This article gives a little flavour of the area as was.
Regent road is the longest of all the streets, running nearly three miles to take the Dock Road from Waterloo Dock to Seaforth. The name refers to George IV, Prince Regent whilst his father, the ‘mad King’ clung to power. Suitably enough, Regent Road became the home so many drinking houses and late night ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ given the Prince Regent’s penchant for such things.
At one time, Liverpools ‘Dock Road’ would’ve been one of the busiest thoroughfares in the world. Hundreds of horses would clatter across the damp cobbles, their waggons groaning under the produce of the Empire. Steam-trains puffed and shunted cargo through the heavy traffic, and burrowed their way into tunnels carved into the sandstone ridge behind Derby Road.
Congestion got so bad that they had to build another railway to link the docks together. This new railway would soar 16 feet above the road, designed just for passengers it would be the first electric overhead Railway in the world.
On the pavements costermongers would push barrows of fish and fruit trundling past cattle being driven to-and-from the ships whilst sailors staggered their way from pub-to-pub having spent their leave and nearly all their money. Urchins, dockers, whores, policemen, immigrants, emigrants, clerks, ship-owners, businessmen – all of human life distilled into six miles of damp cobbles.
