After visiting the city in November, the UN inspectors are claiming that, should Peel’s plans go ahead, it would cause a “serious loss of historical authenticity“.

While UNESCO’s opinions are not a surprise to anyone who’s been following this story from the start, now that a formal response has been received it is up to Liverpool City Council and Peel to respond. English Heritage have also said that they would be happy to become involved “if invited”.

The magazine Seven Streets has published a number of articles on the Peel plans, on both sides of the argument (if I’ve read them right). All are worth reading, but the most recent one (by Robin Brown) especially so It highlights a few key things about the whole slanging match (as do the comments):

• Liverpool City Council asked to become a World Heritage Site. Did they not realize what they were getting into, or do they just not like the responsibility which comes with the award?
• The plans are forever being cited as crucial to jobs and economic prosperity by Joe Anderson and the Council, but as Adrian McEwan points out in his comment, there are other areas of the city which are “ghost towns”. The build-it-and-they-will-come mentality does not always work at the best of times, and certainly not in a recession, when there are vacant tenancies already in existence.
• The article suggests that there are hidden agendas at work, with the business community keen to see the end of the WHS (which they did not necessarily ask for). The UNESCO / Peel Waters shenanigans simply gives them what Brown calls a “battering ram” with which to attack it, in the hopes of longer term implications for future non-Peel developments.
• There is also the mention of agendas on the heritage lobby side. It is suggested that this group are often against development for its own sake, and that the Waters are a good example. I don’t necessarily agree: the heritage lobby (I’m not sure if I count as part of such a thing or not, but anyway…) can certainly be too insistent or restricted in their vision for change, but I don’t think this constitutes an agenda. Either way, this side needs to maintain water-tight and specific arguments if it is to remain credible.

What the Seven Streets article does identify is that the tone of the argument against the WHS has probably been deliberately skewed (towards such things as ‘outsiders’ coming in and stealing our investments) in order to rid the city of a perceived barrier to further development. This doesn’t produce a useful long term solution, but then perhaps not everyone is so keen on one.

The Little Book of Liverpool

Despite Tulloch’s previous book being a general history of the city, the Little Book of Liverpool (LBoL) is a miscellany of Liverpool facts, with less of a history focus. In form (and back cover text) it reminds me of Schott’s Miscellany, a popular book from a few Christmases back, as well as the raft of copycat factbooks which came later. However, there is an understandable concentration on history, both because of Tulloch’s expertise in this area, and arguably because a great deal of Liverpool’s interest lies in its history, as readers of this blog will no doubt agree!

The opening chapter, “Just for Starters… Some Trivia”, is a collection of facts from all aspects of the city, and it was in the opening pages that I was impressed with some of the historical analysis. For example, Tulloch notes that the location of the remains of West Derby Castle in meadow lane is far from certain, even though it is known that a castle was certainly in the vicinity from the 13th century. The list of Liverpool University graduates is one of the less history-centric and yet interesting collections of facts, and the type of thing I expected this book to be full of.

However, I found that the remainder of the book consisted of longer passages which take LBoL out of the realm of miscellany and into history book territory. Whether this suits the book is probably up to the reader, but as Tulloch has already written a full book of this type this feels like a wasted opportunity to create a book more suitable for dipping into at a spare moment.

Unfortunately the historical credentials are marred in the second chapter, “How it All Began”, a chronological account of Liverpool. One passage suggests that the Salthouse Dock was filled in and later covered with Liverpool ONE, rather than the Old Dock which is actually the case. Whilst this can almost be seen as a simple substitution of one dock with another, in Liverpool’s case this is a founding moment of the town’s dominant story. It’s a bit like suggesting that Romulus and Remus founded Paris – little more than a typo which completely alters the historical context!

Tulloch makes a point of apologizing in the introduction for missing out some of the major players and events in Liverpool’s history, claiming that there’s only so much that you can fit in 50,000 words. But judging from some of the odd sentences, repetitions and turns of phrase, I’d say that a strong editing would have furnished him with a couple of thousand more words to play with. Sections such as ‘Liverpool Literati’ begin with rather lengthy introductions which add little to the mix. A few examples:

• On Liverpool FC’s 1980s history: “Liverpool were haunted by the spectre of success and failure”;
• Every comedian and singer seems to have decided that their first job out of school was ‘not for them’, thus leading them into show business;
• the caption to the sketch of the new Museum of Liverpool describes the building as “space age” (aren’t we already in the space age?)

His selection of the ‘Great and the Good’ could be praised for its choice of the lesser known authors, actors, poets and politicians, but in a ‘Little Book’ I would have liked to have seen the author sticking to the very best, not to do Jimmy Tarbuck, Daniel Craig (yes, the Chester-born lad) or Felicia Hemans a dis-service.

The Little Book of Liverpool is a smart, hard-back volume, and at present there’s no other book like it out there. But it falls between the two stools of dip-in factbook and essay collection, and so doesn’t quite fit either description. It needs a good editing and perhaps a tighter choice of topics to cover, otherwise it feels a bit like Tulloch struggled to fill the word count. I would have liked to see the whole book in the format of the Trivia section at the beginning, and many of the topics covered could certainly be adapted for this.

The style of writing, as I’ve said, is odd in places, but it’s certainly easy to read. It’s a book I can imagine getting picked up and passed around turkey-filled family members on Christmas Day, but whether it you’d go back to it later on is debatable. Stocking filler it certainly is.

Bloody British History: Liverpool

Ken Pye’s Bloody History of Liverpool shares many characteristics with the Little Book. It’s a short volume (a 96 page paperback) with articles on different parts of Liverpool history, and is written by an author with other Liverpool books to his name.  But unlike LBoL, this book sets its stall out loud and clearly on the back cover:

Here is the LOATHSOME, LURID and DOWNRIGHT LAMENTABLE history of Liverpool!

Bloody History is chronological, starting with prehistoric Merseyside and the Druids, and goes through Vikings, Normans, Civil War, Slavery and World Wars to describe the more macabre episodes in the city’s history. It does this without holding back on the blood and guts, my favourite line describing the Vikings using their shields: “pounding them into faces and breaking skulls”. What follows are bloody descriptions of the Battle of Bosworth Field, chilling tales of the gallows (and hanging, drawing and quartering in case you were curious) and spooky goings-on in Everton with Spring-Heeled Jack.

While some of the early chapters have little connection to Liverpool (the Druids chapter – don’t get me started on Druids! – and the Vikings can only muster up the Calderstones and local placenames respectively to justify their inclusion), later ones are much better. Pirate and smuggler yarns draw their very leading characters from Mersey shores, while details of the Second World War can’t fail to mention the central role (and target) which Liverpool played in the conflict.

In the spirit of fun which this book is presented, it succeeds brilliantly in presenting a nightmarish version of historic Liverpool. The town is populated with murderers, traitors, heroes, corpse-snatchers and the dead and dying. The articles are fast-paced, well written (more so than the Little Book) and full of energy. Occasionally (especially in Chapter 1) it goes off the rails a bit (“…naked, powerful, angry, hairy blue men…”), but this is easily overlooked given the promise that “you’ll never look at the city in the same way again!”

The primary sources, which often prove themselves too lurid for most histories, are well-chosen and add another gruesome ingredient to the mix (one overwrought witness begins: “my hands tremble while I write…”).

If some of the stories have less direct connections to the city of Liverpool, you at least get a good grounding in wider British history, such as Bosworth or the Armada, but it’s the later chapters which contain most for the Liverpool historian. The last two chapters in particular – about the trenches and the Blitz respectively – are much less gory and more respectful of the recent memory of these events. For this they are stronger, without detracting from the overall feel of the book.

The only two stand-out mistakes I spotted were the lack of gangland coverage promised on the back cover, and the mis-spelling of the exploding ship SS Malakand as Markland. The latter may be due to an over-keen spell-check on this unusual name, but a read-over by someone with knowledge of the city’s history should have picked it up.

Which one should you read?

If you only buy one of these two books, you’re better off with Ken Pye’s Bloody History. It promises blood, guts and gore, and delivers all three, and is entertainingly written. Tulloch’s Little Book of Liverpool, for all it’s high quality presentation, had a couple of historical errors, and somehow the over-long articles and clumsy style just didn’t grab me in the way Pye’s volume did.

That said, I can’t imagine any Liverpool history enthusiast complaining much about getting either in their stocking, as both provide some entertainment to while away those long holiday hours when you should be making polite conversation with the family.

Postscript

Both these volumes were kindly supplied by the History Press for the purposes of this review. If you’d like to let me know of any other books, websites or other material of interest to readers of this site, get in touch via the Historic Liverpool contact page.

If you’d like to buy either volume, and support Liverpool Landscapes, click on the covers to left and right. Any purchases via Amazon.co.uk will contribute to the running of this site (so don’t forget us when you’re doing the Christmas shopping!).

There are two opposing points of view. On one side we have the one-man band of the Liverpool Preservation Trust railing against the plans, and English Heritage (EH) expressing concerns about the nature of the development. On the other side are the developers and Council loudly proclaiming that ‘if we have to give up the WHS for investment, then so be it’.

Fear of a Changing City

But despite the concerns of the heritage lobby, it must be remembered that what EH, the LPT and concerned Scousers around the city want is development, not just of the type that Peel are proposing.

Those who leave comments on the Echo website about how Peel will wreck the city, and those who say we should ignore the WHS in return for jobs must remember that memories of previous modern developments are still strong. After the Second World War Liverpool had several city plans for completely reshaping the town centre, and massive developments in Everton and Kirkby are also the souvenirs we have of that time.

There is a popular dislike of much modern architecture, born of the mistakes of the over-enthusiastic 1950s and 60s developers (remember, someone wanted to put a motorway through the Blue Coat Chambers). The most oft-repeated horror stories of the mid-20th century are the loss of the Customs House, the Liverpool Overhead Railway (LOR) and St. John’s Market. Whether or not the LOR could have been viably restored makes no difference to the fact that the Customs House and St. John’s Market were, or at the very least feel, like unnecessary losses. And looking at what we were given in return – St. John’s Precinct and the modern buildings of Derby Square – it comes as no surprise that there are serious concerns with what Peel will leave us with.

My own opinion is more closely concerned with the future experience of living in a Liverpool of skyscrapers when the current town is more human in scale, and with the effects of dragging the centre of gravity in another direction when Liverpool ONE has already stretched it almost to breaking point (see T.J. Hughes, for example).

Coupled with this is a distrust of developers for exactly the problems Seven Streets mentions: defacement of old buildings before they can be listed is a standard tactic nationally by developers who want to game the system. The same goes for neglecting a building until it’s too late to save and thus stand in the way of ‘progress’. The rhetoric of ‘jobs for locals’, whether or not true, just muddies the waters further.

The Liverpool: a city with a Past and a Future

A distaste for modern architecture, coupled with a distrust of developers and politicians, and the regret of past architectural losses makes for strong anti-development sentiment, as does the steamrollering of citizens’ interests behind a wall of spin. I’ve no doubt that the spin comes from both sides, but retreating to either ends of the debate doesn’t help anyone.

What both sides want is development. What the heritage lobby would like to see is a sensitive rejuvenation of old buildings, and they fear that any large-scale development will ride rough-shod over these wishes. What those in favour of these schemes want is the removal of barriers to development.

There is an overlap of these desires, but as of yet I’ve not seen a sensible way forward advanced by either side. It seems to be

“Here, we’re going to build a load of skyscrapers”

“Fine, as long as you protect the historic environment by not building any skyscrapers”

“But our development is meaningless without skyscrapers – we’ve already made it rubbish by doing half of what you asked! Heritage must step aside completely and let us through!”

And thus both sides retreat to their respective corners, and meanwhile abandoned buildings fall down.

Building on the past

Development must happen, for the good of the city and for the good of the historic buildings we love. But we must learn from the ill-informed mistakes of the past, and the successes too. No one objected to the Albert Dock redevelopment in the 1980s, at least not on historic grounds (there were a few raised eyebrows on economic grounds back then).

What has happened is that Liverpool were very keen to promote the WHS and culture during 2007 and 2008, but now that the inward investment has been attracted, they’re all too willing to risk throwing it away in the pursuit of projects which many people are understandably skeptical about.

Is there a way to restore trust in developers, and for the heritage contingent to go further than simply taking existing plans and chopping off the bits they don’t like? It will take effort, engagement, cooperation and discussion, and less of the mud-slinging which has been all too prevalent in the Peel/UNESCO saga.

There is a common cause: to create a dynamic city which celebrates and enjoys its historic environment while remaining open to change. We in the 21st century have the hindsight which the Victorians and the post-war developers lacked. Let us use that knowledge and work together to create a Liverpool which future generations will be proud of, will love living in, and which won’t need to be razed in 40 years’ time. Only by coming out of our corners can we do this.

Image: The Albert Dock warehouses in 1956 before their sensitive redevelopment in the 1980s. Copyright English Heritage.NMR, available on the ViewFinder website.

The North Liverpool and City Fringe Employment and Investment programme have been granted £25m from the Government’s Regional Growth Fund (RGF), and their plans involve the conversion of the docks and warehouses into apartments, bars, shops and a hotel. The Liverpool Echo compares the scheme to the regeneration of the Albert Dock two decades ago.

The Eldonian Group, an award-winning regeneration project, will also be using some of the money to build a combined heat and power plant to provide electricity and hot water to the Vauxhall area.

This project presents a chance to regenerate and bring back into use a crucial part of the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City World Heritage Site (WHS) which has for so long been under threat. The Stanley Dock area lies between the main business and commercial district of Liverpool city centre and the north docklands which may be transformed under the Peel Waters scheme. Being closer to the centre means that the scheme represents a natural extension of the town, rather than a wholesale remodelling of an isolated area.

History

Stanley Dock was part of the rapid expansion of the dock estate under Jesse Hartley, Liverpool’s dock engineer. The city’s trade was expanding into new markets (including tobacco) and new dock technologies were being introduced to keep up with the demands of commerce.

The Albert Dock and the Stanley Dock warehouses, both projects of Hartleys, with their sheltered quays and cranes on the walls were “bonded storage”, and allowed the transfer of goods from a ship directly into the warehouse, with next to no delay on the dockside at all.

Bonded warehouses were storage buildings where cargo would be unloaded from a ship and put straight under lock and key. The key was held by a representative of the Crown, and customs dues were only paid on the goods when they left the warehouse to continue their journey to customers inland. Thus the turnaround time for boats in the docks was reduced, no longer having to wait for assessment by customs officers.

Jesse Hartley was known for his ‘cyclopean’ architecture: giant stone blocks and imposing building design, and the Tobacco Warehouse was no shrinking violet. As possibly the largest brick building in the world it was ground-breaking at the time, and remains a vital part of world history.

However, it has remained derelict for 50 years.

Heritage at Risk

The warehouse on the north side of the dock was added to English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk register in 1999. In 2009, when EH drew up a list of Conservation Areas at Risk, the whole Stanley Dock area was added, including the Tobacco Warehouse. With the 2011 At Risk list focussing on Industrial Heritage, there’s never been a better time to celebrate the legacy of fabulous warehouses such as these.

As with many historic areas across the country, Stanley Dock became caught between the prospect of insensitive redevelopment and the conservation lobby, and no progress was made. Various plans have been proposed to bring the dock into new use, with most ideas attempting to recreate the success of the commercial Albert Dock or the residential Waterloo warehouse just down the road. Let’s hope these latest attempts actually bring some development to the area, and do justice to the globally-important buildings around Stanley Dock.

Image: Stanley Dock, by SPDP via Flickr, released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

OpenPlaques is a project to “collect and open up data about plaques and the people they commemorate”, which involves placing all the information about blue plaques and the people they are dedicated to on an OpenStreetMap map. You can use the OpenPlaques database in your own projects, as it’s all under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share-Alike and Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication licenses (which means you can generally do anything non-commercial with them as long as you give credit to the source).

The site actually includes all blue and non-blue plaques from projects with similar aims to the original blue plaques scheme from the Royal Society of Arts, now run by English Heritage. I first mentioned them back in February 2010 amongst other web sites for local history.

Since the beginning of October the OpenPlaques Twitter account has been announcing a string of new Liverpool plaques being added to their database.

@mdgreaney We've recently had an influx of plaques as users can now add listings directly: Liverpool currently at 43 http://t.co/m5WixrYs

October 3, 2011 7:50 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@openplaques

Open Plaques

They were up to 43 by 3rd October, and were already at 84 as of writing this (16th Oct). You can submit your own if it’s not already in their database, so do lend a hand if you can. Liverpool was the first city outside London to be included in the English Heritage blue plaque scheme, which goes to show the city’s importance in national history. Liverpool’s first plaques celebrated the lives of Bessie Braddock, J. A. Brodie, John Lennon, Wilfred Owen, Captain Noel Chevasse and 10 others.

Also while writing this, I’ve noticed that a string of black Liverpool Council plaques are featured on the home page, such as this one marking one of the original seven streets, High Street.

One other thing you can help with is the location of Frankie Vaughan’s plaque. It was unveiled in 2005 at the Museum of Liverpool Life, but no one at the moment can confirm that it’s still there. Has it been moved to the new Museum of Liverpool? Or is it still in the MoLL? Let us know in the comments if you know where it is/was!

Image: High Street South Plaque, by TonyMo22 via Flickr (Creative Commons by-nc-sa)

I was approached by Derek Tunnington who was born in Leeds but grew up in Toxteth, and has many memories of his childhood in Liverpool. What follows is his account of those years.

I’d really like to hear what you think of this. Is it the kind of thing you’d like to see more of? Do you have similar stories to share? Let us know in the comments, or contact me directly.

Toxteth – Some distant childhood memories

I was born in 1927 at my aunt’s house in Harehills, Leeds. My father, Joe, was employed by Thorne’s Toffees of Leeds as a representative in Liverpool. This came about as my parents had been renting “rooms” in a tall Victorian house in Kingsley Road, Liverpool. The landlady was not prepared to accept a small child in her establishment, and when my arrival became imminent, my mother, Lilian, moved to Leeds where most of her siblings lived, and where both my parents had been born. Dad, meanwhile had found a house to rent in Arundel Street, just round the corner from Kingsley Road, and soon Mum and I returned to Liverpool. I think the house was number 8, Arundel Street, but I am not sure of the number.

Walking from Kingsley Road and down Arundel St. our house was near the lower end on the left-hand side. It was a terrace house, with the front door leading directly on to the pavement. There were two stone steps leading down which were kept clean and bright by Mum scouring them regularly with a piece of orange coloured sandstone. Folk had a pride in the appearance of their homes, even rented ones, and in the North of England sanding was a regular habit.

There was no garden, but we were lucky to have a tree growing in the pavement in front of No.8. The house was double-storey, but I don’t recall any attic. The windows were vertical sliding sash windows, with stone sills, also sanded. At the side of the house was a ginnel which led to the rear of the house and a transverse passageway connecting the backs of several houses. The ginnel was enclosed by high brick walls and some were topped with broken glass.

Behind the house, we had a paved yard, with some building at the bottom which included laundry facilities. Dad loved flowers and made a modest garden in this yard by placing a miniature wall, one brick high in front of one boundary wall. He obtained soil by begging it from greengrocer shops, where it had fallen off the potatoes, and carried some home each day in paper packets. Climbing Nasturtium plants seemed destined to be the most successful flowering plants, though I think he managed to grow some culinary herb, mint or perhaps thyme.

Inside the house, we had no electricity, and the rooms were illuminated by gas light. These gas lamps were suspended from the ceiling by a kind of pulley system, and it was a daily event to watch Dad lower the gas chandelier to light the gas, and often to replace the fragile gas “mantles”.

I do not remember much detail of our furniture, but Mum put lace curtains across the windows, with floral curtains to be used at night time. We were not well-off, so the furniture would have been rather basic. The bath, I recall, was a galvanised iron tub which was usually set before the open coal fire in the living room.

Inside and behind the front door was a “draught curtain.” This was a heavy velvet curtain hanging on a hinged rail, and when the door was closed, the curtain would be swung across behind the door to exclude draughts.

Dad had been one of the World War One forgotten heroes. He had been severely wounded twice in the Battle of the Somme. The second time was reputed to be the result of rescuing a comrade trapped in No-Man’s Land. He was Mentioned in Despatches and was awarded a minute piece of bronze in the image of an oak leaf, to be worn on one of his war medal ribbons. The Germans were however much more generous and left him with over thirty bits of good German steel in various parts of his body. As a result of these injuries, he was often in hospital for removal of shrapnel.

We did have some happy times, going to Sefton Park, and Lime Street station to see the very old railway engine displayed inside. We also managed to take a couple of holidays in Anglesey.

I had two special friends in Arundel Street. One I only remember as “Cyril” and the other was Donald Adamson, whose parents were friends of ours for several years.

Dad had had very little formal education, having left school at under 13 years of age, but he was very self educated as he was a keen reader of almost anything and particularly of history, geography and Nature.

We did not have many childhood toys. Most were home made from bits of wood or were simple tinplate motor cars or railway trains. We also raced tiny home made boats down the rainwater gutters, or flew paper aeroplanes or even kites in one of the parks. There was no television in those days and the BBC did not always reach our very basic radios with any clarity. Dad, however, was a great raconteur and told me many tales of his own-created Canadian backwoodsmen, Jake and Bill.

I only remember one close neighbour, Mrs. O’ Reardon (?) who always had a pram outside her front door at No.6 (?) – I never knew whether there was just one baby or a succession!

After a few very happy years of watching the rent collector arriving each Friday with his rent book, and splashing in the water running down the overflowing gutters (why was it always raining?), Liverpool, (and the outside world ) was suddenly hit by the Great Depression. My father returned to work after yet another stay in hospital, to be told that his job was no longer available. Those not 100% fit were the first to go. There was little social relief in those days, apart from a small “dole” and Dad spent all and every day tramping the streets of Liverpool looking for work. He took the view that time was better spent searching for work than queuing for a few shillings of dole. I also think personal pride had something to do with his attitude.

I was already attending a form of “Nursery School” in Granby Street School, although our only “education” was the singing of children’s religious songs. I think Mum had sent me there as she had enough other worries trying to make ends meet. It was also within walking distance of Arundel Street.

It is interesting to reflect how safe it was for a small child to walk the streets in the 1930’s. One day I dawdled my way back home and Mum gave me my supper which consisted of a bowl of soup and a slice of bread, no butter. I was rather puzzled why I was eating alone, but Mum told me she had already eaten her meal. Many years later she told me that she and Dad had had nothing to eat that day. The cupboard was truly bare.

Dad was a heavy smoker, and one day he discovered that the “Sweet and Tobacconist”, where he bought his Woodbines, was available on a rental basis. The rent was about the same as we were paying for the Arundel Street house, and the shop had living quarters above. Dad reasoned that most men would give up food and beer, but always needed their cigarettes and a newspaper for the football pools. The shop was just around the corner in Granby Street, and although the was little real income, it gave us a roof over our heads and a modest amount for food.

My parents both worked hard cleaning up the rather shabby shop, and both then worked in it daily. I don’t remember the number in Granby Street, but it was not far from the junction with Arundel Street. Directly opposite was a “Mr. Wu’s Chinese Laundry”. I don’t think Wu was the owner’s name, but that is what we called it. From the front upstairs window, which I suppose was our living room, I spent many fascinating hours watching Mr. Wu steam-ironing customer’s clothes and bedding. He had a large jug of (presumably) water. He would fill his mouth with the water and spray the laundry items before applying the heavy flat iron! I was also able to observe the “Soup Kitchens”, often wheelbarrows, offering free portions of soup to anyone in need. They were often manned by the Salvation Army (“Sally Ann”) or other charitable organisations.

Farthings were still legal tender at that time, and Dad got many in the shop. He would give me a few farthings and I would play “shop” in the back yard with friends. However, when my friends increased in number, and the number of young boys entering the shop to buy sweets with farthings also increased, a stop was put to my “shop”, as the farthings were obviously being recycled. This shop helped us survive the depression years and in 1933 we moved back to Leeds, where my parents ran a very successful shop in Alwoodley, a posh leafy suburb of Leeds.

Derek Tunnington

Your own memories

Many thanks go to Derek for this insight into the history of Toxteth, and what it was like to play in its streets decades ago. This is a beautifully written account, filled with things you just won’t find in a history textbook.

If you’d like to read more like this, or you want to respond to these memories, the comments are open below. If you’d like to contribute your own stories about Liverpool history I’d be very pleased to hear from you.

Image: Edge Hill Yards, Liverpool, with express from Euston View eastward from the Picton Road Bridge, by Ben Brooksbank via Geolocation.ws

1 – Seven Streets

Every historian of Liverpool should know about these:

1. Water Street
2. Chapel Street
3. High Street (originally Juggler Street)
4. Castle Street
5. Old Hall Street
6. Dale Street
7. Tithe Barn Street

They are the original roads laid out when Liverpool was founded in 1207, and this H-shaped plan remained generally unchanged until the 17th century. It remains the heart of the city today.

The original houses which occupied these streets were burgages, a combination of a building which acted as both home and business for the burgesses who occupied them, along with a long back yard, used for growing food and carrying out whatever trade the burgess engaged in. Houses on Dale Street had yards backing onto the Pool (now Whitechapel), and when you sit in the beer garden of Rigby’s, you’re on the spot of a 13th century burgage, the town model which helped Liverpool become the mercantile city that it did.

2 – St Nicholas Church

Although the building at the bottom of Chapel Street is not the original structure, a place of worship has sat on this site or close by since King John granted its charter.

It would have been unthinkable to found a town without a chapel, and so that of Mary del Key (Quay) was built on the river front to care for the souls of Liverpool, not long after the town was founded. As Liverpool expanded there inevitably came a time when the population outgrew the chapel, and a larger church was built, of Our Lady and St Nicholas.

Until 1699 Liverpool fell within the parish of Walton-on-the-Hill, and so St Nicholas was not a parish church but rather a chapel of ease within Walton. It was in the 16th and 17th centuries that Liverpool was becoming too proud to accept this place in the hierarchy, and a petition was begun to gain parish status. It was in 1699 that this status was gained, and St Nicholas’ became the parish church along with St. Peter’s in Church Street, which served as Pro-Cathedral in the Angican diocese.

So despite a succession of rebuilding and expanding, the church St. Nicholas’ represents a long history of worship on this ancient waterfront site.

3 – The Strand

A ‘strand’ is a long strip of land, such as a beach, which stretches along a coastline. This name survives in the road behind Liverpool’s docks as a reminder that, when Liverpool was founded, everything on the west of this line was in the River Mersey.

The first ships to use Liverpool as a port loaded and unloaded their cargoes at a jetty or pier in the Pool, the inlet which ran along the line now occupied by Liverpool ONE, Paradise Street, Whitechapel and Old Haymarket. The Pool was tidal, and so boats rose and fell along with it. Much of the time a boat would lay stranded on the mud at the edge of the Pool, waiting for the next high tide before it could sail again.

Thomas Steers’ Old Dock, Liverpool’s first wet dock, was built in the middle of the Pool, which was drained and developed into a rectangular quayside. From this central location, new docks were built north and south, and out into the Mersey (to build too far away from the centre of town would have been a poor commercial decision). Waterfront locations like St. Nicholas’ Church and the Tower eventually found themselves behind an expanse of reclaimed land, and the ‘strand’ was no more.

However, the name lives on, and gives a clue to part of the original shape of the banks of the Mersey.

4 – West Derby

West Derby is another place name which acts as a reminder of how things once were. Medieval West Derby village was the centre of the West Derby Hundred, a large subdivision of Lancashire which stretched from the Mersey itself up to the Ribble at Preston.

It was a powerful centre, to such an extent it had to be named ‘West’ Derby to distinguish it from the Derby in Derbyshire. It remained powerful for some time, having a castle from soon after the Norman Conquest, as well as a court house and a stately home in the form of Barrett’s, later Croxteth, Hall.

The location of West Derby is also telling. Before Liverpool was founded Merseyside was generally an out-of-the-way place, covered in bogs and mosses. A Roman road crossed the Mersey at Warrington on its way to Lancaster, but the evidence for Roman contact west of this line is sporadic. The banks of the Mersey were probably populated with a scattering of manor farms (and perhaps Liverpool itself was one of these). West Derby’s relative importance was due to its position on slightly raised, drier ground, as well as being more accessible from the important routes linking Cheshire and the Midlands with northern Lancashire and Cumbria. The location which prevented anything forming in Liverpool before King John made a special effort also meant that West Derby, closer to the action, rose to prominence centuries earlier, and without royal patronage.

5 – Park Lane

For the first several hundred years of Liverpool’s history it was a small town which occupied the space between the east bank of the Mersey and the north edge of the Pool. Beyond the Pool was the Waste, and beyond this Toxteth Park.

Toxteth Park, like West Derby to the east, was an important area from the Medieval period. Monarchs used the area as a hunting forest when travelling in this part of the world, and it was just one part of a large area of forest stretching to West Derby and Simonswood in the north east. Until the 18th century Toxteth Park remained a place isolated from Liverpool and the rest of civilisation, and it was reached from the town via a road across the Pool – Park Lane.

In later centuries Liverpool would imitate the more fashionable towns such as (primarily) London, Bath and Bristol, and so adopted some of the building styles and road names of these other towns. Hence Liverpool now has Pall Mall, Whitechapel, Kensington and Covent Garden. However, Park Lane, which looks like another one of these nods to the capital, is a ‘native’ fossil of how the town used to look.

Other fossils from history

I want to hear your suggestions now – what little details can you see in the historic environment that point to interesting bits of Liverpool history?

If you want to find out more about the land reclaimed beyond the Strand, then Graeme J Milne’s book, Trade and Traders in mid-Victorian Liverpool covers everything from the building of the docks to the social impacts of Liverpool’s expansion. It also covers the workings of the dock system, including the elected Mersey Docks and Harbour Board.

English Heritage will co-ordinate as usual, although the event relies primarily on volunteers, building owners, civic societies and other societies.

There are 108 buildings opening on Merseyside, as listed in the Heritage Open Days Merseyside table. There are the clear highlights such as the Williamson Tunnels, West Derby Courthouse, Ancient Chapel of Toxteth and all Three Graces, but I’d take this opportunity to check out the lesser known attractions, such as the Florrie Tour, Gateacre Chapel, the Wavertree Lock Up, or one of the many churches which are putting on special events.

Registration is still open if you’re planning an event not yet listed – do share in the comments! Did you go last year? Anything you’d recommend going to again this year?

Image: Wavertree Lock Up by Sue Adair. Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0.

What to look out for in a parish church

What to Look Out For in a Parish Church is the first article on the revamped Celia’s Blog. The article is a really interesting run-through of the oft-missed aspects of church architecture and archaeology and those features which any observant onlooker can spot.

Find out why ground on the south side of a church is often higher than that on the north; the origins of stone crosses in churchyards; and what activities (other than burial!) took place in the yards.

As well as churchyards, Celia talks about the fabric of the church itself, how the builders might use whatever materials were close to hand, and how this gives us clues as to the earlier archaeology of the area. She then talks about the inside of a church, how to date churches by their features, and how internal layout has changed over the years (or not!).

The Reformation had some major impacts on a church’s role as a centre of worship and the running of the parish. I won’t reveal any more – you really should go an read the article in full. I’m looking forward to part 2, when Celia will delve in more detail into the parish church of Thornham Parva, Suffolk.

Fossil landscapes in urban Liverpool

But what has all this to do with Liverpool? Of course, Liverpool has its own fair share of parish churches, with St. Nicholas becoming the parish church (after 400 years as a chapel under Walton-on-the-Hill) in 1699. Many other churches were built in Liverpool as the city population grew, and particularly as the range of religious beliefs diversified. Welsh, Scottish and Scandinavian churches are all famous features of the Liverpool landscape, as are non-Christian houses such as Britain’s first mosque and the amazing synagogue on Princes Road.

But the link to Celia’s article comes from the fact that many more churches, including Walton parish church, existed before Liverpool absorbed them in new suburbs in the 18th and 19th centuries. In many cases the church and its surroundings remain fossilised within the urban structure, and teasing them apart from more modern roads and buildings can give clues to the history and origins of the village.

The fabric of All Saints’ Church, Childwall contains features from the 14th century, as described by the project to restore and extend the building. The shape of the churchyard is also suggestive of a 14th century origin.

St. Mary’s Church in West Derby is the successor to a chapel which stood in the centre of the village until around 150 years ago. Along with the manor house (now Croxteth Park), the court house and the castle, this close association of these types of buildings is a classic of medieval power structure, where the local lords would exert control over the manorial, military and spiritual structures of the area.

It’s not just medieval landscapes, either. The cast iron church of St George in Everton was built on the site of the Everton Beacon, and holds great views over the Mersey. It’s very structure made a statement about Victorian Liverpool, and the promise of new technology (cast iron) over the old (stone). It was a demonstration of engineering and the men who sponsored it, much like that of Iron Bridge in Staffordshire.

Every church tells a story if you look hard enough. Do you know of any other Liverpool churches which have a special, or revealing, feature? Share in the comments, and have a look at recommended reading.

Recommended Reading

Churches in the Landscape by Richard Morris (left) tells you everything you need to know about where churches are located. It talks about the communities in which the churches stand, as well as the landscapes themselves. It’s a chunky book, but written in a clear style, and very easy to read. If you’re after a shorter book on church archaeology, and churchyards, Shire Publishing dedicates one of its guides to the topic, in Medieval Church and Churchyard Monuments by Sally Badham (right). In contrast to the Morris book, Badham’s takes in effigies, statues and sculpture to help guide you around your local (or any other) parish church history.

Image: Penny Lane Anglican Church 2, by dkwonsh, licensed under Creative Commons BY-ND.