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22nd - 25th August 2003 |
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| Liverpool will be European City of culture in 2008 and, as it has always been an important port, particularly in connection with the cotton and associated slave trade, it is bidding to be designated a World Heritage Site. This would be enough to make the city a strong candidate for a City Safari but it also has some marvellous commercial architecture and pubs. | |
| Friday evening started with dinner, rearranged at the Everyman Theatre when the Adelphi Hotel cancelled a booking, followed by Sue Hayton’s introductory talk. Afterwards, many of us retired to The Philharmonic, a pub and restaurant named after and serving the Philharmonic Hall opposite. The interior is a magnificent Art Nouveau design with a famous marble Gents. By tradition arrangements can be made for ladies to view it. | |
| It was the weekend of the Beatles Festival and our programme was carefully arranged to keep us from this distraction. Accordingly Saturday morning was spent in commercial Liverpool before the festival got under way and it became really crowded. There is a large number of interesting and striking buildings of which there is room only for a selection. | |
| At 25 Church Street is the first Woolworth's shop to be opened in Europe but it is not Woolworth's now. Bluecoat Chambers in School Lane were built as a charity school in 1717 and are now an arts centre. The Central is one of the grandiose Liverpudlian pubs with a Victorian façade and a mirrored interior. Lewis’s store, not to be confused with John Lewis, is post war following an incendiary bomb attack which burnt down the 1886 building. Along with many other fine buildings we came to the Adelphi. | |
| The Adelphi Hotel was built for the Midland Railway by Frank Atkinson, who also designed Selfridges store in London. Built in 1912 it replaces an earlier hotel of 1868-9. Rather surprisingly we were left to wander at will through the magnificent ground floor lounges, dining rooms and bars. | |
| The Adelphi was one of a number of railway buildings, the preponderance of which is itself a measure of the city’s importance. Lime Street Station has one trainshed of 1869 spanning 219 feet and an addition of 1874 spanning 184 feet. Outside is the magnificent North Western Railway Hotel built in 1871 to designs of Alfred Waterhouse. It is now a hall of residence for students at John Moore’s University. The Exchange Station in Tithebarn Street was built for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in the 1880s. Only the fine façade remains with new offices behind. The former offices and warehouse of the Midland Railway in Victoria Street date from 1850 and feature coats of arms and the names of places served by the railway. | |
| Another feature of commercial Liverpool is the shipping, banking and marine insurance companies’ offices. Many of these are in the three parallel Dale, Victoria and Tithebarn Streets. The typical Prudential Building in red brick and terracotta dates from the 1880s. The General Accident Building of 1899 was the head office of the Bank of Liverpool. The India Buildings were built in the 1920s for the Holt Blue Funnel Line. Oriel Chambers is an early use of cast iron as a structural material. The large glass windows are a curtain wall with the cast iron behind bearing the weight. The Tower Building, 1908, was one of the first steel framed buildings in the country. Martins Bank, now Barclays, has a restored, opulent banking hall. | |
| In the afternoon we went across the Mersey by train to Birkenhead. Hamilton Square is a fine large square, 1826, the brain child of William Laird, the founder of the famous ship building company. One side is dominated by Birkenhead Town Hall which is now the Wirral Museum since the modern local authority uses Wallasey Town Hall. The interior is worth viewing without the museum but there are many interesting exhibits too, including a fine model of the Pierhead, Woodside, as it was. The first ‘street railway’ was opened here by George Francis Train in 1860 but it did not last long as the rails above the road level restricted other traffic. There is a tramway museum in Taylor Street and a service is run down to Woodside but we walked in order to take in some other sites. |
The Mersey Ferry, Royal Daffodil |
| Egerton Bridge at Morpeth Dock is a good example of a Birkenhead bascule bridge and affords a view over what were Birkenhead Docks. Other sites included the warehouse of the Cheshire Lines Committee (Great Northern, Midland and, as it was, Manchester, Sheffield and Lincoln Railways), one of several ventilation towers for the Mersey Tunnel, and other offices and warehouses. This bought us to Shore Road Pumping Station with the ‘Giant Grasshopper Engine’ built in the 1870s to keep the railway tunnel under the Mersey dry. The engine can be demonstrated but no longer by steam. At the ferry terminal at Woodside there is the hotel originally of 1834, extended in 1963 and waiting for a new owner. The return by ferry with good views of Liverpool Pierhead ended the day. | |
| Sunday was given over to the docks, the northern docks in the morning and the southern section in the afternoon. We started by train to Sandhills and a short walk to the dock area with a huge boundary wall, 18 feet high built of irregular lumps of granite. It is broken by entrances with wooden gates which slide back on wheels into the wall. Large plaques give the names of the various docks. The docks are gradually being redeveloped and many are filled in. A series of sewer ventilation pipes runs along the dock wall and there are the remains of some drinking fountains - presumably an attempt by some temperance organisation to keep the dockers from stronger drink. However, there are also many pubs almost all of which are now closed for lack of trade. | |
| The major feature is Stanley Dock built at the end of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in 1848. There are warehouses to the north and south of the dock and the bonded Tobacco Warehouse of 1900. Since it was Sunday there was a market in the warehouse and we were able to get inside. Unfortunately the stalls and the crowds made it difficult to fully appreciate the building. | |
| Opposite Victoria Dock is another ventilation shaft for the tunnels under the river. The warehouse of 1821 at Waterloo Dock is the only conversion into housing in this section. Inside the wall near the old landing stage there are some railway remains, a few rails and a signal post. There is also a drinking fountain. At the waterside there are some dilapidated remains of the landing stage from which so many, particularly Irish, departed to the USA in search of a better life. There is modern development here too but it all seemed rather lifeless. As we came to the pierhead we admired the Marine Engine Room Memorial dedicated to all those engineers who kept the boilers going and lost their lives in tragedies at sea. The remains of a canal proposed by the Duke of Bridgwater to bring salt from his mines to the docks followed and then we were at the Pierhead where the Mersey ferries operate. | |
| After lunch we admired the three graces, the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building. There are plans to add a fourth ‘grace’. This bought us to the famous Albert Dock, a major reuse of the dock warehouses as a leisure facility which includes The Merseyside Maritime Museum, Tate Liverpool, The Museum of Liverpool Life, restaurants and pubs. Beyond is Wapping Dock which has been redeveloped. Turning inland up Parliament Street we came to Cains Brewery, a fine red brick complex. The brewery was closed but the Brewery Tap was open, and welcome on a warm sunny afternoon. On our way back to our hotel we paused at a number of interesting but derelict warehouses. |
The Liver Building |
| On Monday morning (it was Bank Holiday Weekend) we went to Port Sunlight. This is the model village William Hesketh Lever laid out, with little expense spared, for the workers at his Port Sunlight soap factory at the turn of the 19th century. It has been suggested that, if he had spared some expense he might have built houses which his workers could afford. | |
| The block at 2-4 Park Road, close to Port Sunlight Station, was built in 1892 and a copy is in Glasgow where it was built as an exhibit for the 1901 Glasgow Exhibition. The fire station was built as stables, converted for horse drawn fire engines and later for motor vehicles. Gladstone Hall, named for the prime minister of the time who opened it, was a canteen but is now a hall for film shows and theatrical productions. The Heritage Centre was a girls' hostel. Lever lived in Bridge Cottage in the 1890s. Hulme Hall (Hulme was Lever’s wife’s maiden name) was also a dining room but is now used as conference suites. We had coffee at the Bridge Inn which has some interesting stained glass. We went on to the church which Lever, a Congregationalist, built as a Congregational Church. There is interesting glass and a Willis organ. Outside, backing on to the west end, are the tombs of Lever, who became Lord Leverhulme, and his wife. From here we went by the Victoria Memorial to the Lady Leverhulme Art Gallery. However, time was pressing for some to catch trains home and the party began to break up. | |
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The Liverpool skyline from Birkenhead |
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(c) Bill Firth, GLIAS Newsletter 208 October 2003All pictures (c) Dan Hayton, February 2003 |
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