Shenanigans Irish Pub

After World War II bombs devastated Tithebarn Street, one pub refused to fall. Dating from 1841 and cycling through names like The Revolving Lamp and Spirit Vaults, this Irish pub now stands conspicuously alone, with a slight lean from wartime damage, surrounded by empty space where neighboring buildings once stood. The solitary survivor became Shenanigans in 1997, perched on one of Liverpool’s original seven streets, where a 16th century tithe barn once stored farmers’ tithes for Lord Molyneux.

The street itself has been rewritten more than once. It started life as Moor Street, part of King John’s original grid laid out in 1207, before Sir William Molyneux built his tithe barn on the corner of Cheapside in 1523 and gave the whole thoroughfare a new name. By the 1840s the barn was long gone and the street had filled with drinking establishments instead, eighteen of them at last count, most too unremarkable to bother naming. The one that became Shenanigans outlasted all of them, along with most of the street it stands on, which suggests the building has a talent for surviving things that were supposed to end it.