Posts from the ‘Archaeology’ Category

Feb 23

Photo of a grid with an engraving beginning 'My future'

“My future” – a grid outside Tate Liverpool

A photo of this grid, with an engraving starting “My future”, popped up on Facebook in early 2019. I had no idea what it really was, but was intrigued. It looked like something from the William Morris school, which I like for both design and political reasons, so I did a little snooping (i.e Googling about a bit).

The metal grid is embedded in the pavement outside Tate Liverpool at the Albert Dock. It is decorated with intertwining vine-like branches, and in the centre is the phrase “My future will reflect a new world”. There’s a spider’s web and a few other things floating round (perhaps berries or pollen grains).

Art at the Dock

The proximity to Tate Liverpool isn’t coincidental. This installation is part of a wider collaboration between artists Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho, under the banner ‘News from Nowhere’ (not to be confused with one of Liverpool’s finest bookshops).

News From Nowhere is the name of a novel by the very same William Morris I mentioned in the first paragraph. In the novel, the Victorian protagonist is mysteriously catapulted into the 21st century, and his conversations with the futuristic inhabitants act as a satire and comment on the inequalities and rampant industrialisation of Morris’s own time (and there lies the connection with the bookshop).

Moon and Jeon’s collaboration arose from conversations between the two artists over art’s role in the world. They were “fed up [with] wasteful art installations and art production”. Part of their News From Nowhere collaboration is a piece of video called El Fin del Mondo (End of the World) which reminds us that the future is no yet written, though we in the present are writing it all the time. Therefore, art can have a very important place in deciding the direction of the world as a whole.

The quote itself is from the female protagonist of the film, and embodies the realisation that her actions have real meaning, and must be chosen wisely.

Grid covers

One of these covers was installed over an existing drain at the entrance to Tate Modern in 2019, while another could be found inside the gallery itself. They stood for the thin cover that we place over the dirty and chaotic parts of our world that must exist to allow civilisation to function. The exhibition also demonstrated links between Liverpool and Jeon’s home city of Busan in South Korea. Both were powerful ports 100 years ago, but suffered decline in the 20th century, followed by a culture and heritage-fronted resurgence at the 21st century got under way.

News From Nowhere ran from 23 November 2018 to 17 March 2019, and I must admit that I’m not sure whether the grid is still out there. However, its place outside the Tate, one of the first elements in the Albert Dock’s regeneration, is highly symbolic, and deserves some attention on this site.

Sources and further reading on “My future…”

Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho: News from Nowhere, https://ocula.com/magazine/reports/moon-kyungwon-and-jeon-joonho-news-from-nowhere/, retrieved 23rd February 2020

See Liverpool through the eyes of a man who has travelled through space and time to arrive in the city on the eve of the apocalypse, https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/moon-kyungwon-and-jeon-joonho-news-nowhere, retrieved 23rd February 2020

Moon and Jeon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonandjeon/

Image: My Future Will Reflect a New World, Tate Liverpool 1.jpg, Wikimedia Commons, By Phil Nash from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 & GFDLViews, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Nov 6

Community Archaeology in Merseyside – sieving through our past

This is part of a series of posts based on the talks given at the Recent Developments in Merseyside Archaeology conference. It was held on the 13th October 2018, and took place at the Museum of Liverpool. This talk was given by Vanessa Oakden, now Curator of Regional & Community Archaeology at the Museum of Liverpool, and formerly the Finds Liaison Officer for Liverpool, for the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

This talk is centred on two community archaeology projects that Vanessa has been involved in: St Nicholas’ Church on the waterfront, and Lister Steps in Tue Brook. The projects aimed to teach volunteers some building recording skills, and preserve the buildings in question. The projects would put the buildings in their landscape context as well, and highlight some of the changes to the structures over time.

St Nicholas’s Church

There once was a small chapel on the banks of the Mersey, known as St Mary del Key (Quay), first mentioned in 1257. This was not a full parish church, but a chapel of ease within the parish of Walton-on-the-Hill. St Nicholas’s Church was built close by in 1355, taking over the role of St Mary’s. It was constructed over the course of a century, finally consecrated in 1361 when plague erupted in the city.

The church has been rebuilt several times, for example in 1952 after it had suffered heavy damage in the Blitz. Lots of older material is therefore still in situ, and the project rediscovered some of this. The fascinating thing about these remains is that they are not all aligned with the current building. They may be earlier, and unrelated to the building of the church itself.

Vanessa showed the Peters Painting which depicts the city in the 1680s. She said that the painting suggests these older walls may be part of warehouses just inland of the church (as it then stood). They could be Late Medieval, or even earlier.

Other parts of the section that the community archaeology group excavated showed the 19th century re-use of rubble from older versions of St Nick’s.

Lister Steps

The old Lister Drive Library was one of the so-called ‘Carnegie libraries‘, the only one in Liverpool, and designed by Thomas Shelmerdine. It closed in 2006 because of the poor state of the building, thus putting it at even greater risk. It’s a Grade II listed building, and following a successful Heritage Lottery Fund bid a project started to bring it back into community use.

Vanessa’s community archaeology project chose a small patch of the building’s outside, and looked at the graffiti there. This was a chance to practice archaeological drawing: teasing apart the layers of paint is much like excavation!

The group chose Heritage Open Day to ask local people to volunteer. It was a great success, and there are hopes to repeat it. Also, in the future Vanessa hopes to run an excavation in the grounds of the library. This will be backed up by social research – talking to locals about their knowledge of the building and the area.

Britannia Inferior?

Vanessa also gave a preview of work being done behind the scenes by Luke Daly-Groves. Luke is in the middle of a PhD in American history, but needed something unrelated to gain wider experience. He chose Roman archaeology, which Luke admits is not all that common in this part of the UK! He’ll be putting together an exhibition using finds from the Ochre Brook excavation of 2000.

A Roman tilery was discovered, stamped by one Aulus Viducus. A patera (a shallow bowl) which had been uncovered in Cheshire had been donated to the museum too.

Now that Luke has finalised the collection, it will appear as Britannia Inferior? A Glimpse of Life Around Roman Merseyside on the first floor of the Museum of Liverpool during November 2018.

Image: St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, by the author, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Feb 14

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Mr. John Dewsnap and the teaching of history

On the morning of 14th February 2013, the funeral of Mr. John Dewsnap took place. He was my teacher in year 6 of primary school at Blackmoor Park in West Derby (c.1992-3), and was an inspiration. It might not be too far fetched to say that, if not for him, you might not be reading these words on this website, because he was one of the biggest influences on my love of history.

His recent passing reminded me of the many great memories I have of my time at Blackmoor, and my introduction to West Derby and Liverpool history by Mr. Dewsnap. One of the other things which has come to light, through conversations with my mum (now a teaching assistant at the school, who worked with him for a while until his retirement 10 years ago) is the number of other people who have fond memories of the man. There was even a letter written to the Echo a few days ago from a Carl McFarlane (scroll to the bottom letter). You can’t overestimate the value of a teacher like Mr. Dewsnap for kids interested in heritage, and learning in general.

I’ll sum up thoughts of the man with my Facebook post from 6th Feb:

Just heard that my favourite teacher, the legendary John Dewsnap, has passed away. He was the man who got me hooked on local Liverpool and West Derby history in the first place, when he taught me in the last year of primary school. He was funny, hugely intelligent and looked like Winston Churchill had got lost in Victoria England. I don’t know anyone who didn’t like him. A rare teacher who could have you in fits of laughter while tricking you into learning, whether you were a pupil or parent. I doubt anyone one else will ever lend me a book on World War Two and another of Spike Milligan poetry and have it make anywhere near as much sense. A doff of my top hat to you, sir.

My mum’s memories of him (as my parent, before she started work at the school) include being amazed at how he knew who she and my dad (a former pupil too) were the moment they walked into parents evening, and how he seemed to know my personality, and those of the other kids, just six weeks into a term with him. He could change the atmosphere of the staff room just from walking in, and always asked after me when my mum met with him after he retired.

One of my strongest memories of him comes from our visit to Croxteth Hall. The boys and girls had to dress up as servants, woodsmen, butlers or cooks, and play the part with actors taking on characters from the Hall’s Victorian heyday. Mr. Dewsnap arrived in a three piece suit, monacle and top hat, and I’ve reason to believe he never felt more comfortable. Actors played Lord and Lady Sefton, and no doubt were not used to teachers taking on additional roles so well!

The History Expert

He knew everything there was to know about the history of West Derby: the court house, the gates to Croxteth Park, the Yeoman’s House, the fountain, memorial… etc etc. I was hooked from our first trip, even before the dressing-up day! I was lucky enough to grow up in a family that took me and my brother (now a Blackmoor Park teacher!) to plenty of historic places, from Chatsworth House to Stonhenge, and supported me through university and a career as an archaeologist for some years. But if it wasn’t for Mr. Dewsnap sparking that interest, and kindling it with his wit, his own fascination for history, and his boundless energy, then maybe those holiday memories would be just those. Liverpool Landscapes, and Historic Liverpool, might not even exist.

I’m pretty sure at least some of you reading this will remember him, and are welcome to share any memories in the comments section, but it’s really this point about inspiring kids which would be the best memorial to him as the teacher he was.

Passing on History

Even in the best of economic circumstances, heritage has a tough time competing with commercial interests and building developments. All too often demolish-and-build-anew is a more profitable way to go than restoring an old building, even if such a thing is feasible. The result of this is a loss to the historic and human environment in which we all must live. The variety of architecture is diminished, and the beauty of the city reduced a little. In the recession we now find ourselves in, it’s not only heritage which finds it even harder to survive, but that joy of everyday life is also stretched. If we regain economic prosperity, but at the cost of the heritage which brings joy for free to those who merely walk amongst it, then we’ve stolen something not only from ourselves, but from our descendents too.

So, here’s to John Dewsnap – that’s Mr. Dewsnap to you, me, parents, other teachers and pretty much everyone actually – and to those teachers who must try to fill his shoes. We need those teachers to instil in schoolkids a love of their heritage, whether they can trace their own ancestry far back in their current home town or not. For they are the future defenders and appreciators of the great variety of architecture and historic sites which we’ve inherited for a while. And if we can’t reveal the sheer wonder of all that heritage – of everything that has gone before us – to them, then we won’t be able to count the cost.

Here’s to more teachers like Mr. Dewsnap.

Good luck, brother! 😉

Memories of Mr. Dewsnap

While googling around, I found a few very true to life memories of Mr. Dewsnap on Friends Reunited: https://web.archive.org/web/20160212065305/http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/Discussion/835879

He did indeed have a name for everyone… 😉

Jun 23

Photograph of the Blue Plaque dedicated to Jesse Hartley

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Liverpool Heroes 4: Jesse Hartley

Continuing our look at the men and women who have had the greatest impact on the Liverpool landscape, this time we examine the work of Jesse Hartley, dock engineer.

Jesse Hartley (1780-1860) is best known as the architect of the Albert Dock. But this was just one of his achievements as Civil Engineer and Superintendent of the Concerns of the Dock Estate in Liverpool from 1824 to 1860, and his career was one which changed the face of Liverpool. It’s a landscape we can still see today, and his buildings continue to affect how we move through and how we deal with the built environment of the city.

Jesse Hartley was born in Pontefract, Yorkshire, and trained first as a mason. Although he later expanded his skills into engineering and architecture, this was to influence his building style for the rest of his life.

His approach to architecture was almost scientific. Contracted to build ‘new warehouses on the south side of the Salthouse Dock’ he first built models at the Trentham Street Dockyard nearby to test his designs. He closely specified the quality of bricks which were to be used, established his own stone quarry in Kirkmabreck, Scotland, and built the Oak, a coaster to bring the stone from this quarry to Liverpool.

Albert Dock

The Albert Dock is Hartley’s most famous legacy, and displays some of his revolutionary ideas. Among his breakthroughs was the use of sheet metal below the timber floorboards. This design which could withstand fire for 40 minutes unchecked, and was influential in future developments of the dock estate, as well as fireproof mills throughout Lancashire.

The dock was one of the first in the world to have warehouses right at the waters edge. Dock gates kept the water at a constant level whatever the tide, allowing ships to berth at high tide, unload straight into the warehouse, and leave as soon as the water level in the river allowed.

In addition, the Albert Dock warehouses were ‘bonded’ warehouses, which meant that customs dues were not paid when cargo moved from between boat to quay. Instead they were paid when stock was moved out of the warehouse, so further decreasing the time a ship needed to wait in port.

Unloading ships into the Albert Dock was a streamlined affair.

Docks, Canals, Railways and more

Although Hartley is best remembered for the Albert Dock, there are dozens of buildings along the waterfront built to his designs, and which display his signature style and attention to detail:

Many of these buildings show Hartley’s signature ‘cyclopean’ architecture. This involves using massive pieces of stone as the bulk of the wall, with smaller stones hand-shaped to precisely fill the rest (see links above). The colossal boundary wall seen all the way down Regent Road was also Hartley’s idea – in this case to reduce theft.

Hartley also designed a dock-wide railway system, to transport goods around and also to help in the building of new docks. He designed improved gates and locks at the Liverpool end of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal. He also designed lighthouses, chain pumps, mills and beam engines. He was a true multi-skilled engineer.

Jesse Hartley in the landscape

Some food for thought:

The docks at Liverpool grew from 46 to 212 acres (19 to 86 ha) during his time as Superintendent;
He worked on every dock that was in existence during his life (in addition to the ones he built);
He added 10 miles of quayside to the dock estate;
When the City Council attempted to demolish the Albert Dock after Blitz damage they found that, due to the solidity of the place, the job would have been too expensive and lengthy. They decided to leave it in place – to be restored decades later.

So not only did he change the face of Liverpool; his works continued to influence the shape of the city’s regeneration in the 1980s, and arguably into the new millennium.

Would there have been enough foot traffic at the Pier Head to warrant the Echo Arena, the new Liverpool Museum or the Leeds-Liverpool Canal extension not Hartley’s monumental architecture given a canvas on which to paint the revival of the city? Would Liverpool One have been possible (or even necessary) without the docks to act as a second centre of gravity in the city centre? Hartley’s contributions mean we can never forget our port heritage.

Of course, it’s possible to see the opposite as true: the Albert Dock is no aesthetic masterpiece. Had Liverpool managed to break free of the weight of the docklands perhaps the focus of attention would not have been split between the river-front at one end and St. John’s Market at the other (and London Road beyond).

But whether you see him as a boon to Liverpool’s past, present and future, or a historical albatross around the neck of Liverpool, preventing coherent regeneration (or both), there’s no doubt that Jesse Hartley changed the face of the city he found. He left an architectural legacy that still shapes the way we feel as a port town, and the discussions about how we shape the Liverpool of tomorrow.

Liverpool Heroes 3: Vikings in Liverpool

OK, so perhaps the Norse Vikings are aren’t the first people to come to mind when we think of ‘Liverpool Heroes’. They’re distant in time, left little visible trace in our city, and went about changing society through the delicate application of pointy-horned helmets.

But of course none of that is strictly true. There are traces of the Norse presence on our doorstep, and may have paved the way for Liverpool itself to be settled half a millennium after they first arrived.

Place names – Norse Language in Liverpool

The most obvious clues to the way in which Norse settlers changed the landscape are the place names seen across the county. In fact, the distribution is the very thing which gives greatest evidence to the local historian.

In the west of the region are the village and town names of Scandinavian origin: Toxteth, West Derby, Kirkby (and West Kirkby). In the north and east are names which signal the presence of Anglo-Saxons: Walton, Bootle, Childwall. These names contain elements of the language the inhabitants spoke (e.g. botl = Old English, “dwelling place”; kirk = Norse, “church”), and therefore must date from the time the Norse arrived from Scandinavia via Dublin, and began moving into Anglo-Saxon territory.

Norse Politics and Merseyside Geography

In addition to the language, place names reveal elements of the geographical or political situation of the time.

Raby on the Wirral, and Roby near Huyton, get their name from the Norse for ‘boundary settlement’. Where these villages stand was once the edge of a land division, probably between the Norse and the Anglo-Saxons (one of whose centres was Chester, to the south east of Viking Wirral and indeed Raby).

Other place names show that Norse settlements were on sand dunes or mosses (‘Meols’ is from the Norse ‘melr’, meaning “sandhill”. Rather than the ruthless invaders we imagine them to be, for a time they were confined to the less fertile ground on the edges of the land.

Thingwall – both on the Wirral and the Hall of that name south of Knotty Ash – signal the site of ‘Things‘, Norse parliaments. Not only does this show how Vikings settled and set up rather civilised government structures, it also shows how a common name on modern Merseyside owes its origins to something brought in by the Scandinavian incomers.

West Derby (Norse: “park with deer”) became an important administrative centre at this time, being the centre of the West Derby Hundred, which stretched from the Mersey to the Ribble at Preston. The medieval ‘wapentake’ court was held here, a castle was built shortly after the Norman Conquest, and West Derby’s importance to government lasted until the 14th or 15th centuries when Liverpool itself rose to prominence.

Vikings – Liverpool Heroes?

By the time their culture disappeared beneath the incoming wave of William the Conqueror’s army, the Vikings had made an imprint in the geography and history of Liverpool and Merseyside.

Place names which survive right up to today tell us where their churches were, their parliament and their borders, and they also tell us the type of landscape they occupied. But was the effect of these invaders on the Liverpool landscape ‘radical’?

They arrived, settled and established a court at West Derby, and for around 500 years this inland location was the centre of power in north west England. Later, Edward the Confessor saw fit to site a hunting lodge here, and later still William the Conqueror deemed it a worthy reward to Roger de Poitou, one of his most powerful allies in the invasion.

If it wasn’t for the society which grew up here around the Thing from the 8th Century, West Derby may have remained a tiny woodland village, and perhaps the attention of King John would not have so naturally fell on the Mersey for a place to launch his Irish campaigns.

Who knows what Liverpool would have looked like had the Vikings not settled on and spread from the Wirral all those centuries ago?

Liverpool Heroes 2: Kitty Wilkinson

Kitty Wilkinson’s story is classic Victorian Liverpool: born in Londonderry in 1786, Wilkinson moved to Liverpool with her parents when she was just 8 years old. Tragically her father and sister were drowned at the end of the crossing when their ferry hit the Hoyle Bank.

(This article was originally inspired by International Womens’ Day, which takes places on March 8th each year).

Despite being faced with the terrible hardships of the time, she was known for opening her house to anyone who needed help. One of the services this entrepreneurial woman took on was to allow people to use her house and yard to wash their clothes for a penny a time. During a cholera outbreak in 1832 she offered her scullery boiler to all who wished to wash their clothes and linen.

Photograph of the interior of Frederick Street wash house — Interior of Frederick Street wash house, built in 1842

This proved so popular that her cellar gradually evolved into a wash house. None of those who worked here became infected by cholera, so effective were her disinfection efforts (e.g. the use of bleach to help clean clothes), and Kitty’s efforts led directly to the opening of the first public wash house. This was in Upper Frederick Street, and opened in 1842.

Given support by the District Provident Society and William Rathbone, Wilkinson was made superintendent of bath, and through the newspapers was crowned ‘Saint of the Slums’.

In 2010 it was announced that a statue was to be erected in her honour, and would be placed in St Georges Hall. As councillor Flo Clucas, who campaigned for the statue, said: “Through rising from abject poverty to achieve lasting reforms in public health Kitty Wilkinson is a real inspiration for every woman in this city.”

So how did Kitty Wilkinson shape the landscape? She pioneered the public wash house movement, and the last wash house closed only around a decade ago. The Upper Frederick Street building was a monument to her efforts, and in a sense the rest of the wash houses were also. In less concrete terms she also affected the human landscape of Liverpool. For the first time there was a place to go to clean your clothes properly, and the effects on stemming the spread of disease through the city are a legacy of Kitty Wilkinson’s generosity and hard work. This woman was a testament to fact that even those born into the poorest levels of society can make a massive difference to the built and experienced landscape.

Liverpool Heroes 1: John Alexander Brodie, City Engineer

In writing about the historic landscape of Liverpool, it’s easy to hide people from the narrative. This post on JA Brodie is the first in a series on Liverpool Heroes which aims to redress the balance. It ties in (rather loosely) with Liverpool’s Year of Radicals, celebrated in 2011.

These people weren’t radical in a left-wing sense (some far from it) but they were the pioneers, the bringers of change. They certainly left their mark on the landscape, some in subtle ways. A couple of these people are obvious choices, and some less so. Either way I hope you learn something new and interesting.

And so without further ado, and in no particular order, we begin with…

J.A. Brodie (1858 – 1934)

J.A. Brodie was the Liverpool city engineer from 1898. He became President of the Institution of Civil Engineers due to his achievements, and was the first local authority engineer to be so. The list of accomplishments is impressive, as is the effect he had on the shape of the city.

Brodie was one of the first to suggest an electric tram system for Liverpool. The city’s electric trams ran from 1898 to 1957, and even today the tracks pop up from time to time during roadworks. The Queens Drive and Prescot Road central reservations are the remains of tram routes which ran along them.

He proposed the development of a ring road, the aforementioned Queens Drive. He widened, straightened or diverted roads such as Black Horse Lane in Old Swan in the 1920s and 30s. The suburban sprawl of West Derby, Tue Brook and Childwall were still in the future. But even today Queens Drive holds up well with the volume of traffic, which couldn’t have been foreseen 90 years ago.

Brodie beyond roads

In 1905 the first pre-fab concrete tenements were built in Eldon Street. Brodie had been experimenting with concrete as a solution to the housing shortage, and in 1905 he exhibited a pre-fab cottage at the Cheap Cottages Exhibition in Letchworth. There’s probably little need to elaborate on the use of pre-fab concrete in Liverpool buildings in later years, but for better or worse (and despite trade union opposition to Liverpool’s production of concrete prefab parts) J.A. Brodie was a pioneer here.

As if being responsible for one of Liverpool’s major thoroughfairs, and a pioneer in building technology we still live with wasn’t enough, Brodie also put forward the idea for the East Lancs road, so that we can more quickly get to our neighbours in Manchester. And finally, of course, he invented the goal net, an invention of which he was particularly proud.

So: J.A. Brodie: engineer, architect, footy-dispute-preventer. And a man who’s effect on the landscape of Liverpool is visible almost a century after he died.

Image: Building the East Lancs Road 1932, released by Robert Wade under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license

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