Lewis’s has only recently announced its closure, but already plans sneaking out about what will come after it. Still no word on whether the shop itself will be ‘resurgent’ in the new development, but plenty of comment, so I’ll leave to to pop over to those sites for a read.
Plans for a ‘Central Village‘ have been on the cards for a few years already.
Robin Brown on the Liverpool Culture Blog is right to worry about what will go in the new ‘Central Village Liverpool’ . What with Liverpool One and the new developments from Paradise Street up to Renshaw Street, Liverpool is at risk from each area pulling customers away the others. If this development is to work, it will have to have its own distinctive character.
However optimistic we are, Liverpool has only got so much money to spend, especially at the moment. As this is near Lime Street, there is a good chance Central Village will attract visitors from outside the city, but if it apes the rest of the new developments, Liverpool will lose its character, and it’s often bold independent shopping soul.
The covenant dictated that no building be constructed within 40 feet of the River Mersey, and any building here would not be more than 40 feet tall. This was to maintain the lines of sight between the Port of Liverpool building and offices at the Albert Dock. This document was signed in 1963 when the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board sold the land the museum now stands on to Liverpool Corporation.
It seems that NML’s David Fleming chose to pay the money upfront before Dowling were tempted into suing for a predicted £70,000.
Visitor numbers up for Liverpool museums
Better publicity for NML comes in the form of visitor numbers to all the museums on Merseyside, which rose to 2.2m in 2009 from just over 2m in 2007.
Of course, 2008 was going to take some beating, so it’s good to know that the trend from the last ‘normal’ year is a positive one. You can only imagine that with the new museum next year, visitor numbers will increase again.
More details and figures for the individual museums are available on the Art in Liverpool blog.
Lewis’s lives on – for a little while longer
Now that Lewis’s has announced it’s closing down, memories turn to its ‘golden years’ in the last century.
A new exhibition by photographer Stephen King is being shown at the Conservation Centre, focussing on the fabled ‘Fifth Floor’. This is where the old cafe was, along with the biggest hair salon in the world. It’s also home to an amazing range of (now) retro design – bright colours in the post-WWII era, yellow walls, orange ceilings and blue chairs, and egg-shaped hair-dryers and 1950s lino floors.
Photographs also include portraits of Lewis’s employees past and present, to breathe some life into the eerie space.
The exhibition runs from 26th February until 30th August. You can follow the exhibition on the Lewis’s Fifth Floor blog.
Abbey Road studios finally listed
You may be aware of the current saga of Abbey Road studios in London; its future uncertain while rumours flew that it would be sold off by owners EMI.
Well, the Culture Minister Margaret Hodge has announced that she would be taking on board English Heritage’s recommendations, and would be listing the Georgian townhouse which contains the studios.
English Heritage first proposed that the building be listed in 2003, but had been ignored until this great publicity opportunity fell at the minister’s feet. Even EH had originally been reluctant to recommend listing, but current listing criteria include ‘historic’ as well as ‘architectural’ significance. And Abbey Road certainly has that.
Over the past few weeks I’ve come across a handful of very interesting looking sites for those of you with a local history interest. The best thing about them is that they’re after your input, so pop along and see what you can contribute!
Building History is a specialised wiki site, much like the (in)famous Wikipedia and the Liverpool Wiki. It encourages users to submit information about any road or building to its database, even the one you live in! Almost 200 roads and nearly 300 buildings have been added, and the site’s only been online since October 2009.
All you need is an email address, and you can get going. The Warwick page is the most complete, so use that as a template. Liverpool is there, waiting for someone to add something, though note that it’s placed in Lancashire!
For those privacy-concerned individuals (like me), it’s good to know they only allow publicly-available data to be added (census data, for example).
Finally, we have the Open Plaques project. This, in its own words, is “a service that aims to find and provide data about all the commemorative ‘plaques’ (often blue and round) that can be found across the UK and worldwide”.
You can browse their database via peoples’ names, places, or organisation, and the site wants all the plaques photographed, tagged with their geographical location, and have their colour identified. There’s a neat little graph on the home page letting you know how they’re getting on.
The data comes from a variety of sources (including English Heritage’s blue plaques site and Freedom of Information requests) which have been cleaned up for presentation on the site.
You can help them by getting in touch, or taking a photo of one and uploading it to Flickr. If you tag the photo correctly (as explained on the site) it will appear next to the relevant entry. Brilliant! All the data is free for you to reuse, and the maps are created using OpenStreetMap. You can follow the project via Twitter: @openplaques, or on their .
Three listed buildings in Liverpool are amongst over 150 to receive money from English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Repair Grants for Places of Worship scheme.
The Church of All Hallows (£103,000), St Michael in the Hamlet (£199,000), plus the Princes Road Synagogue (£71,000) were all beneficiaries of the latest round of grants, which totalled £15.7 million this year. The money will be spent on repairs and restoration of the buildings, as well as anti-vandal measures where necessary.
West Tower, Brook Street, Liverpool, by E Pollock via Geograph
We’ve moved a step closer to Peel’s vision of ‘Liverpool Waters’ with funding being secured for the 54 storey Richmond Properties/Y1 tower towards the north docks, at the junction of the Strand and Leeds Street. It’s 25m taller than the current tallest tower, Tower West, but has been redesigned (again) after a failed attempt at getting planning permission in 2007.
Having failed to get the sleek design past the Council planning committee, it seems that the architects have thrown a bucket of Sticklebricks at the south side, to see what sticks (check out the third pic in the slideshow via the link above). Comments in the Architect’s Journal include the terms ‘pig ugly’, ‘hubris’ and ’shoebox’ (though the third of these is a Wayne Colquhoun comment, so pinches of salt all round).
CABE criticise Pathfinder scheme
Further criticism for Liverpool’s attempts at regeneration come from Colquhoun’s arch enemies, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). The commission has hit out at the New Heartlands Housing Market Renewal scheme, particularly parking courts and the quality of housing. SAVE’s Will Palin added to the judgment, claiming that “swathes of good Victorian terraced housing been emptied and left to rot”, to be replaced by inferior buildings.
This blog brings you views of Liverpool from across the 19th and 20th Centuries, with a paragraph or two about what you can see in the photos. The February 8th post is all about Lost Churches of Liverpool, which is a kind of post-script to the 2001 book The Churches of Liverpool by David Lewis, which was published by the blog author.
It’s great to see some little admissions of what the publisher would have liked to have done better in the book (an index, for example), but to make up for this (perhaps!) future blog posts will give us photos of the greatest losses to the city, starting with St George’s Church, which stood where Liverpool Castle once was, and where now we find the Victoria Monument.
The most recent post as of this writing does a similar service to other lost Liverpool buildings, including arguably the most-missed: the Customs House, which was needlessly demolished in the post-Blitz redevelopment.
Make sure you keep an eye on this new blog – it promises to be a good one!
The Liverpool Echo is reporting that work could begin as early as April on the restoration of the Florence Institute, which has received £3.7 million restoration money from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
£6.6m has already been raised by the Florence Institute Trust, but the new money will allow the construction of “exhibition and performance space, activities for young people and the elderly, an indoor/outdoor sport area, childcare facilities, workspaces for local business and a Heritage Resource Centre”. An additional £1.7m may be granted by the North West Regional Development Agency.
Seaforth Sands Railway Station, from Wikmedia Commons
Motor coach number 3 is the last surviving coach from the legendary Liverpool Overhead Railway. It was donated to National Museums Liverpool when the LOR closed in 1956.
On Friday 29 January from 1 – 4pm FACT will be screening footage of the LOR, showcasing research into the Lumière brothers’ film footage of the railway, and introduced by Dr Richard Koeck. According to the Art in Liverpool blog:
Dr Koeck will share insights into his research and ongoing production of the film animations that will contextualise and reference the original Lumière archive footage with historical maps of the time, and retrace the precise route of the films.
The LOR and motor coach number 3 will become part of the Port City gallery in the new Museum of Liverpool, due to open in 2011.
Mad About Liverpool?
Of course you are, so head over to the gallery of that name which has opened in Clayton Square. More details on the Art in Liverpool site.
Creative Commons History
Finally, anyone out there know of a good source of Creative Commons historic images?
There’s some good stuff on Flickr Commons, especially from the Library of Congress in the US or the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, but just wondered if there was source of Liverpool pictures I could use to illustrate this blog and Historic Liverpool.
Liver Building 2, by gloskeith (Creative Commons via Flickr)
I’d like to start this post with a kind of ‘metablog’. I would have liked to have made that word up myself, but a quick Google proves otherwise. Either way, the Liverpool Blogs blog is a blog about blogs. Try saying that after a Cains or two. I’ve only just discovered this site, and not had time to explore fully, but if you ever want to read more about Liverpool, then it’s the place to start.
The latest post as of this writing is a profile of the Scandinavian Church on Park Lane, which blogs at Save the Scandinavian Church in Liverpool. This site charts the events held at the church, and the ongoing efforts to keep this church in Liverpool. Apparently the mother church in Uppsala, Sweden wants to move the church to somewhere else in the world! The blog also posts in Swedish, so is certainly the real deal in terms of Scandinavian culture on Merseyside. Certainly a site of interest to readers of Liverpool Landscapes.
As for Liverpool Blogs, I’d recommend having a search through their links. If you’re a Liverpool blogger yourself, get in touch with them. I’ve no doubt I’ll be linking to this site in the future, and keeping an eye on it for new and interesting blogs!
Of interest to us Landscapophiles (a word I definitely just invented) is the Liverpool Echo’s Love Where You Live photo competition. The Echo is looking for images that demonstrate why you love where you live, but also illustrate the importance of caring for the environment. Two shots from Flickr have been uploaded as examples. There is also a secondary category for shots of people “who make a difference”.
The Feeling Listless blog discusses a new exhibition, Building Merseyside: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Architecture of Liverpool and the Surrounding Area, taking place at St. George’s Hall. The exhibition includes photography, sculpture and painting. The author, Stuart Ian Burns (the only Stuart Ian Burns around), makes a few good side notes on the fun of looking up at the buildings you might only ever consider to be shop fronts for HMV, Bhs or Dixons if you kept your eyes to ground level.
There has been a certain amount of interest in my post on re-using Liverpool’s derelict buildings and in particular the derelict tobacco warehouse at Stanley Dock, which many (me included) would like to see regenerated. A few questions remain, such as the problem of too-low ceilings (are they too low? How low is too low?). If this is a problem, are there any other uses to which the huge building could be put (See ‘Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse below)?
There is also of course the larger problem of the isolation of the warehouse and other buildings down that part of the city. It’s handy for the town centre, but a little too far to walk, but possibly not worth driving in.
We could sit around here all day discussing the problems of regenerating the warehouse area, but I’d like to keep the focus on the wider issue of the redevelopment and re-use of derelict buildings, of which there are many around Merseyside. There are other cities in the country who have already taken up the challenge. Four of them are mentioned in the English Heritage (EH) publication Making the Most of Your Local Heritage: A Guide for Overview and Scrutiny Committees, downloadable from the HELM website (and which actually has a photo of our own fair city on the cover).
Although the booklet is aimed at those already involved in local heritage and planning issues, any of us can take its advice on how to make the most of our historic landscape and the buildings in it. Of particular interest is Case Study 3, Wolverhampton and Heritage at Risk: Protecting the Irreplacable (can you see where this is going? ).
A quote:
Wolverhampton City Council recognised the considerable potential of redundant historic buildings when in 2004 a scrutiny panel was established to investigate how an increasingly uninhabited historic environment could be used as an effective impetus for regeneration. The review attracted widespread attention amongst the local press and community as the Panel sought to establish how new uses could be found for a significant number of historic buildings…
Their report found that a crucial factor for success was the partnership between the City Council and developers, and recommended a set of character appraisals for important sites and other areas at risk. Could this be a solution for Liverpool? Does Liverpool have a similar process or committee? And what role can local residents play in the absence of such organisations? (Check out the advice for Heritage Champions on the HELM website).
Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse
I’ve found an old Liverpool Echo story referring to plans to regenerate the whole warehouse area from Dec 8th 2003, with “1000 building and permanent retail jobs” by 2008. I think we all know what happened to that optimistic scheme. Originally, owners Kitgrove had planned to demolish the building and keep the north west supplied with bricks “for the next decade” (the warehouse is the largest brick building in Europe). Luckily heritage groups and the city council opposed the plans.
A problem both articles mention is that little light manages to make it into the centre of the building, requiring that it be cored out to create a central atrium, something akin to the entrance to World Museum Liverpool. Also the general complexity of the building means options are limited for re-use. Nevertheless, past projects were ambitious: “There will be an exclusion zone on part of the roof to provide a nesting area for peregrine falcons.”
West Derby is one of nearly 40 Conservation Areas in Liverpool. West Derby 2, by Mrs Magic via Flickr
Every month or so English Heritage releases a new issue of Conservation Bulletin (ConBull), and the latest issue is on Conservation Areas (available in PDF and Microsoft Word formats). Conservation Areas (CAs) were created with the aim of ‘preserving and enhancing’ the built character of a location, and it’s worth flicking through this ConBull for its relevance to areas of Liverpool.
The document is the collected work of experts in the field of conservation, though what is refreshing in recent English Heritage publications is the emphasis on a balance between preservation and development, which can often be in stark contrast to the most conservative Nimby opinion pieces (you know who you are!).
This issue thankfully takes into account the social and economic benefits of preserving historic urban and rural areas, which can only aid the argument for their protection. The whole publication aims to integrate CAs into a positive role as part of the planning process, partcicularly in struggling economies where CAs can easily be cast as an an obstruction to recovery.
What is revealed is that Conservation Areas, in the British sense, are unique in the world – other countries tend to include natural formations within the Conservation Areas definition (what we might in the UK call Sites of Special Scientific Interest, or perhaps Nature Reserves). Examples of this type can be found in China, Australia and Mexico, and this magazine visits all three areas for a comparative look.
Of major interest are the methods by which Conservation Areas are designated. Just as it is useful to know your chances of getting a local building listed, it pays to understand how the professionals judge the importance of CAs, and how the practice of dealing with threats to them works. This issue of ConBull is therefore useful if you live in and wish to help conservation efforts in a local CA.
As an interesting aside, it is reported in this issue that Sefton Park was valued by CABE at £105 million. I’m not sure what this price was based on, but it helps put the Park into context of the interest in economic value of CAs.
The most promising thing about this Conservation Bulletin, and a lesson for us all perhaps, is that it shows that English Heritage do not consider Conservation Areas to be ’set and forget’ designations. They are part of the planning process, part of people’s living and working environments, and as such should be considered as evolving parts of the landscape, just like the cities in which they sit.
Do you live in one of Liverpool’s Conservation Areas? What are your attitudes to change? What’s distinctive about the place and what is under threat?
Conservation Areas were created in 1967 as part of the Civic Amenities Act. There are 9300 in England, nearly 40 if which are in Liverpool. The aim of CAs is to allow authorities to “determine which parts of their area are areas of special architectural or historic interest the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance” Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (c. 9) (c. 9)
Plan of Liverpool Castle by E.W. Cox, from Wikipedia
Last weekend I visited Liverpool Castle. The castle itself was pulled down in 1715 and St George’s Church built in its place. However in 1895 E.W. Cox prepared a reconstruction for the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, and in the first decade of the 20th Century the first Viscount Leverhulme built a reconstruction of the ruins of the castle in the village of Rivington near Chorley. Today it stands in Lever Park, a large area of woodland on the east bank of Rivington Reservoir.
The replica castle stands on high ground overlooking the reservoir, and though of course it can never quite match the shape of the landscape in medieval Liverpool, the lake acts as a stand-in for the Pool (compare this plan on Wikipedia with the satellite view on Google Maps). The position of the Mersey itself would have been in a west to east direction, on the north side of the two most complete towers at Rivington.
The castle was incomplete by the time of Lord Leverhulme’s death in 1925 and work stopped, though the majority of the intended layout was in place. Today the castle has its fair share of graffiti, and evidence of fires and drinking are all around. However, it’s a great place to go to get a feel for one of Liverpool’s lost gems.
I’m not sure whether this castle is a full-scale replica or not, so anyone who could shed a bit of light on it would be most helpful! If you’ve been there yourself, what did you think of the place?
The Castle is the subject of my first ever Flickr upload! All Creative Commons, so do with them what you like, as long as you credit me (if you use them please link to this blog or Historic Liverpool).
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