St Mary's Church, Walton-on-the-Hill

St Mary's Church in Walton, formerly Walton-on-the-Hill, holds a unique place in the history of Liverpool, for it was the ancient mother church of the city — the parish church from which Liverpool itself grew. A Grade II listed building, standing on a site of worship that goes back to before the Norman Conquest, it was originally the parish church of a great district that included the village that would become the second city of the British Empire. Though much rebuilt over the centuries, and largely reconstructed after the bombing of the Second World War, St Mary's remains the historic religious heart of Walton and a building of the deepest significance to Liverpool's past.

St Mary's was originally the parish church of the Hundred of West Derby, and of the area that contained what was to become the city of Liverpool — for in the early Middle Ages Liverpool was merely a small chapelry within the vast parish of Walton, and the people of the future great port came to Walton for their baptisms, marriages and burials. A church on the site is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and it was rebuilt in 1326; the nave was rebuilt again in 1741 and the chancel in 1810. None of these earlier buildings survives, however, the oldest part of the present church being the west tower, built in 1829–32 to the design of John Broadbent, a pupil of the great architect and Gothic scholar Thomas Rickman. The north side of the church was remodelled in 1840, the chancel rebuilt in 1843, and in 1911 a south aisle with a chapel, ambulatory and vestry was added.

The greatest catastrophe in the church's history came in the May Blitz of 1941, when Liverpool — a vital Atlantic port — suffered some of the heaviest air raids of the entire war. Incendiary bombs destroyed most of St Mary's, leaving only the tower standing. The body of the church was rebuilt between 1947 and 1953 by the architects Quiggin and Gee, who retained the exterior much as before but created a new interior, with concrete vaults on a steel frame and a stone gallery at the west end. The church is now open to visitors, who can see within it aspects that date back to the Norman era, surviving relics of its ancient origins.

The Perpendicular west tower, the oldest part of the church, rises in four stages, with angle buttresses topped by pinnacles, a clock on each face, and an embattled parapet with pierced tracery — a dignified landmark in the district. Inside, the chapel contains a reredos incorporating a copy of Fra Angelico's "Deposition of Christ", painted in 1860 by Vincenzo Corsi, which formerly hung at Haigh Hall, and the church preserves a sandstone font and other historic features. Today St Mary's continues as an active Anglican parish church in the Diocese of Liverpool, part of the Walton Team Ministry — still, after a thousand years, the mother church of the area.

The church stands in Walton, in the north of the city of Liverpool, in Merseyside. The district is famous above all for football, for both of Liverpool's great clubs play close by: Anfield, the home of Liverpool FC, and Goodison Park, the home of Everton FC, are both within easy reach, with the green expanse of Stanley Park between them. Walton Hall Park, the wider city of Liverpool with its waterfront, its two cathedrals and its museums, and the Mersey itself are all close at hand.

From a church recorded in Domesday as the mother church of the district that became Liverpool, through its medieval and Georgian rebuildings, the tower of 1829–32, the destruction of the May Blitz and the post-war reconstruction, St Mary's Church gathers a thousand years of history into one building. A Grade II listed church and the ancient mother church of Liverpool, it remains the living parish church of Walton — a place of the deepest significance to the history of one of England's greatest cities.