Viewing window to the Old Dock

Beneath the pavement of the Liverpool One shopping center sits a structure of heavy brick and sandstone bedrock, preserved about forty feet underground. This is the remains of the Old Dock, the world's first commercial enclosed wet dock, which opened on August thirty-first, seventeen fifteen. Before its construction, merchants had to load and unload ships anchored in the river, leaving them at the mercy of the Mersey’s powerful tides. Engineer Thomas Steers designed this basin to hold ships at a constant water level, turning a process that once took weeks into a task completed in days.