This article was originally posted in the Liverpool Echo on 18th December 2021
The house in Wavertree was once the smallest in Britain
This doorway sandwiched between a pub and a betting shop leads to what was once the smallest house in England (Image: Google Maps)
Only a plaque identifies what was once the smallest house in all of Great Britain, now knocked off the top spot by an even tinier property on the North Wales coast.
The little house on Wavertree High Street is sandwiched between the Cock and Bottle pub and a betting shop.
A plaque from The Wavertree Society branding it ‘THE SMALLEST HOUSE’ reads: “Later part of the Cock & Bottle public house, No.95 High Street was once known as the smallest house in England.”
Wavertree Town Hall is just a few doors down, and it sits around the corner from George Harrison’s childhood home on Arnold Grove.
You’d be forgiven for missing the pint-sized property painted the same colour as the neighbouring pub.
A door and upstairs window consume most of the width of the property’s front, making it hard to imagine who’d have room to live inside.
The house was apparently built around 1850 to replace a narrow side passage.
It is said to measure up at a mere six feet wide and 14ft from front to back.
It was eventually incorporated into the Cock and Bottle pub, possibly in 1952, once serving as the living quarters for the pub’s licensee, according to the Cock and Bottle’s manager Chris Bennett.
But its prior history is mysterious and fascinating.
One story goes that a husband and wife raised eight children in their tiny home, while another tale tells of a particularly large resident who had to go up the stairs sideways.
Repairs and renovations a decade ago transformed the tiny house, and reportedly later a storage room for the Cock and Bottle, into a passageway as it once was.
You can’t imagine it from the outside, but behind the door is a stairway leading to a four bedroom flat above the bookies and pub.
Only a plaque marks it as the miniature house it once was.