Earle Street, Earle Road and Earlestown are all named after members of the Liverpool slave-trading dynasty, the Earle Family who were heavily involved in slavery and the slave trade over four generations, as slave ship owners, captains, and plantation landlords. John Earle 1674-1749 came to Liverpool from Warrington in 1688, joining the house of William Clayton, a Member of Parliament and a well-known merchant who partnered John in financing one of the first legal slave ships to leave Liverpool, the 'Union', in 1699. By 1700, he had established his own business and was trading in a range of commodities including: wine, tobacco, sugar and iron goods, whilst also investing in another two slaving voyages that year, firmly establishing the family interest in slaving that would continue for over a century. In 1709, John was elected Mayor of Liverpool and at some point purchased land off Old Hall Street where Earle Street is named in his honour. At his death in 1749, three of his four surviving children: Ralph, Thomas and William, were trading in beads, one of a variety of commodities used in slave trading on the African coast and were also investors in slaving voyages.
Thomas, the eldest son of William Earle of West Derby, was born in 1754, and was sent, when aged 11 years, to the old-established Manchester Grammar School, where we find his entry registered, together with his brother Ralph's, on the 14th of January, 1765. In 1775-6 he travelled abroad, visited Venice and other places in Italy, and some two years later returned home, took up his freedom on the 28th of April, 1779, and was designated a merchant, " being duly sworn and enrolled as a free Burgess on Birthright." At the age of 27, even though his father was still alive, he was managing the affairs of the house in Hanover Street, and also of that of his uncle at Leghorn. Early in August, 1785, he became engaged to his cousin Maria, whom, on the 20th of April 1786 he married, with both her parents then being dead. Two years later he became Mayor of Liverpool, at the age of 33. He and his brother William, as merchants and shipowners, still maintained the premises in Hanover Street, which, indeed, remained the family house of business but they were not content merely to follow on the lines of their ancestors, but branched into several others. They founded a firm styled Earles and Molyneux, iron merchants; another Earles and Carter, and had other extensive interests in the oil, silk, and sugar trades. However with the population of Liverpool having increased to 77,000, and the town no longer retaining the pleasant and salubrious character for which the once "little creek of Leverpoole " was once famed, Thomas, probably for this reason, now removed from his residence in Hanover Street, went further into the country.
In 1798 he purchased from Mr. Wakefield a property on the Smetham (now Smithdown) Lane, situated in the manor of Toxteth near Edge Hill, close to the site of Earle Road, and was some 88 acres in extent. It was bounded on the south by the Toxteth Brook, which divided it from the estate of the Gascoignes; and on the east by Mr. Burning's and Mr. John Shaw Leigh's land. It ran at the north-east corner up to the Wavertree Lane, and on the north about parallel with the present Tunnel Road. Smetham Lane bounded it on the west, with the exception of one field, on the other side of the lane (now the site of Whittier, Greenleaf and Cullen Streets). After residing for a short time at Brookfarm, an old house then on the estate, Thomas erected, on a part of it called the Spekelands, a large house which he so named, a big square building of white stone, which was only pulled down in 1882, and which commanded fine views of the river and country around where he lived until his death. Standing high, the land from this point sloped gradually down to the Mersey across the once wild moss land of the Toxteth Park, and with the splendid background of the Cheshire hills and Welsh mountains in the distance, the prospect must in those days have been worthy of the admiration with which the old topographers describe it. On the 9th of July, 1822, Thomas died at the age of 68 at Spekelands, and was buried at Walton Church, in a family vault there. A tablet is erected to his memory in the chancel of St. Peter's Church in Liverpool, giving a long eulogium on his life and character and above it is a figure of Justice protecting Innocence, executed by John Gibson, R.A. Mary Earle survived her husband many years, living at Spekelands until the 7th of September, 1849. When she died, aged 88. Thomas Earle of Spekelands had five sons and three daughters. The house was demolished in 1882 and the site of Spekelands rapidly became covered with shops and villas.
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