Speke

Speke (ˈspiːk) is a suburb of Liverpool. It is southeast of the city centre. Located near the widest part of the River Mersey, it is bordered by the suburbs of Garston and Hunts Cross, and nearby to Halewood, Hale Village, and Widnes. The rural area of Oglet borders its south. History of Liverpool The name derives from the Old English Spec, meaning 'brushwood' or from Middle English Spek(e), meaning 'woodpecker'. It was known as Spec in the Domesday Book, which gave Speke Hall as one of the properties held by Uctred. (Today Speke Hall, now a Tudor wood-framed house, is open to the public.) In the mid 14th century, the manors of Speke, Whiston, Skelmersdale, and Parr were held by William Dacre, 2nd Baron Dacre. Until the 1930s development by Sir Lancelot Keay, Speke was a small village with a population of 400; by the end of the 1950s more than 25,000 people were living in the area. The local All Saints Church was built by the last resident owner of Speke Hall, Miss Adelaide Watt. From 1795 until 1921, the Speke estate had belonged to the Watt family; when the family died out, the estate was placed in trust. It was bought by the Liverpool Corporation in 1928 for £200,000; the corporation's intention was to build a complete self-contained satellite town (at a time when the garden city movement was underway). The parish of Speke became part of the county borough of Liverpool in 1932, having previously belonged to the Whiston Rural District. Constructed between 1930 and 1933, by the start of World War II, Speke Airport was the second busiest in the UK. Retention of control by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in London after the war meant that it had lost its leading position in the UK by the 1950s. The industrial rise of Speke continued until the mid-1970s, when an equally rapid decline ensued over the next 20 years, particularly during the recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s. The closure of the Bryant and May match factory in December 1994 was a noted example of these problems, as was the closure of the Triumph car plant more than a decade before.