Liverpool Waterfront by Jim Media via Flickr

It seems only yesterday that I was bemoaning the uncertainty of the future for Liverpool’s built environment (oh, wait… it was).

Now, on the same day that we can celebrate the historic Stanley Park and 16 other Liverpool parks getting a Green Flag award, there are confusing rumours of Peel Holdings’ plans to transform Merseyside’s docklands.

English Heritage have expressed their concern that the schemes – which originally wanted to erect dozens of skyscrapers across both waterfronts – would damage the context of the World Heritage site, centred on the Three Graces.

In response, Peel have scaled back the plans, now with just two groups of tall buildings between Princes and Clarence Docks. The number of tall buildings is lower than was planned in 2007, with the group at Clarence Dock being reduced from 15 to seven towers.

Meanwhile however, more success for Peel over the Mersey, with the Wirral Waters project expected to be granted planning permission by councillors next week.

In other news…

OK, if all that was a bit much for one day, here’s a more… lovely story.

A history of Lewis’s

The corner entrance of Lewis's Department Store, Ranelagh Street, Liverpool

David Lewis founded a small shop selling men’s and boy’s clothing in 1856. The sale of women’s clothes began in 1864 , and by the 1870s Lewis’s was a full department store, having added sections for shoes and tobacco.

Branches were opened in other cities, beginning with Manchester in 1877 and followed by Birmingham, Sheffield and Leicester.

The building burnt down in a famous fire of 1886, and was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. Nevertheless, it was rebuilt each time, and was refurbished in 1957, including the installation of the statue ‘Liverpool Resurgent’ to symbolise the city’s renewed vigour following the horrors of the recent conflict.

The fifth floor of Lewis’s has taken on an almost mythical status. In the store’s heyday, the 1950s, the fifth floor was the place to dine in the self-service cafeteria or the Red Rose restaurant, or to get your hair done in the salon. A large mural decorated the walls, but this and the other features were hidden from the public in the 1980s when the floor was closed. It’s now found a new burst of publicity as it becomes the focus of an exhibition at the National Conservation Centre.

Lewis’s went into administration in 1991, and all but the Liverpool store were sold off, the majority to competitor Owen Owen. The Liverpool store continued to trade though, until it went into liquidation in 2007. Having been bought by Vergo Retail Ltd in the same year it managed to soldier on until the lease on the iconic building came up for renewal. Due to development of the area, the company was no longer allowed to stay. Despite efforts at negotiation, it remains uncertain whether Lewis’s will have a place in the new Liverpool Central Village.

Trying to come to terms with the loss of an iconic Liverpool company, Susan Lee explained that Lewis’s ceased to be ‘a player’ in the city. Recent development meant that the focus shifted to the waterfront and Liverpool One. Also in recent years the Big Dig cut off Lewis’s from its customers, and was no longer the highly fashionable place – complete with a lady behind a lectern to welcome you – to shop.

40 Ranelagh Street

Lewis's original Department Store, 1864

David Lewis opened his first small store on Ranelagh Street, Liverpool in 1856. It was a small, glass-fronted shop as shown in the image on the Lewis’s web site.

It expanded piece by piece between 1910-12 into much larger premises, which were gutted by fire in 1888. The building was once again heavily damaged, this time by German bombs, during the Second World War. It is the 1957 building, complete with ‘Dickie Lewis’, which remains standing today, and which will stay as part of the redevelopment of the area.

This latest Lewis’s store was designed in 1947 by Gerald de Courcy Fraser, and constructed by Fraser, Sons and Geary. It is built from a steel frame with a Portland stone façade.

There are several classical influences in the building. Red granite columns are topped with Ionic capitals, while the columns on the fourth floor are Tuscan in style. A two-storey collonade above the corner entrance have Doric-style half columns.

The statue Liverpool Resurgent is accompanied by relief panels depicting scenes of childhood, the figures in which are modelled on the sculptor Jacob Epstein’s own children and grandchildren. These represent the younger generation which Liverpool was being rebuilt for.

One of the most interesting features of the building are the lifts, of which some are still in place, but which are to be removed as part of the new Liverpool Central Village. These lifts are original features of the building, and were operated by a member of staff through use of a lever. There were no controls for the customers! Both the fold-down seats and the lever mechanism are currently still in the building, and are mentioned in the listing description. The passenger lifts at the south east of the building still have ‘clocks’ with coloured lights to indicate which member of staff was required on the shop floor.

In addition, parts of the original customer escalators survive to the fourth and fifth floors.

The rediscovered fifth floor has wood panelling, panelled doors and a tiled floor corridor. A ten foot high Festival of Britain mural on the eastern wall is made of hand painted and hand printed tiles. Another mural on the south wall shows geometric patterns and cutlery, probably designed by the same artist.

References

Lewis’s closure brings end to colourful history (Liverpool Echo)

Susan Lee on the reasons why Lewis’s department store in Liverpool is facing closure (Liverpool Echo)

Oldest department store to close (BBC News)

Lewis’s closes down the shutters after 154 years (BBC News)

Lewis’s Liverpool, exterior, 1931 (Liverpool Museums)

Lewis’s Department Store (Listed Buildings Online)

Lewis’s (Wikipedia)

Two of Us, by Eric the Fish via Flickr

Welcome back to the Liverpool Landscapes blog! I do hope you came checking every day while I was away , but even if not, you’ll be glad to know I’m rested, relaxed and raring to go to bring you the most interesting bits of news concerning the history of Liverpool. The theme of this post seems to be milestones, in a way, so let’s start with politics…

The general election and history

The first occasion on the horizon is of course the General Election. As a civil servant, I should probably be careful what I say in the run up to May 6th, but it’s worth pointing out that the Museums Journal this month contains a short analysis of what the main parties intend to do should you vote them into power next month. (You’ll need to register to view the article, or pick up a copy of MJ in the local library).

All the parties seem to agree on free admissions to museums, a move away from targets, and on increasing access to arts and cultural institutions. However, Louise de Winter of the National Campaign for the Arts notes that Labour’s reliance on free admission to help with increased access is not enough.

The Conservatives emphasis on helping people to help themselves (“Big Society, Small Government”) may extend to the cultural sector, with an ‘arm’s length principle‘ being applied to supporting museums.

The Liberal Democrats also want to enable museums to be more independent and enterprising, and want to generate more arts and heritage money from the National Lottery through tax changes.

At the time of the Journal’s press, the Labour manifesto had not been released, but it noted that the party wanted to ensure all Britain benefits from the digital revolution, and to build on earlier schemes such as Find Your Talent.

English Heritage publish heritage protection paper

Even though the Heritage Protection Bill did not make it into the Queen’s Speech last year, work has continued on reforming the way the historic environment is cared for.

All you professional archaeologists out there will know about PPG15 and PPG16, the two documents which make rescue archaeology (and so the vast majority of professional archaeology occurring in this country) possible. These documents are both almost 20 years old, and have been replaced by Planning Policy Statement (PPS) 5.

The long term aims with heritage protection reform (HPR) are to replace the current system of listed buildings, scheduled monuments and other designations with a single, hierarchical system. This would make it easier to protect historic sites and buildings, as well as make it simpler for owners of such assets to find the information they need to effectively protect them.

The new document also covers such topics as approaches to planning, climate change issues, and the monitoring of the historic environment. It’s available to download from the Department for Communities and Local Government Planning for the Historic Environment page.

Somewhat related to this is the Government’s Statement on the Historic Environment of England 2010, which has a lovely picture of Canning Dock on the front (minus the new Mann Island developments it seems, but we’ll skip round that issue…).

In the rest of the news…

Well, those are probably the big stories of the day, but there are a few more tidbits to cover.

It’s International World Heritage Day tomorrow (18th April)! Now, I’m assuming that anyone reading this post is somehow interested in a certain World Heritage Site, and now’s your chance to raise awareness of where it is, and the work it takes to preserve and look after it.The Global Development Research Center (sic) has a few suggestions on what people can do to celebrate and commemorate.

Liverpool City Council have organised five tours of parts of the city which fit in with this year’s theme, which is the Heritage of Agriculture. Now, you may argue that Liverpool’s WHS has little to do with agriculture, but as the foremost port of the empire, merchants in Liverpool oversaw a huge proportion of the transport of the world’s agricultural produce. For details of the tours, download the leaflet from the Liverpool World Heritage web site. Places are limited, so get in early!

Speaking of mercantile heritage, the Old Dock is finally to be opened to the public on 4th May. As the BBC report, the remains of the dock wall were carefully preserved during the construction of Liverpool One, and can be seen through a window placed in the floor at the bottom of the steps from the Liverpool Wheel where the Liverpool Wheel used to stand [cheers for the correction, Adrian!].

From next month, there will be a “visitors’ facility” to allow you to view objects found during archaeological excavations there, a computer reconstruction fly-through, and the east section of the dock which has a tunnel suspected of linking to Liverpool Castle. More details are available on the Maritime Museum Liverpool web site.

And finally-finally, architects Baca have another masterplan to ruffle the feathers of the Liverpool Preservation Trust et al. This time the south docks are in the picture, and Baca want to “bring an interesting new approach to waterspace design that will unlock the potential of these wonderful docks and the World Heritage Site”.

As you know, I for one consider that the World Heritage Site needs its potential unlocking. It’s so… tied up there in those creaky old buildings.

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.

Good luck to it.

New Museum Liverpool, by pixiepic, via Flickr

The keys were handed over to National Museums Liverpool from the developers last week, and now the pristine Museum of Liverpool is preparing for the installation of its exhibits ahead of the 2011 opening. The Liverpool Echo has a great slideshow of the museum, including the main entrance, the giant picture window, and the central spiral staircase.

You can also sponsor part of the Jura stone cladding, or one of the seats in the auditorium. Just pop over to www.liverpool museums.org.uk/about/development/mol for more information.

I’m looking forward to seeing it when it opens!

Liverpool Map to go on display

Speaking of the museum, a new fused glass map which will take pride of place in the galleries when MoL opens next year is to go on display at the Daily Post’s offices in the city centre. There’s a blog on the Daily Post web site to keep you up to date with progress with the map.

Now if only they’d do an electronic version I could stick on my site!

Work begins on the International Garden Festival site.

After 26 years, work is finally to start on the site of the 1984 Garden Festival. The Oriental gardens will be restored, lakes dredged and undergrowth cleared. Plenty of people in the Liverpool Echo article are ‘delighted’ at the ‘milestone’. 600 homes were built straight after the Festival, and Pleasure Island gave many a young schoolkid a fun Bank Holiday in the 1990s, but developers Langtree hope that this latest phase of building will create a worthy leisure facility for Merseyside and kick-start the collapsed apartment project from 2008.

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.

New Pictorial History of Liverpool

OK, enough about planning for now. Adrian McEwen (via Twitter) pointed out the new Streets of Liverpool website.

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!

Liverpool skyline shows the new and the old bidding for space (by jimmedia via Flickr)

The Art in Liverpool blog has news that English Heritage and Liverpool City Council (as part of the Historic Environment of Liverpool Project) are running a competition to contribute to the Shanghai Expo 2010.

The theme of the competition is ‘Your Liverpool’, and you can enter by submitting a photo or about 100 words on the topic.

The 10 shortlisted entries will earn their creators a chance to work with digital designers to produce short pieces on ‘their city of Liverpool’. The pieces will then be shown in the Liverpool pavilion at the Expo later this year. Closing date is 22nd  February.

Future of Liverpool

On the City Council website today is news of a Local Development Framework (LDF) to guide the future development of the city. The plan has been released for a public consultation.

The most relevant of the seven main features for readers of this blog is “Protecting  important historic buildings”. As all Liverpool residents past and present will  know, the city has an amazing array of listed and other historic buildings, particularly in Dale Street, Castle Street and the Lime Street/William Brown Street area. It has also seen a great deal needlessly lost.

So get onto the Council site and have a look at the LDF documents, and have your say at one of the local events!

Liverpool Waters image by Jaybuoy

Peel’s Liverpool Waters scheme has reached another milestone with their plans for Birkenhead Docks being submitted to the local council. The Northbank east section has already been approved, but this East Float part is apparently the UK’s largest planning application.

Peel hopes the Mersey estuary will rival Shanghai and Sydney once the development is completed, and the artists’ impressions I’ve seen certainly show a massive change from what the area looks like now.

Perhaps I’m being old-fashioned, or at least conservative, but to me this will completely change the character of Liverpool and the Wirral. I’m not opposed to big cities per se, but what I love about Liverpool is the human scale of it all. Say what you want about the Mann Island development and the new Liverpool Museum, but the size (if not the design) of these buildings fit with the character of Liverpool. So does Liverpool One. The forest of skyscrapers promised by Peel will remove that feeling, and alter the balance and focus of the river bank. No longer will the Three Graces be the prow of the good ship Liverpool. All eyes will be on Peelsville.

I’d dearly love to see the vast swathes of dereliction in Liverpool and Birkenhead brought back into use (see for instance my earlier posts on Stanley Dock). But whether historic buildings are brought into use or new development takes place, I’m sure there are better, more individual ways of doing it. Discussions on Yo! Liverpool certainly show enthusiasm for the project, although there are some who want tougher questions asked.

Perhaps the new version of Liverpool – Peel’s version – will be a hugely exciting place to live and work, but I fear that I’ll feel a little lost in it all. The plans concentrate in the north docks, so perhaps both towns can successfully contain their ‘scraper cities’. What do you think?

Liverpool’s own scrutiny committee

Speaking of my recent Stanley Dock article, I was contacted by Peter Baines, Local Government Improvement Adviser for English Heritage, who pointed me in the direction of Liverpool City Council’s Regeneration Select Committee. Peter tells me that “these committees hold in-depth reviews on all manner of policy areas and make recommendations to the Council’s Executive / Cabinet about how things can be improved”. This page shows how open this committee is, with agendas and minutes posted for all their meetings. The page also lists their responsibilities, which to me look like exactly the kind of progress and development we should be after.

Thanks, David! Good to know we have these committees!

When Christmas shopping gets a bit much…

Liverpool.com has a great little article on the best pubs and bars to be found in the city centre. From the Grapes and Carnaevon Castle to the Richmond and the Globe, the list gives away some hidden gems in Liverpool’s pub landscape. Have you tried any?

Liverpool Landscapes and Historic Liverpool go social!

If you’re a regular reader (and if not, why not?!) then you may have noticed the headlines in the left-hand bar. These are my posts on the new Historic Liverpool Twitter page! Click straight through to the stories from this blog, or follow all the updates at @histliverpool.

You can also keep an eye on all the links used in this blog by going to the Historic Liverpool Delicious page. This is a site where I can publicly bookmark interesting pages, and keep them collected in one place.

Both these pages can be viewed without opening an account, and you can keep up to date with each page by adding their URLs (Delicious, Twitter) to a feed reader.

Stanley Dock, by Tim.Edwards, via Flickr

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.

Another scheme to regenerate “starting in 2009″ was reported in June 2008 (scroll down to Stanley Dock).

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.”

Useful Resources:

Ownership of buildings in the Liverpool Mercantile City World Heritage Site (see p3): http://www.liverpool.gov.uk/Images/tcm21-32550.pdf
World Heritage Site Management Plan: http://www.liverpool.gov.uk/Leisure_and_culture/Tourism_and_travel/World_heritage_site/Management_plan/index.asp

Liverpool Garden Festival by MC =), from Flickr

Two stories come together this week which conjure up memories of Liverpool in the 1980s (limited memories for me personally, as I was two when the Garden Festival was on!).

The Garden Festival site is finally beginning the last segment of its journey of regeneration. The company Langtree are the developers, who hope to begin work in November with the site being completed in a year. The £250 million redevelopment will include restoration of many of the gardens, and the building of homes. The BBC story seems to suggest that the site has been derelict for the 25 years since the Festival, which I would suggest cruelly overlooks Pleasure Island, scene of many an exciting Bank Holiday in the mid-1990s.

The related story is that Lord Heseltine gave a speech yesterday to a conference celebrating 25 years of the Mersey Basin campaign, an effort to clean up the River Mersey. Lord Heseltine warned against resting on our laurels. The river is cleaner now than it has been since the Industrial Revolution, but this should be “the platform to leap forward, not the opportunity to congratulate ourselves on a job completed.”

Those who know their recent Liverpool history will be aware that Lord Heseltine was the initial force behind the 1984 Garden Festival, although the then ‘Minister for Merseyside’ was often criticised for ignoring the deeper problems of Liverpool, and settling for this rather ‘cosmetic’ and temporary fix. However, it has been pointed out that the festival raised the spirits of the region, and showed what a co-ordinated effort with the Merseyside Development Corporation could produce.

Of related interest is the fact that Otterspool Promenade on which the festival site stands was created from the dumping of household waste and debris from the Queensway tunnels from the 1930s, a process which clearly had some detrimental impact on the river, and meant that the natural features of Otterspool and Dingle Point were lost beneath the concrete which later capped the promenade.

It also goes to show that even recent history is constantly impacting on the landscape, shaping the city we live in! Feel free to share your Festival memories, or your views on the site in general!

Note: The photo above is from a collection of photos of the derelict Garden Festival site by MC =) on Flickr. This is a great collection of photos, though tinged with a slight spookiness and desolation. Plus an abandoned typewriter. It’s full of Creative Commons goodness too, so have a look!