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Changes to Liverpool Listed Buildings to mark International Slavery Remembrance Day

Liverpool Landscapes was a blog charting new discoveries, news and developments affecting Liverpool's historic environment. It was regularly updated between 2007 and 2016.

Liverpool Landscape has now been retired, and most of the less time-dependent articles moved to Historic Liverpool.

Saturday 23rd August was UNESCO day for the International Remembrance of the Slave Trade, and to mark the occasion Culture Minister Margaret Hodge has listed a number of buildings associated with the trade, and has amended the listing description of a number of others. In 2006, English Heritage started a project to review listed buildings and acknowledge historic links to transatlantic slavery and the abolitionist movement. For Liverpool, the changes to listed buildings are:-

Town Hall (Water Street, Liverpool) – includes an ornate frieze depicting slaves, animals (tigers, crocodiles, elephants) and other symbols of Africa. The listed buildings description has been amended to ensure that their connection to the slave trade is ‘adequately reflected’.

Allerton Hall (Springwood Avenue, Liverpool) – the former home of William Roscoe, and now a pub. The listed buildings description has been amended to ensure that their connection to the slave trade is ‘adequately reflected’.

62 Rodney Street (Liverpool) – Upgraded to Grade II*; owned by John Gladstone, father of William Ewart Gladstone, four times British Prime Minister. John Gladstone owned sugar plantations in the West Indies, and was an ardent anti-abolitionist. William Roscoe laid out Rodney Street itself, which survives remarkably well, with over 70 listed Georgian houses.

Mrs Hodge said: “These new listings and upgrades show the close and continuing historical and social links that much of our heritage has to the history of slavery both in this country and from around the world. It is particularly fitting that on this day of national commemoration, so many of our historic buildings and monuments are being granted a new or increased level of protection.”

For more information on English Heritage’s project, see its page on The Slave Trade and Abolition.