Prior to colonization, Llanerch was land belonging to the
Lenape tribe. It fell under possession of
William Penn by royal charter, and was subsequently settled by Welsh
Quakers in what is known as the
Welsh Tract. The land that would become Llanerch was originally granted to Lewis David, a Welsh Quaker. The Welsh farmers that settled Llanerch include the names Bewley, Davis, Albertson and Taylor. Until the 1890s, Llanerch remained mostly undeveloped, with only a handful of families occupying the area. The use of the name in the area dates at least to 1867. The 1895 subdivision development in Llanerch was one of the Township's first, with twelve dwellings constructed by architects Robert G. Kennedy and Frank A. Hays who both resided in the neighborhood. The two purchased 200 acres of "beautiful rolling ground" from businessman Henry Albertson, with the highest point of the site allowing a view of Philadelphia City Hall. Llanerch was described as being built upon a high knoll and as an upland, that was "high, dry, cool" with access to freshwater from the Springfield Water Company. The new subdivision was planned with "Telford roads, granolithic pavements, under drains, [and] electric lights" with a minimum lot size of 50 by 150 feet. The streets were laid out to magnify the distance between one home and next, offering focal points and a sense of destination between houses. Llanerch had two lines meeting at Llanerch Junction by the end of the 19th century and a further third line to Ardmore in 1902. Three lines of the four original Haverford Township lines, the two trolley lines on Darby Road and West Chester Pike and the
Newtown Square Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, met in Llanerch. The fourth line, the
Norristown High Speed Line, still runs along the eastern edge of Haverford Township.. There is a memorial to the historical background involving the case in the form of Llanerch Crossing, a small park with a mural and markers detailing the history of the feud. Llanerch is a politically active community. Its first association was formed in 1904, the Llanerch Citizen's Association, which included a special patrol officer that acted as a form of policeman. The same association held a "mass meeting" in 1910 to protest the Springfield Water Company that raised rates in three counties. In 1916, a group of Llanerch residents pushed to create an independent borough, carved out of Haverford Township. The group, citing an irritation of "not getting back enough in betterments for the amount of taxes it pays into the Township treasury." gray granite stone from Llanerch's quarry, now the Quarry Center. Llanerch sits next to a former quarry site, now a shopping center. The quarry provided granite stone that was used in many of the pre-1930s buildings of Haverford Township and the Main Line, including the Haverford Middle School. Many Llanerch homes, both of its churches, and the former
Llanerch School, are built in this stone, sometimes referred to as
Wissahickon schist. In 1981, a civic group called RAG (Residents Against Garbage) was formed in Llanerch to protest turning the abandoned quarry - a site of 32 acres of which 22 was a hole at its deepest point 300 feet - to a sanitary landfill, citing the present issue of "rats as big as cats". RAG distributed 5,000 flyers and drew more than 200 people to a meeting in opposition to the landfill plan. == Services ==