WEST DERBY, a township in Lancashire, England, now virtually a suburb of Liverpool, about 4 miles northeast of Liverpool Exchange. It is chiefly composed of houses inhabited by the wealthier merchants of Liverpool. The parish church of St Mary was re-erected in 1856 in the Early English style from the designs of Sir Gilbert Scott, and has a massive central tower with four pinnacles. The site of the former church is marked by a cross. Attached to the church of St James, also a modern structure in the Early English style, there is a library of 1800 volumes. In the centre of the old village there is an old court-house, erected in 1662, now belonging to the marquis of Salisbury as lord of the manor. Croxteth Hall, the seat of the earl of Sefton, is in the immediate vicinity. The population of the urban sanitary district (area 5561 acres) was 27,292 in 1871 and 33,614 in 1881.

In Saxon times West Derby gave its name to a hundred. Edward the Confessor had a castle there, the site of which is still called the Castle Hill. In 1266 the manor was bestowed on Edmund, earl of Lancaster. When Henry de Bolingbroke, duke of Lancaster, became king, this and other manors reverted to the crown. In the 4th of Charles I. it was granted to various citizens of London, who resold it in 1639 to James, Lord Stanley and Strange. The property of the Stanleys was afterwards partly sequestrated and partly alienated.