Perched on elevated ground in north Liverpool, Everton is a suburb in Merseyside that borders Vauxhall to the west, Kirkdale to the north and Anfield to the north-east. Historically part of Lancashire, Everton falls within the Liverpool Walton constituency. At the 2011 Census, 14,782 people lived here.
The Name and Its Origins
The name Everton is generally traced to the Saxon word eofor, meaning wild boar that lives in forests. In 1830, however, local historian Robert Syers put forward a rival theory. He pointed out that earlier residents referred to the place as ‘Yerton’, a usage also noted by James Stonehouse some thirty years later. Syers argued that in the Domesday Book of 1086, Everton appeared as Hiretun – meaning higher-town – a label that would have reflected its elevated position above the surrounding area. He proposed that ‘Yerton’ was simply a corruption of Hiretun or Oureton, both translating roughly as higher-town or over-town.
From Ancient Settlement to Merchant Suburb
Everton is one of the oldest settlements in the region, recorded alongside Liverpool as one of the six unnamed berewicks of West Derby. For most of its history it was very small: a census-type survey from 1327 counted just nineteen heads of household, implying a total population of around ninety-five people. By 1692 only 135 people lived here, and by 1714 that figure had barely reached 140. Before the mid-eighteenth century, most residents were working farmers and smallholders of modest means, though wealthier families who had retired from commerce occasionally settled on the hill. The gap between social classes was narrow in both lifestyle and manner.
From the late eighteenth century the prosperity of nearby Liverpool began drawing its wealthier merchants up to Everton. The population climbed from 253 in 1769 to 370 by 1790, then 499 by 1801 and 913 by 1811. By 1815, a large proportion of residents were listed as merchants or gentlemen not engaged in trade. Writing in 1869, James Stonehouse recalled that half a century earlier Everton had been ‘a courtly place, wherein resided the richest merchants, the most distinguished citizens, and the most fashionable and leading families’ – so lofty in status that locals nicknamed them the ‘Everton nobles’. Robert Syers, in his History of Everton published in 1830, credited this merchant class with transforming what had previously been little more than a neglected common into a prosperous township.