Bold Street is Liverpool’s best-known independent food street, but it began as a place to make rope. Before the houses were built, the line of the street was a ropewalk more than 300 metres long, where rope for sailing ships was laid out and twisted. The surrounding district is still called the Ropewalks.
A merchant street, and an uncomfortable name
The street was laid out for housing around 1780. It is named after Jonas Bold, a sugar trader, banker and slave trader who became Mayor of Liverpool in 1802. Merchant housing spread outwards from the docks in sequence, Hanover Street first, then Duke Street, then Bold Street, and Bold Street later became one of the city’s principal shopping streets.
The street is closed at its upper end by the Church of St Luke, the “bombed-out church”, gutted in the Liverpool Blitz in 1941 and left as a shell. At its lower end stands the Lyceum, home to Europe’s first lending library, beside an entrance to Liverpool Central station.
Five decades of cafés
Near the top of the street, Café Tabac at No. 126 has traded since 1974 and describes itself as Liverpool’s longest-running independently owned café bar. Bold Street Coffee opened its original café at No. 89 in 2010.
Italian, by way of Scotland
The Crolla family, whose roots are in the village of Picinisco south of Rome and whose earlier generations emigrated to Scotland, opened The Italian Club at No. 85 in 2007. Two years later came The Italian Club Fish at No. 128, founded with chef Maurizio Pellegrini, mixing Scottish-Italian fish and chips with Puglian coastal cooking.
The street that launched national names
Mowgli at No. 69 is the first Mowgli of all, opened on 23 October 2014 by Nisha Katona, a former barrister, and the start of a national chain. Maray at No. 91 opened the same summer, named after the Le Marais district of Paris, and is the original site of a group that has since spread to Manchester and Chester. Bundobust, founded in Leeds, opened its vegetarian Indian street food and craft beer bar at Nos. 17–19 in 2019.
At the lower end, Crust at No. 25 serves wood-fired pizza and fresh pasta, and KO Grill at No. 23 serves charcoal-grilled Middle Eastern, Pakistani and Indian food.
Visiting
Bold Street runs from Liverpool Central station up to St Luke’s, and most of it is pedestrianised. See the Register for opening hours and the full list of Bold Street venues.
Sources: Historic England, National Heritage List for England; the venues’ own published histories; and the sources cited on each linked Old Town Liverpool venue page.