the National Olympian Association in Liverpool, a forerunner of the British Olympic Association. Its articles of foundation provided the framework for the Olympic Charter.
Liverpool was the first city outside London to be chosen to have an official Blue plaque and now has the largest number outside London[121]
In 1889, borough engineer John Alexander Brodie invented the football goal net. He was also a pioneer in the use of pre-fabricated housing[122] and oversaw the construction of the UK’s first ring road (A5058) and intercity highway (East Lancashire Road), as well as the Queensway Tunnel linking Liverpool and Birkenhead. Described as “the eighth wonder of the world” at the time of its construction, it was the longest underwater tunnel in the world for 24 years.
In 1897, the Lumière brothers filmed Liverpool,[123] including what is believed to be the world’s first tracking shot,[124] taken from the Liverpool Overhead Railway, the world’s first elevated electrified railway. The Overhead Railway was the first railway in the world to use electric multiple units, employ automatic signalling, and install an escalator.
In 1999, Liverpool was the first city outside London to be awarded blue plaques by English Heritage in recognition of the “significant contribution made by its sons and daughters in all walks of life”.[127]
For the purposes of local government, Liverpool is classified as a metropolitan borough with city status. The metropolitan borough is located within both the county of Merseyside and the Liverpool City Region. Each of these geographical areas is treated as an administrative area with different levels of local governance applying to each.
Liverpool City Council is the governing body solely for the Metropolitan Borough of Liverpool and performs functions that are standard of an English Unitary Authority. The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the Mayor of the Liverpool City Region reserve major strategic powers over such things as transport, economic development and regeneration for the city along with the 5 surrounding boroughs of the Liverpool City Region. The Combined Authority has competency over areas which have been devolved by national government and are specific to the city region.[128]
Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions to local governance apart from these two structures. Liverpool was administered by Merseyside County Council between 1974 and 1986 and some residual aspects of organisation which date back to this time have survived. When the County Council was disbanded in 1986, most civic functions were transferred to Liverpool City Council. However, several authorities such as the police and fire and rescue service, continue to be run at a county-wide level. The county of Merseyside, therefore, continues to exist as an administrative area for a few limited services only, while the capability and capacity of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is evolving over time.[129]
City Councillors meet regularly at the Council Chamber in Liverpool Town Hall to conduct civic business[130]
Liverpool City Council operates under a constitution comprising 85 city councillors who are directly elected by the Liverpool electorate every 4 years and represent a variety of different political parties. The city councillors make decisions about local services for the city’s people.
At each election, the political party that wins the majority of the 85 council seats leads the council for the following 4 years. The local leader of this party assumes the role of Leader of the City Council who then chairs a Cabinet of 9 councillors who are assigned specific responsibilities known as ‘portfolios’.
The incumbent Leader of Liverpool City Council is Councillor Liam Robinson, who represents the Labour Party, which secured a large majority at the 2023 local election,[131] the Leader is also a member of the Mayor of the Liverpool City Regions cabinet (Separate from the City Council Cabinet), at present Robinson holds the portfolio of Cabinet Member for Innovation.
The City Council’s decisions and scrutiny of activities are undertaken by a number of different committees and panels which include the Overview and Scrutiny Committees, Scrutiny Panels, Regulatory Committees and other committees. The day-to-day management of the council is carried out by the management team which includes the Chief Executive and several directors and senior officers. The management team works with the Cabinet and councillors to deliver strategic direction and priorities such as the budget and the City Plan.[132][133]
During the 2023 Liverpool City Council election, the Labour Party consolidated its control of Liverpool City Council, following on from the previous elections. Out of the total 85 City Council seats up for election, The Labour Party won 61 seats (53.13% of the electorate’s total votes), the Liberal Democrats won 15 seats (21.61% of the votes), the Green Party won 3 seats (9.76% of the votes), the Liverpool Community Independents won 3 seats (4.64% of the votes) and the Liberal Party won the remaining 3 seats (3.21% of the votes). The Conservative Party, the political party in power at national government, had no representation on Liverpool City Council. Only 27.27% of the eligible Liverpool electorate turned out to vote.[135]
Throughout most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Liverpool was a municipal stronghold of Toryism. However, support for the Conservative Party in recent times has been among the lowest in any part of Britain, particularly since the monetarist economic policies of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. After the 1979 general election, many have claimed that her victory contributed to longstanding high unemployment and decline in the city.[136] Liverpool is one of the Labour Party’s key strongholds; however, the city has also seen hard times under Labour governments. Particularly in the Winter of Discontent (late 1978 and early 1979) when Liverpool suffered public sector strikes along with the rest of the United Kingdom, but also when it suffered the particularly humiliating misfortune of having grave-diggers going on strike, leaving the dead unburied for long periods.[137]
City Council criticism and improvement
In recent years, Liverpool City Council began an extensive improvement program designed to ensure that the authority makes efficient use of taxpayer‘s money and to encourage more business and investment in the city. Grosvenor Group, the property company responsible for Liverpool One, commended the changes as an “opportunity for bold thinking in liverpool”.[138]
In 2021, a highly critical government inspection and subsequent report of Liverpool City Council (referred to as the Caller report) identified multiple shortcomings at Liverpool City Council. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Robert Jenrick sent government commissioners to oversee the City Council’s highways, regeneration, property management, governance and financial decision-making. The authority was compelled to commit to a three-year improvement plan in which the entire structure of the council would be overhauled. As a result of the intervention, major structural changes at the City Council took place by the 2023 United Kingdom local elections, which were labelled “the most unpredictable [elections] in the city’s history”. The number of electoral wards in the city was doubled from 30 to 64, while the overall number of City Councillors up for election was reduced from 90 to 85. In future, the council would also change to ‘all out’ elections every four years whereby every single City Councillor would be eligible for re-election at the same time. The role of elected city mayor was also abolished and the Council reverted to the previous Leader and Cabinet style of leadership. The outcome of the elections were seen not only as a test of how the general public would respond to the government intervention in the city, but also to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak‘s government as a whole.[139][140][141][142]
Councillor Liam Robinson became the new Leader of Liverpool City Council at the 2023 City Council election. The Liverpool Strategic Futures Advisory Panel, chaired by the Mayor of Liverpool City RegionSteve Rotheram, and including several high-profile figures with experience in local government, was established. The panel was tasked with directing the council’s long-term future outside of government intervention measures and to advise on plans and priorities that the city should pursue.[143]
In February 2008, Liverpool City Council was reported to be the worst-performing council in the country, receiving just a one-star rating (classified as inadequate). The main cause of the poor rating was attributed to the council’s poor handling of tax-payer money, including the accumulation of a £20m shortfall while the city held the title of European Capital of Culture.[144] In April 2024, the Office for Local Government released a ranking of local authorities, placing Liverpool City Council 317th out of a possible 318.[145]
The Lord Mayor of Liverpool is an ancient ceremonial role. Councillors within Liverpool City Council (not the general public) elect the Lord Mayor annually, who then serves a one-year term. The Lord Mayor is styled as the “first citizen” and is chosen to represent the city at civic functions and engagements, promote it to the wider world, support local charities and community groups, attend religious events, meet delegates from Liverpool’s twin cities, chair council meetings and confer Honorary Freemen and associations.[146] The Lord Mayor is also the presiding officer for Liverpool City Council full meetings.
. Liverpool is one of the six constituent boroughs of the Liverpool City Region. The Mayor of the Liverpool City Region is directly every four years by residents of those six boroughs and oversees the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. The Combined Authority is the top-tier administrative body for the local governance of the city region and is tasked with taking major strategic decisions on issues such as transport and investment, economic development, employment and skills, tourism, culture, housing and physical infrastructure. The current Mayor is Steve Rotheram.
Liverpool has been described as having “the most splendid setting of any English city”.[149] At 53°24′0″N 2°59′0″W (53.4, −2.98), 176 miles (283 kilometres) northwest of London, located on the Liverpool Bay of the Irish Sea, Liverpool is built across a ridge of sandstone hills rising up to a height of around 230 feet (70 m) above sea-level at Everton Hill, which represents the southern boundary of the West Lancashire Coastal Plain.
JFMAMJJASOND6983578353104501365316864181166201472201477181190149821169283█ Average max. and min. temperatures in °C█ Precipitation totals in mmSource: Met Office
showImperial conversion
Liverpool experiences a temperatemaritime climate (Köppen: Cfb), like much of the British Isles, with relatively mild summers, cool winters and rainfall spread fairly evenly throughout the year. Rainfall and temperature records had been kept at Bidston Hill since 1867, but records for atmospheric pressure go back as far as at least 1846.[150] Bidston closed down in 2002 but the Met Office also has a weather station at Crosby. Since records began in 1867, temperatures have ranged from −17.6 °C (0.3 °F) on 21 December 2010 to 34.5 °C (94.1 °F) on 2 August 1990, although Liverpool Airport recorded a temperature of 35.0 °C (95.0 °F) on 19 July 2006.[151]
The lowest amount of sunshine on record was 16.5 hours in December 1927 whereas the most was 314.5 hours in July 2013.[152][153]
Tornado activity or funnel cloud formation is very rare in and around the Liverpool area and tornadoes that do form are usually weak. Recent tornadoes or funnel clouds in Merseyside have been seen in 1998 and 2014.[154][155]
During the period 1981–2010, Crosby recorded an average of 32.8 days of air frost per year, which is low for the United Kingdom.[156] Snow is fairly common during the winter although heavy snow is rare. Snow generally falls between November and March but can occasionally fall earlier and later. In recent times, the earliest snowfall was on 1 October 2008[157] while the latest occurred on 15 May 2012.[158] Although historically, the earliest snowfall occurred on 10 September 1908[159] and the latest on 2 June 1975.[160]
Rainfall, although light, is quite a common occurrence in Liverpool, with the wettest month on record being August 1956, which recorded 221.2 mm (8.71 in) of rain and the driest being February 1932, with 0.9 mm (0.035 in).[161] The driest year on record was 1991, with 480.5 mm (18.92 in) of rainfall and the wettest was 1872, with 1,159.9 mm (45.67 in).[162]
^ Weather station is located 7 miles (11 km) from the Liverpool city centre.
^ Sunshine hours were recorded at the Bidston Observatory from the period of 1971–2000.
^ Humidity was recorded at the Bidston Observatory for the period of 1975–June 2002. The period Jul–Sep 1992 has no record, with Jan–May 2001 reporting unreliabe data.
^ From 1867–2002, extremes were recorded at the Bidston Observatory in Wirral. Since 1983, extremes were recorded at Crosby, Sefton.
In 2010, Liverpool City Council and the Primary Care Trust commissioned the Mersey Forest to complete “A Green Infrastructure Strategy” for the city.[171]
Liverpool is a core urban element of a green belt region that extends into the wider surrounding counties, which is in place to reduce urban sprawl, prevent the towns in the conurbation from further convergence, protect the identity of outlying communities, encourage brownfield reuse, and preserve nearby countryside. This is achieved by restricting inappropriate development within the designated areas and imposing stricter conditions on permitted building.[172]
Due to being already highly built up, the city contains limited portions of protected green belt area within greenfield throughout the borough at Fazakerley, Croxteth Hall and country park and Craven Wood, Woodfields Park and nearby golf courses in Netherley, small greenfield tracts east of the Speke area by the St Ambrose primary school, and the small hamlet of Oglet and the surrounding area south of Liverpool Airport.[173]
The green belt was first drawn up in 1983 under Merseyside County Council[174] and the size in the city amounts to 530 hectares (5.3 km2; 2.0 sq mi).[175]
Demonyms
Scouser
Since the mid-20th century, Scouser has become the predominant demonym for the inhabitants of Liverpool, and is strongly associated with the Scouse accent and dialect of the city.[176] The Scouse accent is described as progressively diverging from the Lancastrian accent in the late 19th century.[177][178][179][180][181]
The etymology of Scouser is derived from the traditional dish Scouse brought to the area by sailors travelling through Liverpool’s port.[182][181][183]
Other demonyms
Prior to the establishment of Scouser as there have been a number of different terms used to refer to inhabitants of Liverpool of varying popularity and longevity:
Professor Tony Crowley argues that up until the 1950s, inhabitants of Liverpool were generally referred to by a number of demonyms. He argues that there was a debate in the mid 20th century between the two rival terms of ‘Liverpolitan’ and ‘Liverpudlian’. The debate surrounded the lexicology of these terms and their connotations of social class.[183][187]
Professor John Belchem suggests that a series of other nicknames such as ‘Dick Liver’, ‘Dicky Sam’ and ‘whacker’ were used, but gradually fell out of use. Belchem and Philip Boland suggest that comedic radio presenters and entertainers brought the Liverpool identity to a national audience, which in turn encouraged locals to be gradually more known as ‘scousers’. By the time that Frank Shaw’s My Liverpool, a Celebration of ‘Scousetown’ was published in 1971, Belchem argues that ‘Scouser’ had firmly become the dominant demonym.[176][188][189]
Borough of Liverpool founded by John, King of England. The economy was focused on agricultural and food processing, grain mills and warehouses until the 16th century.
1272
840
14th century
1,000 – 1,200
Population roughly 1,000 in 1300. Because Liverpool was a port, it was more at risk from the spread of disease. Townspeople lived partly by farming and fishing. Some were craftsmen or tradesmen such as bakers, brewers, butchers, blacksmiths, and carpenters. A watermill existed to ground grain into flour for the townspeople’s bread, and there was a windmill. Black Death wiped out whole families and bodies were buried in a mass grave at St Nicholas’s churchyard.
16th century
Ireland was still Liverpool’s main trading partner. In 1540, a writer said: “Irish merchants come much hither as to a good harbor”. He also said there was “good merchandise at Liverpool and much Irish yarn, that Manchester men buy there”. Skins and hides were still imported from Ireland. Exports from Liverpool included coal, woolen cloth, knives and leather goods. There were still many fishermen in Liverpool. In the mid 16th century, the town was under the control of the country gentry and trade was slow. The population dropped to below 600, in part due to deaths in the 1558 plague when a third of the townspeople died. Further plague outbreaks took place in 1609, 1647 and 1650 which led to static or retrogressive population levels. The town was regarded as subordinate to Chester until the 1650s.
1600
<2,000
English troops bound for rebellions in Ireland settled in the 16th and early 17th centuries.
1626
Charles I of England issued new Charter for the town. Trade with other cities, Ireland, Isle of Man, France and Spain increased. Fish and wool was exported to the Continent, and wines, iron and other commodities imported. In the following decades, merchants invested in Liverpool and its importance grew. Regular shipping began to America and West Indies. Liverpool was controlled by the Crown, the Molyneux and Stanley families.
1642
2,500
Liverpool overtook Chester in exporting coal and salt in early 17th century, especially to Ireland.
1644
During English Civil War, Prince Rupert led a royalist army to capture Liverpool. He described the town as a “mere crow’s nest which a parcel of boys could take”. He stormed Liverpool Castle in the ‘Siege of Liverpool’ with considerable slaughter.
1647
Liverpool was made a free and independent port, no longer subject to Chester.
1648
First recorded cargo from America landed at Liverpool.
Late 17th century
Liverpool grew rapidly with the growth of English colonies in North America and West Indies. Liverpool was well placed to trade across Atlantic Ocean. The writer Celia Fiennes visited Liverpool and said: “Liverpool is built on the River Mersey. It is mostly newly built, of brick and stone after the London fashion. The original (town) was a few fishermen’s houses. It has now grown into a large, fine town. It is but one parish with one church though there be 24 streets in it, there is indeed a little chapel and there are a great many dissenters in the town (Protestants who did not belong to the Church of England). It’s a very rich trading town, the houses are of brick and stone, built high and even so that a street looks very handsome. The streets are well paved. There is an abundance of persons who are well dressed and fashionable. The streets are fair and long. It’s London in miniature as much as I ever saw anything. There is a very pretty exchange. It stands on 8 pillars, over which is a very handsome Town Hall.”
1700
5,714
First recorded Liverpool slave ship, the ‘Liverpool Merchant’, sold a cargo of 220 slaves in Barbados. In the early 1700s, the writer Daniel Defoe said: “Liverpool has an opulent, flourishing and increasing trade to Virginia and English colonies in America. They trade around the whole island (of Great Britain), send ships to Norway, to Hamburg, and to the Baltic as also to Holland and Flanders (roughly modern Belgium).” Welsh people in search of work and opportunity made up a large amount of population in early 18th century.
1715
World’s first wet dock opened in Liverpool, symbolising a new era in the town’s growth, the starting point of the 18th century boom in Liverpool’s fortunes.
Influx of Irish, Welsh, Scandinavian and Dutch communities grew the town rapidly. Most of the population were not native to Liverpool.
1797
77,708
1801
77,000 – 85,000
1811
94,376
1821
118,972
1831
165,175
1835
Boundary of Liverpool expanded to include Everton, Kirkdale and parts of Toxteth and West Derby. Liverpool was second only to London in importance. Poor, overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions led to disease and epidemics of cholera in 1830s to 1860s.
1841
286,487
1851
375,955
At the height of the Great Famine in Ireland, Liverpool’s Irish born population peaked to about 83,000–90,000. 43,000 were settled in the area around the docks. More Irish people lived in Liverpool than the majority of Irish towns. 40% of the world’s trade was passing through Liverpool’s docks.
Boundary of Liverpool expanded to include Fazakerley.
1907
746,144
1911
746,421 – 766,044
1913
Boundary of Liverpool expanded to include Woolton and Gateacre.
1921
805,046 – 821,000
1931
855,688
1937
867,000
The highest recorded population of Liverpool city proper.
1941
806,271
Liverpool’s population fell in the following decades, largely due to the new towns movement and the British government’s policy to displace thousands of people from major British cities (including Central Liverpool) to various new towns within the region such as Kirkby, Skelmersdale, Runcorn and Warrington.
1951
765,641 – 768,337
1961
683,133 – 737,637
1971
595,252 – 607,454
Suburbanisation into neighbouring local authorities continues.
1981
492,164 – 503,726
1991
448,629 – 480,196
2001
439,428 – 439,476
Liverpool’s population steadily increased again, partly attributed to a rise in students, student accommodation, young professionals, and increased job opportunities through urban regeneration.
2011
466,415
2021
486,100
The city
The city of Liverpool is at the core of a much larger and more populous metropolitan area, however, at the most recent UK Census in 2021, the area governed by Liverpool City Council had a population of 486,100, a 4.2% increase from the previous Census in 2011. This figure increased to 500,500 people by 2022, according to data from Liverpool City Council.
Taking in to account how local government is organised within the cities and metropolitan areas of England, the Liverpool was the fifth largest of England’s ‘core cities’ and had the second overall highest population density of those, by 2021.[201][202]
The population of the city has steadily risen since the 2001 Census. As well as having a growing population, the population density also grew at the 2021 Census compared to the previous Census. Since 2011, its population size ranked 10th out of 309 local authority areas.[203]
The population of the city is comparatively younger than that of England as a whole. Family life in the city is also growing at odds with the North West England region as a whole: At the 2021 Census, the percentage of households including a couple without children increased in Liverpool, but fell across the North West. The percentage of people aged 16 years and over (excluding full-time students) who were employed also increased in Liverpool compared to the overall North West region where it fell.
Liverpool’s ethnic and international population is growing. More people in the city identified as Asian and Black in the most recent census, compared to the previous census.
The 2021 Census also showed that Liverpool’s ethnic and international population was growing. The number of residents in the city born outside of England has increased since the previous Census, while the number of residents who did not identify with any national identity associated with the UK has also increased at a faster rate than England as a whole. The overall share of the city’s population who identified as Asian and Black increased, while the percentage who identified as white decreased in the city compared with previous Census.[204]
It has been argued that the city can claim to have one of the strongest Irish heritages in the United Kingdom, with as many as 75 percent (estimated) of Liverpool’s population with some form of Irish ancestry.[205]
The growing population of Liverpool in the 21st century reverses a trend which took place between the 1930s and 2001, when the population of the city proper effectively halved.
Such a mass relocation and population loss during this time was common practice for many British cities, including London and Manchester, In contrast, satellite towns such as Kirkby, Skelmersdale and Runcorn saw a corresponding rise in their populations (Kirkby being the fastest growing town in Britain during the 1960s).[206][207][204][208]
Urban and metropolitan area
Liverpool is typically grouped with the wider Merseyside (plus Halton) area for the purpose of defining its metropolitan footprint, and there are several methodologies. Sometimes, this metropolitan area is broadened to encompass urban settlements in the neighbouring counties of Lancashire and Cheshire.[209][210]
North West England (code TLD) At the 2021 Census, the ITL 1 region of North West England had a usual resident population of 7,417,300.[214]
ITL 2 region
Merseyside (code TLD7) The ITL 2 region of Merseyside is defined as the area comprising East Merseyside (TLD71) plus Liverpool (TLD72), Sefton (TLD73) and Wirral (TLD74). At the 2021 Census, the population of this area was as follows:[215]
Therefore, the total population of the ITL 2 Merseyside region was 1,551,500 based on the 2021 Census.
ITL 3 region
The smallest ITL 3 area classed as Liverpool (code TLD72), therefore, had a population of 486,100 at the 2021 Census.
Other definitions
At the 2021 Census, the ONS used a refreshed concept of built-up areas (BUAs) based on the physical built environment, using satellite imagery to recognise developed land, such as cities, towns, and villages. This allows the ONS to investigate economic and social statistics based on actual settlements where most people live. Data from the 2021 Census is not directly comparable with 2011 Census data due to this revised methodology. Using the population figures of BUAs at the 2021 Census (excluding London), Liverpool Built-up Area is the third largest in England with some 506,565 usual residents (behind only Birmingham and Leeds). Liverpool’s built-up area is, therefore, larger than the major English cities of Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham and Sheffield.[216]
A 2011 report, Liverpool City Region – Building on its Strengths, by Lord Heseltine and Terry Leahy, stated that “what is now called Liverpool City Region has a population of around 1.5 million”, but also referred to “an urban region that spreads from Wrexham and Flintshire to Chester, Warrington, West Lancashire and across to Southport“, with a population of 2.3 million.[221]
Liverpool and Manchester are sometimes considered as one large polynuclear metropolitan area,[223][224][225] or megalopolis.
Ethnicity
In recent decades, Liverpool’s population is becoming more multicultural. According to the 2021 census, 77% of all Liverpool residents described their ethnic group as White English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British. The remaining 23% were described as non-White English/British. Between 2011 and 2021, there was population growth across all ethnic groups, except ‘White English/British’ and ‘Any Other’, where there were overall losses. The number of ‘Other White residents’ in Liverpool also increased by almost 12,000 people, with notable increases in the ‘Other Asian’, ‘Arab’, and ‘Other Mixed/Multiple’ population categories. The non-White English/British population as a percentage of the total population across the ‘newly organised city electoral wards’ ranged from 5% in the Orrell Park ward to 69% in the Princes Park ward. 9 out of 10 Liverpool residents regarded English as their main language. The highest non-English languages in the city were Arabic (5,743 main speakers) followed by Polish (4,809 main speakers). Overall, almost 45,000 residents had a main language that was not English.[226]
White: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British
375,785
77.3
White: Other White
24,162
5.0
Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African: African
12,709
2.6
Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh: Chinese
8,841
1.8
Other ethnic group: Arab
8,312
1.7
Other ethnic group: Any other ethnic group
7,722
1.6
Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh: Other Asian
7,085
1.5
White: Irish
6,826
1.4
Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh: Indian
6,251
1.3
Mixed or multiple ethnic groups: Other mixed or multiple ethnic groups
4,934
1.0
Mixed or multiple ethnic groups: White and Black African
4,157
0.9
Mixed or multiple ethnic groups: White and Black Caribbean
4,127
0.8
Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh: Pakistani
3,673
0.8
Mixed or multiple ethnic groups: White and Asian
3,662
0.8
Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African: Other Black
2,762
0.6
Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh: Bangladeshi
1,917
0.4
Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African: Caribbean
1,493
0.3
White: Roma
1,169
0.2
White: Gypsy or Irish Traveller
501
0.1
According to a 2014 survey, the ten most popular surnames of Liverpool and their occurrence in the population are:[228][229]1. Jones – 23,0122. Smith – 16,2763. Williams – 13,9974. Davies – 10,1495. Hughes – 9,7876. Roberts – 9,5717. Taylor – 8,2198. Johnson – 6,7159. Brown – 6,60310. Murphy – 6,495
Liverpool is home to Britain’s oldest Black community, dating to at least the 1730s. Some Liverpudlians can trace their black ancestry in the city back ten generations.[230] Early Black settlers in the city included seamen, the children of traders sent to be educated, and freed slaves, since slaves entering the country after 1722 were deemed free men.[231] Since the 20th century, Liverpool is also noted for its large African-Caribbean,[4]Ghanaian,[232] and Somali[233] communities, formed of more recent African-descended immigrants and their subsequent generations.
The city is also home to the oldest Chinese community in Europe; the first residents of the city’s Chinatown arrived as seamen in the 19th century.[234] The traditional Chinese gateway erected in Liverpool’s Chinatown is the largest such gateway outside China. Liverpool also has a long-standing Filipino community. Lita Roza, a singer from Liverpool who was the first woman to achieve a UK number one hit, had Filipino ancestry.
The city is also known for its large Irish and Welsh populations.[235] In 1813, 10 per cent of Liverpool’s population was Welsh, leading to the city becoming known as “the capital of North Wales.”[235]
During, and in the decades following, the Great Irish Famine in the mid-19th century, up to two million Irish people travelled to Liverpool within one decade, with many subsequently departing for the United States.[236] By 1851, more than 20 per cent of the population of Liverpool was Irish.[237] At the 2001 Census, 1.17 per cent of the population were Welsh-born and 0.75 per cent were born in the Republic of Ireland, while 0.54 per cent were born in Northern Ireland,[238] but many more Liverpudlians are of legacy Welsh or Irish ancestry.[239]
The thousands of migrants and sailors passing through Liverpool resulted in a religious diversity that is still apparent today. This is reflected in the equally diverse collection of religious buildings,[244] including two Christian cathedrals.
Liverpool is known to be England’s ‘most Catholic city’, with a Catholic population much larger than in other parts of England.[245] This is mainly due to high historic Irish migration to the city and their descendants since.[246]
Liverpool’s wealth as a port city enabled the construction of two enormous cathedrals in the 20th century. The Anglican Cathedral, which was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and plays host to the annual Liverpool Shakespeare Festival, has one of the longest naves, largest organs and heaviest and highest peals of bells in the world. The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, on Mount Pleasant next to Liverpool Science Park, was initially planned to be even larger. Of Sir Edwin Lutyens‘s original design, only the crypt was completed. The cathedral was eventually built to a simpler design by Sir Frederick Gibberd. While this is on a smaller scale than Lutyens’ original design, it still incorporates the largest panel of stained glass in the world. The road running between the two cathedrals is called Hope Street. The cathedral has long been colloquially referred to as “Paddy’s Wigwam” due to its shape.[247]
Liverpool contains several synagogues, of which the Grade I listed Moorish RevivalPrinces Road Synagogue is architecturally the most notable. Princes Road is widely considered to be the most magnificent of Britain’s Moorish Revival synagogues and one of the finest buildings in Liverpool.[248] Liverpool has a thriving Jewish community with a further two orthodox Synagogues, one in the Allerton district of the city and a second in the Childwall district of the city where a significant Jewish community reside. A third orthodox Synagogue in the Greenbank Park area of L17 has recently closed and is a listed 1930s structure. There is also a LubavitchChabad House and a reform Synagogue. Liverpool has had a Jewish community since the mid-18th century. The Jewish population of Liverpool is around 5,000.[249] The Liverpool Talmudical College existed from 1914 until 1990, when its classes moved to the Childwall Synagogue.[citation needed]
The city had the earliest Mosque in England and possibly the UK, founded in 1887 by William Abdullah Quilliam, a lawyer who had converted to Islam who set up the Liverpool Muslim Institute in a terraced house on West Derby Road.[253] Apart from the first mosque in England which now houses a museum,[254][255] the largest and main one, Al-Rahma mosque, was also the third purpose-built mosque in the United Kingdom.[256] The second largest mosque in Liverpool is the Masjid Al-Taiseer.[257] Other mosques in the city include the Bait ul Lateef Ahmadiyya Mosque,[258] Hamza Center (Community Center),[259] Islamic community centre,[260] Liverpool Mosque and Islamic Institute,[261] Liverpool Towhid Centre,[262] Masjid Annour,[263] and the Shah Jalal Mosque.[264]
Liverpool forms an integral part of North West England‘s economy, the third largest regional economy in the United Kingdom. The city is also a major contributor to the economy of Liverpool City Region, worth over £40 billion per year.[268][269][270]
The local authority area governed by Liverpool City Council accounts for 39% of the Liverpool city region’s total jobs, 40% of its total GVA and 35% of its total businesses. At the local authority level, the city’s GVA (balanced) at current basic prices was £14.3 billion in 2021. Its GDP at current market prices was £15.9 billion. This equates to £32,841 per head of the population.[271][272]
At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 51.1% of Liverpool’s population aged 16 years and over was classed as employed, 44.2% economically inactive and 4.8% unemployed. Of those employed, the most popular industries providing the employment were human health and social work activities (18.7%), wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motor cycles (15%), education (10.8%), public administration and defence; compulsory social security (7.3%), accommodation and food service activities (6.8%), construction (6.5%), transport and storage (5.8%), manufacturing (5.5%) and professional, scientific and technical activities (5.2%).[273]
According to the ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2021, some industries within Liverpool perform strongly compared to other local authorities in Great Britain. In terms of absolute number of jobs per industry in Great Britain’s local authority areas, Liverpool features in the national top 10 for human health and social work activities; arts, entertainment and recreation; public administration and defence; compulsory social security; accommodation and food service activities and real estate activities. Liverpool features in the national top 20 for number of jobs in education; construction; wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles; transportation and storage; financial and insurance activities and professional, scientific and technical activities.[274]
According to the International passenger Survey, from the ONS, Liverpool was one of the top 5 most visited cities in the UK by overseas tourists in 2022. As of the same year, the city’s tourist industry was worth a total of £3.5 billion annually and was part of a larger city region tourist industry worth £5 billion. A consistent calendar of major events, as well as a plethora of cultural attractions, continue to provide a significant draw for tourists. Tourism related to the Beatles is worth an estimated £100m to the Liverpool economy each year alone. Liverpool One, as well as a growing retail offer overall, has led to the city being one of the most prominent destinations for shopping in the UK. Liverpool Cruise Terminal, which is situated close to the Pier Head, enables tourists to berth in the centre of the city.[276][277][278][279][280][281][282]
Liverpool is home to the Knowledge Quarter, a 450-acre city centre district that hosts some of the world’s most influential institutions in science, health, technology, education, music and the creative performing arts. The UK government has also identified the city as a ‘pharmaceutical production superpower’ and one of the UK’s leading regions for bioprocessing. The accolade led to the government choosing the city for England’s second ever ‘Investment Zone’ in 2023. This will involve millions of pounds being invested over the coming years in to science orientated districts including the Knowledge Quarter and the so-called ‘pharma cluster’ in the city suburb of Speke. The two clusters form an internationally significant role in infectious disease control. Liverpool City Council also plan to invest in the city’s Baltic Triangle, which is renowned in the creative and digital industries.[283][284][285][286][287][288]
Historically, the economy of Liverpool was centred on the city’s port and manufacturing base. Today, the Port of Liverpool is the UK’s fourth largest port by tonnage of freight, handling over 30 million tonnes in 2020. The city is also the UK’s largest port for transatlantic trade, handling 45% of the country’s trade from the United States. In 2023, the city was chosen by the British government to be a designated Freeport to encourage growing international commerce.
Liverpool’s rich architectural base has helped the city become the second most filmed city in the UK outside London. As well as being a featured location in its own right, it often doubles up for Chicago, London, Moscow, New York City, Paris and Rome. The Depot studios, close to the city centre, provide space for film and TV productions.[308][309]
Major economic projects planned for the city include the revitalisation of disused land in the North docks/Ten Streets area, Liverpool Waters and a new purpose built TV studio at the former Littlewoods Pools building, adjacent to the Depot.[310][311][312]
City region economy and devolution
The Liverpool City Region GDP in 2021 was £40.479 billion. The 6 contributing boroughs to this GDP were as follows:[313]
The policy agenda of the British Government is to continuously monitor the economy and productivity of the UK’s core cities within the context of their respective city regions. The government’s longer-term plan is to assess each area’s potential for increased devolution and transfer of additional powers and budgets from central government in Whitehall to their corresponding combined authorities. As such, official statistics about Liverpool’s economy within the context of the Liverpool City Region, are closely monitored by the Office for National Statistics. This allows policy and decision makers to more accurately assess the ‘functional economic area’ of the city, which is not bound by traditional local government geographies.[314][315][316][317][318]
As of 2023, there are 10 city regions in England with Combined Authorities. The economy of Liverpool’s combined authority area in comparison to the other city regions is as follows:
Liverpool’s long commercial history has given rise to a considerable variety of architectural styles found within the city, ranging from 16th century Tudor buildings to modern-day contemporary architecture.[320] The majority of buildings in the city date from the late-18th century onwards, the period during which the city grew into one of the foremost powers in the British Empire.[321] There are over 2,500 listed buildings in Liverpool, of which 27 are Grade I listed[322] and 85 are Grade II* listed.[323] The city also has a greater number of public sculptures than any other location in the United Kingdom aside from Westminster and significant number of Georgian houses still exist.[324][325] This richness of architecture has subsequently seen Liverpool described by English Heritage, as England’s finest Victorian city.[326]
The value of Liverpool’s architecture and design was recognised in 2004, when several areas throughout the city were declared a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site. Known as the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City, the sites were added in recognition of the city’s role in the development of international trade and docking technology.[327] However, this status was revoked in July 2021, when UNESCO resolved that recent and proposed developments, such as the Bramley-Moore Dock Stadium and Liverpool Waters projects, had resulted in the “serious deterioration” of the area’s significance.[328]
As a major British port, the docks in Liverpool have historically been central to the city’s development. Several major docking firsts have occurred in the city including the construction of the world’s first enclosed wet dock (the Old Dock) in 1715 and the first ever hydraulic lifting cranes.[329] The best-known dock in Liverpool is the Royal Albert Dock, which was constructed in 1846 and today comprises the largest single collection of Grade I listed buildings anywhere in Britain.[330] Built under the guidance of Jesse Hartley, it was considered to be one of the most advanced docks anywhere in the world upon completion and is often attributed with helping the city to become one of the most important ports in the world. Today, the Royal Albert Dock houses restaurants, bars, shops, two hotels as well as the Merseyside Maritime Museum, International Slavery Museum, Tate Liverpool and The Beatles Story. North of the city centre is Stanley Dock, home to the Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse, which was at the time of its construction in 1901, the world’s largest building in terms of area[331] and today stands as the world’s largest brick-work building.[332]
One of the most famous locations in Liverpool is the Pier Head, renowned for the trio of buildings – the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building – which sit upon it. Collectively referred to as the Three Graces, these buildings stand as a testament to the great wealth in the city during the late 19th and early 20th century. Built in a variety of architectural styles, they are recognised as being the symbol of ‘maritime Liverpool’ and are regarded by many as contributing to one of the most impressive waterfronts in the world.[333][334][335][336]
However, plans to redevelop parts of Liverpool city centre have been marred by controversy. In December 2016, a newly formed company called North Point Global Ltd. was given the rights to develop part of the docks under the “New Chinatown” working name. Though heavily advertised in Liverpool, Hong Kong and Chinese cities with high-profile advertisements and videos, the “New Chinatown” development failed to materialise.[339] In January 2018, the Liverpool Echo and Asia Times revealed that the site remained sans any construction. North Point Global as well as its subcontractor “Bilt” had both declared bankruptcy, and the small investors (mostly middle class couples) who had already paid money for the apartments had lost most of their savings in them.[340]
Liverpool’s historic position as one of the most important trading ports in the world has meant that over time many grand buildings have been constructed in the city as headquarters for shipping firms, insurance companies, banks and other large firms. The great wealth this brought then allowed for the development of grand civic buildings, which were designed to allow the local administrators to ‘run the city with pride’.[341]
The commercial district is centred on the Castle Street, Dale Street and Old Hall Street areas of the city, with many of the area’s roads still following their medieval layout. Having developed predominantly over a period of three centuries, the area is regarded as one of the most important architectural locations in the city, as recognised by its inclusion in Liverpool’s former World Heritage site.[342]
The area around William Brown Street is referred to as the city’s ‘Cultural Quarter’, owing to the presence of numerous civic buildings, including the William Brown Library, Walker Art Gallery, Picton Reading Rooms and World Museum Liverpool. The area is dominated by neo-classical architecture, of which the most prominent, St George’s Hall,[347] is widely regarded as the best example of a neo-classical building anywhere in Europe.[348] A Grade I listed building, it was constructed between 1840 and 1855 to serve a variety of civic functions in the city and its doors are inscribed with “S.P.Q.L.” (Latin senatus populusque Liverpudliensis), meaning “the senate and people of Liverpool”. William Brown Street is also home to numerous public monuments and sculptures, including Wellington’s Column and the Steble Fountain. Many others are located around the area, particularly in St John’s Gardens, which was specifically developed for this purpose.[349] The William Brown Street area has been likened to a modern recreation of the Roman Forum.[350]
While the majority of Liverpool’s architecture dates from the mid-18th century onwards, there are several buildings that pre-date this time. One of the oldest surviving buildings is Speke Hall, a Tudormanor house located in the south of the city, which was completed in 1598.[351] The building is one of the few remaining timber framed Tudor houses left in the north of England and is particularly noted for its Victorian interiors, which were added in the mid-19th century.[352] In addition to Speke Hall, many of the city’s other oldest surviving buildings are also former manor houses including Croxteth Hall and Woolton Hall, which were completed in 1702 and 1704 respectively.[353]
Liverpool is noted for having two Cathedrals, each of which imposes over the landscape around it.[358] The Anglican Cathedral, which was constructed between 1904 and 1978, is the largest Cathedral in Britain[359] and the fifth largest in the world. Designed and built in Gothic style, it is regarded as one of the greatest buildings to have been constructed during the 20th century[360] and was described by former British Poet Laureate, John Betjeman, as “one of the great buildings of the world”.[361] The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral was constructed between 1962 and 1967 and is known as one of the first cathedrals to break the traditional longitudinal design.[362]
In the 21st century, many parts of Liverpool’s city centre have undergone significant redevelopment and regeneration after years of decline. So far, the largest of these developments has been Liverpool One, which saw almost £1 billion invested in the redevelopment of 42 acres (17 hectares) of land, providing new retail, commercial, residential and leisure space.[363] Around the north of the city centre, several new skyscrapers have also been constructed including the RIBA award-winning Unity Buildings and West Tower, which at 140m is Liverpool’s tallest building. Many redevelopment schemes are also in progress including Circus,[364]King’s Dock,[365]Paddington Village[366] and Liverpool Waters.[367]
Liverpool has an extensive transport infrastructure that connects the city with its metropolitan area, the rest of the United Kingdom, Europe and the world. Various modes of transport provide considerable connections by road, rail, air and sea. The local network of buses, trains and ferries is managed by Merseytravel on behalf of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region. The Mayor and Combined Authority have control of a devolved transport budget and associated transport powers for this local system. The city’s major port and international airport provide global links for both passengers and freight.[371][372]
The city sits at the centre of a much larger metropolitan area. The city’s suburbs run contiguously into the neighbouring boroughs defined by the ONS as the Liverpool Built-up Area. The wider City Region and Merseyside in general is densely urbanised and divided by several motorways and major roads. The city is served by a network motorways. The three motorways in closest proximity are the M58 to the north, and M62 and M57 to the east.
To the east, the M62 runs across the north of England, ultimately connecting Liverpool with Hull on the opposite coast, and along the route with several large cities including Manchester, Leeds and Bradford. The M62 also provides a connection to both the M6 and M1 motorways, providing indirect links to more distant areas including Birmingham, London, Nottingham, Preston and Sheffield.[374][375]
To the east, but running north-south, the M57 acts as a 10-mile ring road for the city itself and links the M62 and M58 motorways, as well as the A580 East Lancashire Road providing a link directly to the A5300 that links to the bridges that cross the Mersey to the south of the city.[376]
Liverpool’s urban railway network, known as Merseyrail, is one of the busiest and most extensive in the country. The network provides approximately 30 million passenger journeys per year, across a system of 69 stations throughout Liverpool’s metropolitan area, within the formal boundaries of the Liverpool city region and adjacent areas of Cheshire and Lancashire.[422][423][424][425]
Local bus services within and around Liverpool are managed by Merseytravel[433] and are run by several different companies, including Arriva and Stagecoach. The two principal termini for local buses are Queen Square bus station (located near Lime Street railway station) for services north and east of the city, and Liverpool One bus station (located near the Royal Albert Dock) for services to the south and east.[434]Cross-river services to the Wirral use roadside terminus points in Castle Street and Sir Thomas Street. A night bus service also operates on Saturdays providing services from the city centre across Liverpool and wider region.[435]Tour bus services are provided by Maghull Coaches which allow tourists to hop-on-hop-off and view historical landmarks and attractions, as well as Liverpool F.C. and Beatles related locations.[436][437]National Express services operate from the Liverpool One bus station to and from destinations across the UK.[438] In 2023, the Liverpool city region confirmed plans to become the second place outside London to implement bus franchising. Local leaders have argued that it will improve services by transferring control over fares, ticketing and routes from bus companies to the Combined Authority. The full implementation of bus franchising will take place by the end of 2028.[439][440]
Mersey Ferry
A Mersey Ferry (foreground) with the Liverpool waterfront in the distance
The cross-river ferry service in Liverpool, known as the Mersey Ferry, is managed and operated by Merseytravel, with services operating between the Pier Head in Liverpool city centre and both Woodside in Birkenhead and Seacombe in Wallasey. Services operate at intervals ranging from 20 minutes, at peak times, to every hour during the middle of the day and at weekends.[441] Despite remaining an important transport link between the city and the Wirral Peninsula, the Mersey Ferry has become an increasingly popular tourist attraction within the city, with daytime River Explorer Cruises providing passengers with an historical overview of the River Mersey and surrounding areas.[442]
Cycling and scooters
A scooter-sharing system and electric bicycle scheme operates throughout Liverpool which allows residents and visitors to move around the city on rented scooters and bicycles. The scheme is operated by Swedish technology company Voi, and riders are able to pick up and drop off bikes and scooters at various locations around the city.[443][444][445]National Cycle Route 56, National Cycle Route 62 and National Cycle Route 810 run through Liverpool.
As with other large cities, Liverpool is an important cultural centre within the United Kingdom, incorporating music, performing arts, museums and art galleries, literature and nightlife among others. In 2008, the cultural heritage of the city was celebrated with the city holding the title of European Capital of Culture, during which time a wide range of cultural celebrations took place in the city, including Go Superlambananas! and La Princesse. Liverpool has also held Europe’s largest music and poetry event, the Welsh national Eisteddfod, three times, despite being in England, in 1884, 1900, and 1929.
Well established festivals in the city include Africa Oyé and Brazilica which are the UK’s largest free African and Brazilian music festivals respectively.[454][455] The dance music festival Creamfields was established by the Liverpool-based Cream clubbing brand which started life as a weekly event at Nation nightclub. There are numerous music venues located across the city, however, the Liverpool Arena is by far the largest. Opened in 2008, the 11,000-seat arena hosted the MTV Europe Music Awards the same year, and since then has played host to world-renowned acts such as Andrea Bocelli, Beyoncé, Elton John, Kanye West, Kasabian, The Killers, Lady Gaga, Oasis, Pink, Rihanna, and UB40.
On 7 October 2022, the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced that Liverpool would host the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 on behalf of the previous year’s winning country Ukraine, which was unable to meet the demands of hosting the event due to security concerns caused by the Russian invasion of the country. The contest was held at Liverpool Arena, and consisted of two semi-finals on 9 and 11 May and a final on 13 May 2023. This was the first time that the contest took place in the city, and was also a record-extending ninth time that the UK has hosted the contest, having last done so in Birmingham in 1998.[456]
Liverpool has more galleries and national museums than any other city in the United Kingdom apart from London.[11]National Museums Liverpool is the only English national collection based wholly outside London.[457] The Tate Liverpool gallery houses the modern art collection of the Tate in the North of England and was, until the opening of Tate Modern, the largest exhibition space dedicated to modern art in the United Kingdom. The FACT centre hosts touring multimedia exhibitions, while the Walker Art Gallery houses one of the most impressive permanent collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world.[458]Sudley House contains another major collection of pre-20th-century art.[459] Liverpool University’s Victoria Building was re-opened as a public art gallery and museum to display the university’s artwork and historical collections which include the largest display of art by Audubon outside the US.[460] A number of artists have also come from the city, including painter George Stubbs who was born in Liverpool in 1724.
The Liverpool Biennial festival of arts runs from mid-September to late November and comprises three main sections; the International, The Independents and New Contemporaries although fringe events are timed to coincide.[461] It was during the 2004 festival that Yoko Ono‘s work “My mummy was beautiful” invited controversy when photographs of a woman’s breast and crotch were exhibited on the main shopping street.[462]
Literature
Felicia Hemans (née Browne) was born in Dale Street, Liverpool, in 1793, although she later moved to Flintshire, in Wales. Felicia was born in Liverpool, a granddaughter of the Venetianconsul in that city. Her father’s business soon brought the family to Denbighshire in North Wales, where she spent her youth. They made their home near Abergele and St. Asaph (Flintshire), and it is clear that she came to regard herself as Welsh by adoption, later referring to Wales as “Land of my childhood, my home and my dead”. Her first poems, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, were published in Liverpool in 1808, when she was only fourteen, arousing the interest of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who briefly corresponded with her. [463]
An engraving of a painting of The Wishing Gate. by S. F. Serres was published in Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834 with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon to which she adds the note ‘I believe that to this haunted gate, a common superstition is attached, namely, that to wish, and to have that wish fulfilled, is the result of such wish being uttered while passing’. It stood on the North Shore before the docks were built and was a place where farewells could be waved to departing voyagers.[464]
Plaque in Campbell Square commemorating Charles Dickens who from 1842 gave public readings of his novels at St George’s Hall, and who for one day in 1860 was appointed a special police constable in the city while researching a novel.
A number of notable authors have visited Liverpool, including Daniel Defoe, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, Thomas De Quincey, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Hugh Walpole. Defoe, after visiting the city, described it, as “one of the wonders of Britain in his ‘Tour through England and Wales’”.[465] Melville’s novel Redburn deals with the first seagoing voyage of 19 years old Wellingborough Redburn between New York and Liverpool in 1839. Largely autobiographical, the middle sections of the book are set in Liverpool and describe the young merchantman’s wanderings, and his reflections.[463] From 1842 to 1869, Dickens visited the city to give public readings of his novels.[466] Hawthorne was stationed in Liverpool as United States consul between 1853 and 1856.[467] Hopkins served as priest at St Francis Xavier Church, Langdale St., Liverpool, between 1879 and 81.[468] Although he is not known to have ever visited Liverpool, Jung famously had a vivid dream of the city which he analysed in one of his works.[469]
Her Benny, a novel telling the tragic story of Liverpool street urchins in the 1870s, written by Methodist preacher Silas K. Hocking, was a best-seller and the first book to sell a million copies in the author’s lifetime.[470] The prolific writer of adventure novels, Harold Edward Bindloss (1866–1945), was born in Liverpool.
The writer, docker and political activist George Garrett was born in Seacombe, on the Wirral Peninsula in 1896 and was brought up in Liverpool’s South end, around Park Road, the son of a fierce Liverpool–Irish Catholic mother and a staunch ‘Orange’ stevedore father. In the 1920s and 1930s, his organisation within the Seamen’s Vigilance Committees, unemployed demonstrations, and hunger marches from Liverpool became part of a wider cultural force. He spoke at reconciliation meetings in sectarian Liverpool, and helped found the Unity Theatre in the 1930s as part of the Popular Front against the rise of fascism, particularly its echoes in the Spanish Civil War. Garrett died in 1966.[471]
The novelist and playwright James Hanley (1897–1985) was born in Kirkdale, Liverpool, in 1897 (not Dublin, nor 1901 as he generally implied) to a working-class family.[472] Hanley grew up close to the docks and much of his early writing is about seamen. The Furys (1935) is first in a sequence of five loosely autobiographical novels about working-class life in Liverpool. James Hanley’s brother, novelist Gerald Hanley (1916–92) was also born in Liverpool (not County Cork, Ireland, as he claimed).[473] While he published a number of novels he also wrote radio plays for the BBC as well as some film scripts, most notably The Blue Max (1966).[474] He was also one of several scriptwriters for a life of Gandhi (1964).[475] Novelist Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010) was born in Liverpool and raised in nearby Formby. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often set among the English working classes. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996 and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. The Times newspaper named Bainbridge among their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945″.[476]
J. G. Farrell was born in Liverpool in 1935 but left at the outbreak of war in 1939.[477] A novelist of Irish descent, Farrell gained prominence for his historical fiction, most notably his Empire Trilogy (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip), dealing with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule. However, his career ended when he drowned in Ireland in 1979 at the age of 44.
Helen Forrester was the pen name of June Bhatia (née Huband) (1919–2011),[478][479] who was known for her books about her early childhood in Liverpool during the Great Depression, including Twopence to Cross the Mersey (1974), as well as several works of fiction. During the late 1960s the city became well known for the Liverpool poets, who include Roger McGough and the late Adrian Henri. An anthology of poems, The Mersey Sound, written by Henri, McGough and Brian Patten, has sold well since it was first being published in 1967.
Liverpool has produced several noted writers of horror fiction, often set on Merseyside – Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker and Peter Atkins among them. A collection of Liverpudlian horror fiction, Spook City was edited by a Liverpool expatriate, Angus Mackenzie, and introduced by Doug Bradley, also from Liverpool.[480] Bradley is famed for portraying Barker’s creation Pinhead in the Hellraiser series of films.
Performing arts
The Empire Theatre has the largest two-tier auditorium in the UK.
Liverpool has a thriving and varied nightlife. The majority of the city’s late-night restaurants, bars, pubs, nightclubs, music venues and comedy clubs are located in a number of distinct districts.
Figures by the Liverpool BID Company suggest that the busiest nights of the week in Liverpool city centre are Friday and Saturday. Using cameras to track the flow of people in key locations between 7 pm and 4 am, at least 1.5 million people pass through the city centre every Friday night and almost 2 million people on Saturday nights. The data demonstrates that Monday night is the quietest night of the week in the city centre and footfall then increases every single night to reach its peak on Saturday nights. 125,889 people worked in the city’s night time economy as of 2022, according to the Liverpool BID Company.[488][489][490]
In Liverpool primary and secondary education is available in various forms supported by the state including secular, Church of England, Jewish, and Roman Catholic. Islamic education is available at primary level, but there is no secondary provision. One of Liverpool’s important early schools was The Liverpool Blue Coat School; founded in 1708 as a charitable school. It is now a stategrammar school.
The Liverpool Blue Coat School is the top-performing school in the city with 100% 5 or more A*-C grades at GCSE resulting in the 30th best GCSE results in the country and an average point score per student of 1087.4 in A/AS levels.[495] Other notable schools include Liverpool College founded in 1840 Merchant Taylors’ School founded in 1620.[496] Another of Liverpool’s notable senior schools is St. Edward’s College situated in the West Derby area of the city. Historic grammar schools, such as the Liverpool Institute High School and Liverpool Collegiate School—both closed in the 1980s—are still remembered as centres of academic excellence. Bellerive Catholic College is the city’s top-performing non-selective school, based upon GCSE results in 2007.
The University of Liverpool was established in 1881 as University College Liverpool. In 1884, it became part of the federal Victoria University. Following a Royal Charter and Act of Parliament in 1903, it became an independent university, the University of Liverpool, with the right to confer its own degrees. It was the first university to offer degrees in biochemistry, architecture, civic design, veterinary science, oceanography and social science.
Liverpool Hope University, which was formed through the merger of three colleges, the earliest of which was founded in 1844, gained university status in 2005. It is the only ecumenical university in Europe.[497] It is situated on both sides of Taggart Avenue in Childwall and has a second campus in the city centre (the Cornerstone).
The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, founded to address some of the problems created by trade, continues today as a post-graduate school affiliated with the University of Liverpool and houses an anti-venom repository.
Liverpool John Moores University was previously a polytechnic, and gained status in 1992. It is named in honour of Sir John Moores, one of the founders of the Littlewoods football pools and retail group, who was a major benefactor. The institution was previously owned and run by Liverpool City Council. It traces it lineage to the Liverpool Mechanics’ institute, opened in 1823, making it by this measure England’s third-oldest university.
There are two Jewish schools in Liverpool, both belonging to the King David Foundation. King David School, Liverpool, is the High School and the King David Primary School. There is also a King David Kindergarten, featured in the community centre of Harold House. These schools are all run by the King David Foundation located in Harold House in Childwall; conveniently next door to the Childwall Synagogue.
The two clubs contest the Merseyside derby, dubbed the ‘friendly derby’. Despite the name the fixture is known for its keen rivalry, having seen more sending-offs in this fixture than any other. Unlike many other derbies it is not rare for families in the city to contain supporters of both clubs.[498] Liverpool F.C. is the English and British club with the most European Cup titles with six, the latest in 2019.
Liverpool has played at Anfield since 1892, when the club was formed to occupy the stadium following Everton’s departure due to a dispute with their landlord. Liverpool are still playing there 125 years later, although the ground has been completely rebuilt since the 1970s. The Spion Kop (rebuilt as an all-seater stand in 1994–95) was the most famous part of the ground, gaining cult status across the world due to the songs and celebrations of the many fans who packed onto its terraces. Anfield as capacity for 54,000 spectators in comfort and is a distinctive landmark in an area filled with smaller and older buildings. Liverpool club also has a multimillion-pound youth training facility called The Academy.
After leaving Anfield in 1892, Everton moved to Goodison Park on the opposite side of Stanley Park. The ground was opened on 24 August 1892, by Lord Kinnaird and Frederick Wall of the FA but the first crowds to attend the ground saw a short athletics meeting followed by a selection of music and a fireworks display. Everton’s first game there was on 2 September 1892 when they beat Bolton 4–2. It was one of the host venues during the 1966 FIFA World Cup. It now has the capacity for just under 40,000 spectators all-seated, but the last expansion took place in 1994 when a new Park End Stand gave the stadium an all-seater capacity. The Goodison Road Stand dates back to the 1970s, while the Gwladys Street Stand and Bullens Road Stand are refurbished pre-Second World War structures.
Everton is currently in the process of relocating, with a stadium move first mooted as early as 1996.[499] In 2003, the club were forced to abandon plans for a 55,000-seat stadium at King’s Dock due to financial constraints,[500] with further proposed moves to Kirkby (comprising part of Destination Kirkby, moving the stadium just beyond Liverpool’s council boundary into Kirkby) and Walton Hall Park similarly scrapped.
Aintree Racecourse in the adjacent Metropolitan Borough of Sefton is home to the world’s most famous steeple-chase, the Randox Grand National which takes place annually in early April. The race meeting attracts horse owners/ jockeys from around the world to compete in the demanding 4-mile (6.5-kilometre) and 30-fence course. There have been many memorable moments of the Grand National, for instance, the 100/1 outsider Foinavon in 1967, the dominant Red Rum and Ginger McCain of the 1970s and Mon Mome (100/1) who won the 2009 meeting. In 2010, the National became the first horse race to be televised in high-definition in the UK.
Wavertree Sports Park is home to the Liverpool Harriers athletics club, which has produced such athletes as Curtis Robb, Allyn Condon (the only British athlete to compete at both the Summer and Winter Olympics), and Katarina Johnson-Thompson; Great Britain was represented by Johnson-Thompson at the 2012 London Olympics in the women’s heptathlon, and she would go on to win the gold medal at the 2019 World Championships, giving Liverpool its first gold medal and breaking the British record in the process.
Gymnastics
In August 2012, Liverpool gymnast Beth Tweddle won an Olympic bronze medal in London 2012 in the uneven bars at her third Olympic Games, thus becoming the most decorated British gymnast in history. Park Road Gymnastics Centre provides training to a high level.
Swimming
Liverpool has produced several swimmers who have represented their nation at major championships such as the Olympic Games. The most notable of which is Steve Parry who claimed a bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics in the 200m butterfly. Others include Herbert Nickel Haresnape, Margaret Kelly, Shellagh Ratcliffe and Austin Rawlinson. There is a purpose-built aquatics centre at Wavertree Sports Park, which opened in 2008. The City of Liverpool Swimming Club has been National Speedo League Champions 8 out of the last 11 years.
Professional basketball came to the city in 2007 with the entry of Everton Tigers, later known as Mersey Tigers, into the elite British Basketball League. The club was originally associated with Everton F.C., and was part of the Toxteth Tigers youth development programme, which reached over 1,500 young people every year.[509] The Tigers began to play in Britain’s top league for the 2007–08 season, playing at the Greenbank Sports Academy before moving into the newly completed Echo Arena during that season. After the 2009–10 season, Everton F.C. withdrew funding from the Tigers, who then changed their name to Mersey Tigers. The club were expelled from the British Basketball League in 2013 due to financial problems.[510]
Baseball
Liverpool is one of three cities which still host the traditional sport of British baseball and it hosts the annual England-Wales international match every two years, alternating with Cardiff and Newport. Liverpool Trojans are the oldest existing baseball club in the UK.
Cycling
The 2014 Tour of Britain cycle race began in Liverpool on 7 September, using a city centre circuit to complete 130 km (80.8 mi) of racing.[511] The Tour of Britain took nine stages and finished in London on 14 September.
Other
A 2016 study of UK fitness centres found that, of the top 20 UK urban areas, Liverpool had the highest number of leisure and sports centres per capita, with 4.3 centres per 100,000 of the city population.[512]
The city has one daily newspaper: the Echo, published by Reach plc. The Liverpool Daily Post was also published until 2013. The UK’s first online only weekly newspaper called Southport Reporter (Southport and Mersey Reporter), is also one of the many other news outlets that cover the city. The independent media organisation The Post[513] also covers Liverpool, while Nerve magazine publishes articles and reviews of cultural events.
Liverpool TV is a local television station serving Liverpool City Region and surrounding areas. The station is owned and operated by Made Television Ltd and forms part of a group of eight local TV stations. It broadcasts from studios and offices in Liverpool.
The ITV region which covers Liverpool is ITV Granada. In 2006, the Television company opened a new newsroom in the Royal Liver Building. Granada’s regional news broadcasts were produced at the Royal Albert Dock News Centre during the 1980s and 1990s.[514] The BBC also opened a new newsroom on Hanover Street in 2006.
ITV’s daily magazine programme This Morning was broadcast from studios at Royal Albert Dock until 1996, when production was moved to London. Granada’s short-lived shopping channel “Shop!” was also produced in Liverpool until it was cancelled in 2002.[515]
Liverpool is the home of the TV production company Lime Pictures, formerly Mersey Television, which produced the now-defunct soap operas Brookside and Grange Hill. It also produces the soap opera Hollyoaks, which was formerly filmed in Chester and began on Channel 4 in 1995. All three series were/are largely filmed in the Childwall area of Liverpool.
Liverpool has also featured in films;[517] see List of films set in Liverpool for some of them. In films the city has “doubled” for London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Moscow, Dublin, Venice and Berlin.[43][518]
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“Lyrpole, alias Lyverpoole, a pavid towne, hath but a chapel … The king hath a castelet there, and the Earl of Darbe hath a stone howse there. Irisch merchants cum much thither, as to a good haven … At Lyrpole is smaul custom payed, that causith marchantes to resorte thither. Good marchandis at Lyrpole, and much Irish yarrn that Manchester men do buy there …” – John Leland, Itinerary, c. 1536–1539[519]
“Liverpoole is one of the wonders of Britain … In a word, there is no town in England, London excepted, that can equal [it] for the fineness of the streets, and the beauty of the buildings.” – Daniel Defoe, A tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1721–1726
“[O]ne of the neatest, best towns I have seen in England.” – John Wesley. Journal, 1755
“I have not come here to be insulted by a set of wretches, every brick in whose infernal town is cemented with an African’s blood.” – George Frederick Cooke (1756–1812), an actor responding to being hissed at when he came onstage drunk during a visit to Liverpool[520]
“That immense City which stands like another Venice upon the water … where there are riches overflowing and every thing which can delight a man who wishes to see the prosperity of a great community and a great empire … This quondam village, now fit to be the proud capital of any empire in the world, has started up like an enchanted palace even in the memory of living men.” – Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine, 1791
“I have heard of the greatness of Liverpool, but the reality far surpasses my expectation.” – Prince Albert, speech, 1846
“Liverpool … has become a wonder of the world. It is the New York of Europe, a world city rather than merely British provincial.” – Illustrated London News, 15 May 1886
“The dream represented my situation at the time. I can still see the greyish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of the rain. Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque – just as I felt then. But I had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that is why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the “pool of life.” The “liver,” according to an old view, is the seat of life, that which makes to live.” – C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1928
“The centre is imposing, dignified and darkish, like a city in a rather gloomy Victorian novel … We had now arrived in the heart of the big city, and as usual it was almost a heart of darkness. But it looked like a big city, there was no denying that. Here, emphatically, was the English seaport second only to London. The very weight of stone emphasised that fact. And even if the sun never seems to properly rise over it, I like a big city to proclaim itself a big city at once…” – J. B. Priestley, English Journey, 1934
“If Liverpool can get into top gear again, there is no limit to the city’s potential. The scale and resilience of the buildings and people is amazing – it is a world city, far more so than London and Manchester. It doesn’t feel like anywhere else in Lancashire: comparisons always end up overseas – Dublin, or Boston, or Hamburg. The city is tremendous, and so, right up to the First World War, were the abilities of the architects who built over it. The centre is humane and convenient to walk around in, but never loses its scale. And, in spite of the bombings and the carelessness, it is still full of superb buildings. Fifty years ago it must have outdone anything in England.” – Ian Nairn, Britain’s Changing Towns, 1967
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