History
Liverpool is one of the oldest urban settlements in Australia, founded on 7 November 1810 as an agricultural centre by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. He named it after Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, who was then the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the British city of Liverpool, upon which some of the area's architecture is based.
Liverpool is at the head of navigation of the Georges River and combined with the Great Southern Railway from Sydney to Melbourne reaching Liverpool in the late 1850s, Liverpool became a major agricultural and transportation centre as the land in the district was very productive.
Until the 1950s, Liverpool was still a satellite town with an agricultural economy based on poultry farming and market gardening. However the tidal surge of urban sprawl which engulfed the rich flatlands west of Sydney known as the Cumberland Plain soon reached Liverpool, and it became an outer suburb of metropolitan Sydney with a strong working-class presence and manufacturing facilities. The Liverpool area also became renowned for its vast Housing Commission estates housing thousands of low-income families after the slum clearance and urban renewal programs in inner-city Sydney in the 1960s.
The following buildings are listed on the Register of the National Estate:
- Technical College (formerly Liverpool Hospital), probably designed by Francis Greenway, circa 1825-30
- Former Court House, corner of Bigge and Moore Streets, extended circa 1855
- Collingwood (also known as Captain Bunker's Cottage), Birkdale Crescent, circa 1810, extended circa 1860
- Liverpool Dam, Georges River, built 1836, designed by David Lennox
- St Luke's Anglican church, designed by Francis Greenway, 1818
Read more about this topic: Liverpool, New South Wales
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