Piermaster's Green finds

This group of finds were excavated, along with thousands more, at an archaeological site at Piermaster’s Green, Royal Albert Dock. They represent the history of human activity on the site from the 1840s when the land was reclaimed from the river Mersey up until the Second World War, when three houses on the site were bombed. Numbers 7, 8 and 10 Albert Parade were homes designed by Jessie Hartley and built by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. Piermasters, dock masters and their families lived in these houses for 89 years before an incendiary bomb damaged the homes.

The Museum of Liverpool archaeology team led community excavations in 2021 and 2022. Local residents, members of the Liverpool Black History Research Group, students and the Young Archaeologists Club came together with sketchers and citizen scientists to contribute to the Piermaster’s Green community archaeology project. The project aimed to uncover the history of numbers 7, 8 and 10 Albert Parade, to explore family life on the docks and to actively engage the local community with industrial and historical archaeology in Liverpool. The material culture excavated together with documentary research reveals some of the stories of those who lived and worked on the Liverpool waterfront.  

Dig statistics  

• 7,433 finds were uncovered    

• 111 local volunteers took part

• 101 archaeological contexts 

• 40 Young Archaeologists Club members  and 14 of the Museum of Liverpool’s Emerging Archaeologists visited the site

• 6,950 visitors engaged with archaeology