Liverpudlians walk on water, or at least where water once was, as is shown in a new map of the port on the eve of a historic rebellion. David Charters reports

AS SHE raises herself on to a tall, rather unforgiving, aluminium chair to drink from her cardboard beaker of dark coffee, the little patriot, in red Eskimo-style boots and vivid blue jeans, is perched somewhere between the D and the H of Old Hall Street on her splendid new map of 17th-century Liverpool.

But her mind is rolling half a mile across the city centre towards another spot, where happened events that she believes to have been the most important in the history of this city, which she loves so much.

To help others share her enthusiasm, Jean Grant has designed an information pamphlet and map, which she hopes will go through every front-door in the city and into the hands of the thousands of visitors expected for next year’s European Capital of Culture festivities. It tells of Liverpool’s little-known medieval past.

Of course, on August 28 this year, we celebrated the 800th anniversary of King John granting the Letters Patent, establi-shing Liverpool as a port.

Five days earlier, he had obtained the hamlet from Henry Fitzwarin in exchange for other land. The Letters Patent, or Royal Charter as it is more popularly known, invited people to settle around the waterfront.

These tenants each had to pay a shilling (5p) a year to the king, who needed an embarkation point for troops sent to quell uprisings in Ireland.

To most historians this was the great moment for Liverpool.

“Not so,” says Jean, adamantly, as she stares across the table through her owl spectacles.

But, in some ways, she believes, the rights granted to wealthy merchants and cronies by King John’s agents after he selected the port, actually restricted Liverpool’s development.

Jean co-ordinates the ’pool Project, a group dedicated to ensuring the tidal inlet is remembered.

In those days, it was filled by the Mersey, as well as numerous little streams gargling down from the higher ground. The pool occupied what is now the area embracing Pembroke Place, London Road, Stafford Street, Islington, Christian Street, the Old Haymarket, Whitechapel and Paradise Street. Between the 1670s and the middle of the next century, the pool was filled by docks and various other developments, becoming the landscape familiar to us today.

All that was made possible, she says, by Liverpool revolutionaries Edward Marsh and James Whitefield.

Stretch your imagination back to an autumn morning in 1669.

Sullen water in lazy ripples rises in the pool, which had given its name to this small settlement, which would be known to the world as Liverpool.

Smoke plumes from the chimneys of squat stone and timber cottages with thatched roofs. Gulls swoop and hens scratch. Steamed breath shudders from the great heads of horses. On the higher rises there is heathland and a few crofters keep sheep.

Little boats row and sail in and out, carrying small cargoes.

Beyond the sounds of human commerce and exchange, the loudest noise comes from the birds – among them dunlin, greenshank, godwit and oystercatchers.

But then, as now, this was a city divided by wealth. The old pool was the dividing line. One side was comparatively prosperous and organised, containing the seven streets laid out by King John’s agents – Castle, Dale, Bank (now Water), Juggler (High), Chapel Moor and Whiteacre (Old Hall) streets. In addition to the rent paid to the monarch, the early settlers also collected toll and ferry fees and probably added an additional rent into a general purse, an embryonic council tax. This gave the port a sense of identity and collective purpose under the Crown.

But John died in 1216, to be replaced by Henry III, who lacked cash. He flogged Liverpool and its income to the highest bidder, the Earl of Chester. Over the next 400 years the hamlet, which had grown into a small township was owned by several different landlords, who took the money.

Despite these unsatisfactory and fluctuating arrangements, Liverpool Castle had been built, giving the port a major landmark. It would change hands between the Royalists and Parliamentarians and suffer serious damage in the Civil War in the 1640s. About half the population – estimated at 1,000 – had died in the fighting.