Posts from the ‘Landscapes’ Category

Breathing Spaces, or A Sense of Placed

My interest in landscape is not just restricted to history and archaeology. I’m just as interested in the modern urban landscape (of Liverpool in the case of this website), because it’s the product of everything that went before. Archaeologists recognise the ‘layers’ of landscape development as truly as they see the ordered layers in the side of a trench denoting Romans following Iron Age communities following etc etc etc. Sense of Placed delves into these layers.

And as I’ve researched Liverpool’s historic landscape and the landscapes of urban zones around the world (and as I’ve lived in several very distinct cities myself), I’ve come to realise the role landscape history plays in our day to day lives. This happens whether we think we’re interacting with ‘The Past’ or not.

And so a project that naturally caught my eye started with a van called Ed, and has so far developed into Placed (‘Place Education’), which until Sunday 23rd September 2018 inhabited a slice of the old George Henry Lee building on Houghton Street.

Placed want to know what influences changes in shop occupancy, and the impact of those changes on the use of the surrounding area. In this way it ties in to my own interests.

Breathing Spaces

My encounter with Placed came in the form of a guided tour by Ronnie Hughes, who many readers will recognise as the author of the A Sense of Place blog (only available on the Wayback Machine archive: https://asenseofplace.com/). He’s also involved in local community initiatives such as Granby 4 Streets and the Mystery Literary Festival (though he’d be the first to tell you he’s just part of a team). And now a PhD in Sociology and History!

Having read Ronnie’s blog for what seems like the best part of a decade, I was very much looking forward to meeting the man in person, especially listening to him talk about a project where our respective interests overlap.

Breathing Spaces, giving the walk its title, are the spaces Ronnie has identified in any given city which let visitors to the centre can use to take a moment to reflect.

Ideal Breathing Spaces should be noticeably quiet – away from the bustle of shoppers, cars, buskers, soap-boxers – sheltered to lesser or greater extent from the elements, and Free. Free has a capital F for me because (taking a cue from the Open Source movement) it should be Free as in ‘Free Speech’ as well as in ‘free beer’. In its Free-ness it should be inviting, in that you should be in no doubt that you can come here, sit down, eat your own food perhaps, without being moved on. A truly communal public space that welcomes.

Do we have any of those in Liverpool? And how well do they match up to these ideals?

I must say now that these ‘ideals’ are ones I felt came across during the walk, and are not necessarily culled from a shopping list that Ronnie has made!

It was a small group on this, the third of three walks. This made it easy to exchange ideas and chat about our own takes on what Ronnie was describing. The youngest member of the group must have been no more than 10 years old, and even she was engaged with the things we were talking about!

Literally Going to Town

We first shared our ideas of what ‘going to town’ means to us. It means (to our group) shopping, socialising, going to work, doing touristy things and a few other things besides.

But this is in some contrast to the landscape of town, which can very easily feel like it’s all about shopping. This is particularly true since the arrival of Liverpool One. Town is a shopping landscape, and so Breathing Spaces might merely be seen as a ‘break from shopping’. But that would be to misunderstand what many people are in town to do.

Ronnie had promised to take us to the best Breathing Space first, before taking us on a tour of other spaces that don’t do such a great job. The walk set out from George Henry Lee’s and headed first to the garden of Bluecoat Chambers. Why is this garden such a good space? Well, it is a secluded space, quiet and green, with seats and benches. Although the gates are locked at the end of the day (and were locked when Ronnie did a reccie earlier that morning!) you can come and go as you like. Even better, some of the tables inside the Bluecoat are free for you to sit without being obliged to buy a coffee from the café there.

In many ways this is the ideal: a Free space where you can come whenever you like, and where you’re not obliged to carry on your purchasing. You can truly take a break.

However, where the Bluecoat falls down is its obscurity. On the other walks Ronnie has taken, many did not know of its existence. And of those who did, they (and this included me until today) assumed that all the seating inside is for customers only. But that’s not the case, so next time you need a moment to yourself, pop into the Bluecoat cafe, head to the tables next to the Children’s Corner, and take the weight off.

Placed in public squares, car parks and through routes

But Bluecoat was a model student compared to the rest of the class, who could learn a thing or two…

I’ll not bore you with a detailed itinerary, suffice to mention a few common themes which our encounters with the other open spaces looked at.

Free to Breathe

The places we visited were dotted across town. We stopped at ‘Mr Seel’s Garden’, just off Hanover Street. We visited a couple of ‘squares’ (often created through the demolition of old houses) in the Ropewalks area, and we inspected the Breathing Space potential of Liverpool One and Derby Square.

We talked about the responsibility for these areas, and the quality of the space there. Most of the spaces had seating in, but in every case this was lacking in quantity, faced away from each other (so you wouldn’t go there with more than, say, one friend in tow), and was definitely doing its best to discourage the homeless from staying too long. In fact, it seemed designed to prevent anyone from getting too comfortable.

The other common theme was wastage of space. The area outside the Court in Derby Square was huge and flat and broken only by electronic bollards and a few intimidating benches to one side. Part of Ropewalks Square off Bold Street was a privately owned rectangle of uneven flagstones. Formerly the site of Christian’s grocer’s, the place is now vacant, empty, and unused, and yet private. Besides the fact that its a shame the grocer’s was moved on by the owner, its a double crime that someone can ‘sit’ on this space and reserve the right to keep people from it. It should be part of a revamped Ropewalks Square plan.

And this square, in common with the other spaces we saw, felt more like a cut through, from one place to another. The paving pattern reflected this, directing walkers straight across. It isn’t a place to stop, to pass the time of day, to people watch. And yet it could be, with a little bit of clever planning.

There are mature trees in these spaces now, and a smattering of seating. With some decent landscaping, people could come to these spots to rest, chat, or spend a moment of quiet contemplation away from the rush. A path that wound around planting would help ‘trap’ people (in the best way possible) and encourage them to stay a while. Not to mention that such a space would be more attractive to everyone, passers-by included!

Responsibility

But with Freedom comes great responsibility. Who would care for these places? Isn’t maintenance and redesign expensive?

Well, is it any more expensive than the street sweeping that must follow a heavy Saturday night in the Ropewalks? Plus, as Ronnie pointed out, an increasing number of people are moving into these areas. You can imagine guerilla gardeners or ‘friends of’ groups attaching themselves to these pockets. You can’t imagine either of these things happening to them in their current ‘bronze throne’ incarnations.

Some of the ‘squares’ are surrounded by bars, who benefit from these public spaces to accommodate bigger crowds and generate that all important footfall. Although they do a sterling job of sweeping up the broken glass and cigarette butts on a (late) Sunday morning, perhaps they should be contributing to the beautification of what also happens to be a space used in the day time.

This clash of daytime economy vs nighttime economy was raised a few times. Couldn’t there be more integration and collaboration?

Optimism

By the end of the tour it would have been possible to feel that Liverpool had a rather sorry selection of lacklustre spaces. But on the contrary, Ronnie was optimistic. Firstly, these spaces are open. They’re not built on, and are not about to be (although who knows about the Christian’s site?). So that’s the first issue rendered moot.

Secondly, through initiatives like those that Ronnie and the Placed team are involved in, there’s a chance that such ideas can have an impact.

Placed is all about increasing the influence of the community on their local environment. It’s also about showing people just how much influence they can have. There is a lot of skepticism over how much say people have over the changing landscape. People either think they have no say, or are not listened to. While this latter issue is unfortunately often the case in practice (two-day ‘consultations’ on a completed Masterplan, for example), it needn’t be the rule.

Ronnie truly feels that this situation can be turned around, and is working actively, with many others, towards this goal.

Free Spaces

The potential to create indoor Breathing Spaces is already there in Liverpool too.

We talked about the Bluecoat cafe, which just needs to be publicised more. But there’s also plenty of vacant space all over the shop (if you’ll pardon the pun). George Henry Lee’s is one example, and there are countless empty shop floors – first storey and upward – down Church Street, Bold Street and Lord Street. We also visited Cavern Walks, which has a nice big empty shop which hasn’t had tenants in a couple of years.

Cavern Walks was built to house hundreds of Lloyd’s Bank staff, who were a captive audience for the shops on the bottom two floors. But Lloyd’s left, and Cavern Walks is not in a great position to get much passing trade. Hence the empty lots.

But if a Breathing Space was set up in there – a place where you knew you could bring your own food, sit a while, sit as long as you like – then it becomes a magnet for people at this end of town.

The same thing applies to other places where this might be implemented. The potential for indoor Breathing Spaces is totally untapped.

Organic Spaces

We talked about a few other factors. Masterplans like Liverpool One are dropped wholesale on an area, and we heard how it necessitates artificial measures like price controls in order to work. It’s a delicate balance, artificially maintained. This is in contrast to how cities built up in the first place, with businesses cropping up in response to need (with the odd Charter, ahem, to seed the first settlement).

We talked about how residential developments must include a minimum percentage of homes in the ‘affordable’ bracket. Ronnie suggests we should demand portion of indoor Free Space too, especially in town centres.

Towns they are a-changing

Modern town centres are highly planned machines for encouraging spending. But as people move back into the towns and cities they fled from in the 70s and 80s it’s going to become more important that we take into account the other aspects of life: relaxation, contemplation, wandering, thinking, and we’ll need to provide for these things too.

By Ronnie’s thinking, the ideal situation would be one where we have a chain of indoor and outdoor spaces across town where we can plan little breaks and retreats from city centre life. Places where we can predict a spot to sit and think. ‘Going to town’ would then become much more varied in meaning. In fact ‘doing nothing’ might be a meaning in itself! Towns would become just that little bit more relaxed, and attractive, to they eyes and to the feet.

Heritage Breathing Spaces

To bring it back to history for a moment (!), it did cross my mind that museums and galleries can play a big part in this, and to a great extent already do. Although their opening hours are set, there are few other places you have such great license to come in for free, sit where you like, and do absolutely nothing, should the feeling take you. These places also come with a great deal of ‘props’ to inspire a bit of thinking, and are generally peaceful without having the strict Quiet rules of libraries.

I wish Ronnie and Placed the best of luck, and will be following their progress. I also hope to see other groups doing similar things, and would like to see these ideas spread.

Meanwhile, I think I will be keeping my eyes open for previously unnoticed Breathing Spaces wherever I go. I’ll collect them in memory for future reference when needing a moment to myself.

Thanks again to Ronnie for the walk, and the sharing of ideas. I’d like him to know that the first thing I did afterwards was to take my home-made packed lunch to Bluecoat to sit inside and eat it at their tables with great relish!

More information on Placed

Placed home page: https://placed.org.uk/

Placed on Twitter: https://twitter.com/placeded

Ronnie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/asenseofplace1

Ronnie’s blog: https://asenseofplace.com/

The City and the City and the Liverpool Landscape

This website is all about the historic landscape. It’s about how the landscape shapes what happens in the city, and it’s about the landscapes that we invent by living in it. Just think of the ‘Knowledge Quarter’ and the ‘Cavern Quarter’. Though they’re sickly marketing-gimmick names they do acknowledge some of the character that certain areas have built naturally, unconsciously over time. And so it was with great excitement that I found that The City and the City, a brilliant book by China Mieville, had been adapted for the small screen by the BBC.

Note: I’m not intending to have too many spoilers in this post, but I will be talking about the big plot concepts which permeate the whole story. If you’d rather come to the story fresh, go and read the book, or watch the show, first, and come back to this later.

Book: The City and the City, by China Mieville (Amazon UK)

TV version: The City and the City, BBC iPlayer

The City in the City and the City

This post isn’t going to be a review of the programme. Suffice to say I loved the book when I first read it, and I loved this adaptation. I recommend both.

My article is about how Liverpool is a star of the show, and the city features centrally. Hell, the main character is played by Liverpool’s own David Morrissey. But he’s not the only Merseyside star of the show. The City and the City is a veritable I Spy of Liverpool locations.

The main concept of the book, on the face of it a police procedural, surrounds the two rival cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma. Besźel is the down-at-heel city where Inspector Tyador Borlú (Morrissey) polices the streets. Ul Qoma is the shiny, high-rise, Shanghai-alike sibling that split from Besźel some years ago. The crucial fact is that the two cities occupy the same space on the map.

Citizens of one must not look at (in fact, must learn to ‘unsee’) the buildings and people in the other city, on pain of apprehension by Breach, the government unit who monitor the invisible and intertwined border.

Suffice to say that when Borlú starts the investigation of a woman murdered in Ul Qoma but dumped on his home turf of Besźel, the Kafka-esque complications of the invisible barrier complicate things enormously.

Tale of Two Cities

How do you film such a high-concept story? The characters have been brainwashed into fearing even accidental interaction with the other side. They almost literally cannot see what they are not allowed to. ‘When in Besźel, see Besźel’, as the propaganda posters remind the good citizens.

Well, of course you need a city with shiny high rises, an ageing red-brick airport, a smattering of Brutalist towers, and some ornate Victorian architecture to give a sense of faded glamour. And you need all this on top of each other, preferably over a network of strange underground arched caverns.

Oh, and of course you need a colossal columned building to act as the central bureaucratic Soviet edifice.

While watching it, what started out as an exciting game of spot-the-landmark soon became an interesting thought process: why was Liverpool a good place to film this programme?

Two cities in one

Liverpool is a complex arrangement of buildings which have grown up over the years. The same goes for the streets of the city.

There are wide boulevards and open plazas. There are narrow streets, Art Deco tunnel entrances on both sides of the river.

There are glass-fronted towers and there are concrete monstrosities (that we love all the same). There are older, sturdier bright white stone office buildings. There are mysterious obelisk-like monuments standing proud, but of uncertain origin.

Liverpool, city of contrasts

Water Street typifies the potential that those working on The City and the City saw for portraying two different cities in the same place.

The north side of the street is a hotch-potch collection of different architectural styles. The groundbreaking Victorian Oriel Chambers sit next to some 1960s egg-box building which is clearly inspired by it. The Town Hall peers round the corner, sticking out beyond the general street line.

The south side of the street, by contrast, is a catalogue of massive yet clean Neolclassical lines. The square bulks of India Buildings and 7 Water Street (an old bank) make a imposing business face that doubles as the wealthy Ul Qoma landscape.

Liverpool Heritage, old and new

What’s often lost in discussion of ‘heritage vs progress’ is this wonderful variety. We can argue til we’re blue in the face whether the old Midland Bank on Dale Street is in keeping with the other offices, or if the Echo really did complain about the ugly pile of stones – the Liver Building – when it was built blocking their view of the Mersey.

But any true heritage campaigner fights for all types of quality building. The idea is that additions to the landscape should improve it, not just boost the ego of the architect. Even more importantly, removals should not be to the detriment of the urban environment, and certainly shouldn’t be pointless demolition.

The City and the City reminds us of this variety by deliberately separating it out. In the story, Tyador Borlú can only see the old and higgledy piggledly world of Besźel, while Ul Qoma is modern and foreign. But the plot inevitably leads him to break that barrier, and discover how the other half live. In his world, the two sides can never be reconciled, but in our world, in our city, they are.

Filming in Liverpool

Using Liverpool as a film set is nothing new. We’ve seen Harry Potter and Captain America gracing the streets of the city, because it can fill in for 1920s-40s New York. Foyles War used it to depict London, Poland, Southampton and France.

But the case of The City and the City is even more impressive. Liverpool stands in for two cities at the same time, in the same place, a city uniquely conceived and arguably unfilmable, except for in this, the City of Cities.

Other locations

I hear that the interior (bar and club) shots were all filmed in Manchester. But I’d be interested in knowing where other exteriors were filmed. There are a few bonus screenshots below, where I’ve noticed a Merseyside building or streetscape. But let me know if you’ve watched this programme and have noticed any more.

A traveller to the Pool

The town grew up around a ‘dark pool‘, from which is took its name. The pool flowed into a wide river which would one day be famous across the globe, almost synonymous with the town. The river in turn empties into the Irish Sea, for a long time an important trading route both east-west and north-south.

As technology moved on, the river’s banks became crowded with masts, and docks to hold those masts. Eventually, the ancient pool was lost beneath the city’s streets – the land was simply more valuable – but it is known that the stream which fed the pool still flows underground, buried not lost, along with remains of the medieval castle.

To the east and south of the city centre, a gridiron of Georgian streets with smartly coloured front doors attest to one of the city’s most affluent periods. These days, their neat uniformity is face to solicitors, dentists and ‘aesthetic’ clinics.

The Victorian parks – gifts from the city’s richest sons and daughters – throng with the distinctive accent of the locals, along with a host of dialects and languages brought here from all over the globe by students and others. This is the legacy of a time when the place claimed to be ‘Second City of Empire’.

The Vikings once landed here too, but the evidence of their stay is as ephemeral as King John’s castle. A placename here and there; something in the genes perhaps.

A greater impact came out of the generations of writers, musicians and actors who grew up here, exporting portraits of the locals, and changing the face of global culture permanently. It is to find the home of these portraits that the tourists flock.

There has been trouble along the way, to be sure, and no little violent upheaval. National headlines have been written in the streets of this fiercely independent town.

But you can’t keep this place down (there are more cathedrals, and more universities, than the average), and now the city, once again, finds itself resurgent. Cranes march across the skyline, and the old is – almost carelessly – cleared to make way for the brand new, for the future. Only time will tell if that future belongs to the people who call this place home, or to the people who bring their business here from elsewhere.

This is a city which won’t be held back. This a city of music, of poets, of sport, of life. Your forebears may have trodden the docks and piers here, on their way out, to a new life across the water, to America, or Britain.

This is Dublin, your long lost twin, your neighbour across the sea.

Image: The corner of Fitzwilliam Street Upper and Baggot Street, Dublin, by the author.

This post was inspired by a recent visit to Dublin, and the amazing city I found there.

Toxteth – Some distant childhood memories.

The following article is a bit of a departure from the normal round of news or analysis.

I was approached by Derek Tunnington who was born in Leeds but grew up in Toxteth, and has many memories of his childhood in Liverpool. What follows is his account of those years.

Over to Derek…

Toxteth – Some distant childhood memories

I was born in 1927 at my aunt’s house in Harehills, Leeds. My father, Joe, was employed by Thorne’s Toffees of Leeds as a representative in Liverpool. This came about as my parents had been renting “rooms” in a tall Victorian house in Kingsley Road, Liverpool. The landlady was not prepared to accept a small child in her establishment, and when my arrival became imminent, my mother, Lilian, moved to Leeds where most of her siblings lived, and where both my parents had been born. Dad, meanwhile had found a house to rent in Arundel Street, just round the corner from Kingsley Road, and soon Mum and I returned to Liverpool. I think the house was number 8, Arundel Street, but I am not sure of the number.

Walking from Kingsley Road and down Arundel St. our house was near the lower end on the left-hand side. It was a terrace house, with the front door leading directly on to the pavement. There were two stone steps leading down which were kept clean and bright by Mum scouring them regularly with a piece of orange coloured sandstone. Folk had a pride in the appearance of their homes, even rented ones, and in the North of England sanding was a regular habit.

There was no garden, but we were lucky to have a tree growing in the pavement in front of No.8. The house was double-storey, but I don’t recall any attic. The windows were vertical sliding sash windows, with stone sills, also sanded. At the side of the house was a ginnel which led to the rear of the house and a transverse passageway connecting the backs of several houses. The ginnel was enclosed by high brick walls and some were topped with broken glass.

Behind the house, we had a paved yard, with some building at the bottom which included laundry facilities. Dad loved flowers and made a modest garden in this yard by placing a miniature wall, one brick high in front of one boundary wall. He obtained soil by begging it from greengrocer shops, where it had fallen off the potatoes, and carried some home each day in paper packets. Climbing Nasturtium plants seemed destined to be the most successful flowering plants, though I think he managed to grow some culinary herb, mint or perhaps thyme.

Inside the house, we had no electricity, and the rooms were illuminated by gas light. These gas lamps were suspended from the ceiling by a kind of pulley system, and it was a daily event to watch Dad lower the gas chandelier to light the gas, and often to replace the fragile gas “mantles”.

I do not remember much detail of our furniture, but Mum put lace curtains across the windows, with floral curtains to be used at night time. We were not well-off, so the furniture would have been rather basic. The bath, I recall, was a galvanised iron tub which was usually set before the open coal fire in the living room.

Inside and behind the front door was a “draught curtain.” This was a heavy velvet curtain hanging on a hinged rail, and when the door was closed, the curtain would be swung across behind the door to exclude draughts.

Dad had been one of the World War One forgotten heroes. He had been severely wounded twice in the Battle of the Somme. The second time was reputed to be the result of rescuing a comrade trapped in No-Man’s Land. He was Mentioned in Despatches and was awarded a minute piece of bronze in the image of an oak leaf, to be worn on one of his war medal ribbons. The Germans were however much more generous and left him with over thirty bits of good German steel in various parts of his body. As a result of these injuries, he was often in hospital for removal of shrapnel.

We did have some happy times, going to Sefton Park, and Lime Street station to see the very old railway engine displayed inside. We also managed to take a couple of holidays in Anglesey.

I had two special friends in Arundel Street. One I only remember as “Cyril” and the other was Donald Adamson, whose parents were friends of ours for several years.

Dad had had very little formal education, having left school at under 13 years of age, but he was very self educated as he was a keen reader of almost anything and particularly of history, geography and Nature.

We did not have many childhood toys. Most were home made from bits of wood or were simple tinplate motor cars or railway trains. We also raced tiny home made boats down the rainwater gutters, or flew paper aeroplanes or even kites in one of the parks. There was no television in those days and the BBC did not always reach our very basic radios with any clarity. Dad, however, was a great raconteur and told me many tales of his own-created Canadian backwoodsmen, Jake and Bill.

I only remember one close neighbour, Mrs. O’ Reardon (?) who always had a pram outside her front door at No.6 (?) – I never knew whether there was just one baby or a succession!

After a few very happy years of watching the rent collector arriving each Friday with his rent book, and splashing in the water running down the overflowing gutters (why was it always raining?), Liverpool, (and the outside world ) was suddenly hit by the Great Depression. My father returned to work after yet another stay in hospital, to be told that his job was no longer available. Those not 100% fit were the first to go. There was little social relief in those days, apart from a small “dole” and Dad spent all and every day tramping the streets of Liverpool looking for work. He took the view that time was better spent searching for work than queuing for a few shillings of dole. I also think personal pride had something to do with his attitude.

I was already attending a form of “Nursery School” in Granby Street School, although our only “education” was the singing of children’s religious songs. I think Mum had sent me there as she had enough other worries trying to make ends meet. It was also within walking distance of Arundel Street.

It is interesting to reflect how safe it was for a small child to walk the streets in the 1930’s. One day I dawdled my way back home and Mum gave me my supper which consisted of a bowl of soup and a slice of bread, no butter. I was rather puzzled why I was eating alone, but Mum told me she had already eaten her meal. Many years later she told me that she and Dad had had nothing to eat that day. The cupboard was truly bare.

Dad was a heavy smoker, and one day he discovered that the “Sweet and Tobacconist”, where he bought his Woodbines, was available on a rental basis. The rent was about the same as we were paying for the Arundel Street house, and the shop had living quarters above. Dad reasoned that most men would give up food and beer, but always needed their cigarettes and a newspaper for the football pools. The shop was just around the corner in Granby Street, and although the was little real income, it gave us a roof over our heads and a modest amount for food.

My parents both worked hard cleaning up the rather shabby shop, and both then worked in it daily. I don’t remember the number in Granby Street, but it was not far from the junction with Arundel Street. Directly opposite was a “Mr. Wu’s Chinese Laundry”. I don’t think Wu was the owner’s name, but that is what we called it. From the front upstairs window, which I suppose was our living room, I spent many fascinating hours watching Mr. Wu steam-ironing customer’s clothes and bedding. He had a large jug of (presumably) water. He would fill his mouth with the water and spray the laundry items before applying the heavy flat iron! I was also able to observe the “Soup Kitchens”, often wheelbarrows, offering free portions of soup to anyone in need. They were often manned by the Salvation Army (“Sally Ann”) or other charitable organisations.

Farthings were still legal tender at that time, and Dad got many in the shop. He would give me a few farthings and I would play “shop” in the back yard with friends. However, when my friends increased in number, and the number of young boys entering the shop to buy sweets with farthings also increased, a stop was put to my “shop”, as the farthings were obviously being recycled. This shop helped us survive the depression years and in 1933 we moved back to Leeds, where my parents ran a very successful shop in Alwoodley, a posh leafy suburb of Leeds.

Derek Tunnington

Your own memories

Many thanks go to Derek for this insight into the history of Toxteth, and what it was like to play in its streets decades ago. This is a beautifully written account, filled with things you just won’t find in a history textbook.

If you’d like to read more like this, or you want to respond to these memories, the comments are open below. If you’d like to contribute your own stories about Liverpool history I’d be very pleased to hear from you.

Image: Edge Hill Yards, Liverpool, with express from Euston View eastward from the Picton Road Bridge, by Ben Brooksbank via Geolocation.ws

Churches, and Rural Landscapes in Urban Liverpool

This article was inspired by Celia Heritage’s article on parish churches. Her love of churches, in terms of history, began through researching family history and looking for ancestors’ gravestones.

What to look out for in a parish church

What to Look Out For in a Parish Church is the first article on the revamped Celia’s Blog. The article is a really interesting run-through of the oft-missed aspects of church architecture and archaeology and those features which any observant onlooker can spot.

Find out why ground on the south side of a church is often higher than that on the north; the origins of stone crosses in churchyards; and what activities (other than burial!) took place in the yards.

As well as churchyards, Celia talks about the fabric of the church itself, how the builders might use whatever materials were close to hand, and how this gives us clues as to the earlier archaeology of the area. She then talks about the inside of a church, how to date churches by their features, and how internal layout has changed over the years (or not!).

The Reformation had some major impacts on a church’s role as a centre of worship and the running of the parish. I won’t reveal any more – you really should go an read the article in full. I’m looking forward to part 2, when Celia will delve in more detail into the parish church of Thornham Parva, Suffolk.

Fossil landscapes in urban Liverpool

But what has all this to do with Liverpool? Of course, Liverpool has its own fair share of parish churches, with St. Nicholas becoming the parish church (after 400 years as a chapel under Walton-on-the-Hill) in 1699. Many other churches were built in Liverpool as the city population grew, and particularly as the range of religious beliefs diversified. Welsh, Scottish and Scandinavian churches are all famous features of the Liverpool landscape, as are non-Christian houses such as Britain’s first mosque and the amazing synagogue on Princes Road.

But the link to Celia’s article comes from the fact that many more churches, including Walton parish church, existed before Liverpool absorbed them in new suburbs in the 18th and 19th centuries. In many cases the church and its surroundings remain fossilised within the urban structure, and teasing them apart from more modern roads and buildings can give clues to the history and origins of the village.

The fabric of All Saints’ Church, Childwall contains features from the 14th century, as described by the project to restore and extend the building. The shape of the churchyard is also suggestive of a 14th century origin.

St. Mary’s Church in West Derby is the successor to a chapel which stood in the centre of the village until around 150 years ago. Along with the manor house (now Croxteth Park), the court house and the castle, this close association of these types of buildings is a classic of medieval power structure, where the local lords would exert control over the manorial, military and spiritual structures of the area.

It’s not just medieval landscapes, either. The cast iron church of St George in Everton was built on the site of the Everton Beacon, and holds great views over the Mersey. It’s very structure made a statement about Victorian Liverpool, and the promise of new technology (cast iron) over the old (stone). It was a demonstration of engineering and the men who sponsored it, much like that of Iron Bridge in Staffordshire.

Every church tells a story if you look hard enough. Do you know of any other Liverpool churches which have a special, or revealing, feature? Share in the comments, and have a look at recommended reading.

Recommended Reading

Churches in the Landscape by Richard Morris (left) tells you everything you need to know about where churches are located. It talks about the communities in which the churches stand, as well as the landscapes themselves. It’s a chunky book, but written in a clear style, and very easy to read. If you’re after a shorter book on church archaeology, and churchyards, Shire Publishing dedicates one of its guides to the topic, in Medieval Church and Churchyard Monuments by Sally Badham (right). In contrast to the Morris book, Badham’s takes in effigies, statues and sculpture to help guide you around your local (or any other) parish church history.

Image: Penny Lane Anglican Church 2, by dkwonsh, licensed under Creative Commons BY-ND (originally at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dkwonsh/148470475/ but no longer online).

7 ways in which Liverpool *is* the Museum of Liverpool

The ‘Museum of Liverpool‘ is a very fitting name, because this is a museum about the city, and about the people. It’s the largest national museum dedicated to a city in over a century, and opened in a year when the M Shed in Bristol, the Cardiff Story, and Glasgow’s Riverside Museum Project bring similar attractions to those places.

But just as the Museum of Liverpool will capture the city in a nutshell, the city beyond is a museum in itself. For starters, it contains objects that have survived from the past into a new use in the present, but unlike the museum, they’re not on here for display’s sake.

But, in a sense, Liverpool is the Museum of Liverpool:

Galleries

Anyone who’s studied the different areas of Liverpool to any extent – for its geography or its history – can’t fail to recognise the distinctiveness of each part of the city.

As different as a Roman gallery is to a History of Science gallery, so Toxteth has its terraces and its Victorian parks, West Derby has Croxteth Hall, Queens Drive and suburbia, Allerton its impressive large houses and the Calderstones, and Everton Rupert’s Tower.

To walk across the whole city (should you have the energy) is to take in all aspects of Merseyside history, from its prehistoric origins, through its political development to its cultural successes.

Cases

As with all museums of great age, Liverpool has its dusty containers of life gone by. Its preserved relics too delicate to handle directly, artefacts at risk in the race to the modern, interactive, disposable age.

Visitors

The museum, and the city, are not just for the locals.

Millions flock to Liverpool each year to sample the culture, history, sport and music, or pass through as travellers on their way somewhere else. What do these people see, feel and experience when they visit the city-as-museum?

The museum can only give them a glimpse of the full story, and so too the city itself can only show a side of Liverpool through the eyes of the visitor. It depends what they’re here for, and is coloured (for good or ill) by their preconceptions and experiences.

When they walk/fly/drive through the doors of the city-as-museum, will they head straight for the Beatles Experience gallery, the Liverpool One gallery or the Cathedrals gallery?

Or will they be given a guided tour by a local? Because of course, every museum needs…

Curators

These are the natives of the museum. They see much more than the visitors (though how much of the total might even surprise them). They know the shortcuts, the closed-off rooms, the main attractions and the hidden history.

When creating the galleries (through living in the city), they will be taking a selection of the whole and putting it on display for the consumption of the customer. They will try to show off the best of their corner of the museum, and show just how much they know of the great city.

Not everyone who arrives here will get to meet one, but those who do will get a great deal more out of their visit than those who do not.

Objects on display, and objects behind the scenes

It’s easy to feel like you know the whole of Liverpool. You can wander the streets for years, compete on its playing fields, drink in its bars, play in its parks and worship in its churches for every year of your life. But for every Scouse artefact you see, thousands are hidden from view.

Just as Merseyside’s museums have vast stores which the public never get to see, so the city has its secrets, its behind-the-scenes. There are the underground tunnels of Merseyrail and the river tunnels. There are rooms behind net curtains, and there are air conditioning systems and prison cells and private vistas that only a few see.

Old but new

The museum is a living, evolving part of the community, and similarly it has long been realised that the city is not a fossil, a finished piece.

A museum has to adapt to changing tastes, and must update itself to include new histories and interpretations. So a city must continually reinvent itself to move with the times.

A city (and a museum) is always trying to do this. Sometimes this is a popular success and sometimes not. Either way, neither museum nor city can stay still.

Participation

These days a visitor is not just a visitor. They’re a consumer of history, and a participant. Liverpool the city is heavily defined by  those who come to see it, as well as those who end up staying longer.

So whether it’s the World Museum’s hands-on events, or the city’s incomers shaping its very landscape and history, the city-as-museum is not merely built by the people who are already here, but a mixture of newer and more established contributions.

Liverpool as Museum

Liverpool is a city in the 21st century, but it is – and will continue to be – shaped by its past. The streets tell the story of its origins; it’s people the ways of its present.

Its galleries are full of the accumulated debris of 8000 years of use.

As viewers of its exhibits, consumers of its presentation and participants in its events, if we keep an eye open on our ramblings around its edifice we will be rewarded with a greater appreciation of the things left by our predecessors in these corridors of life.

And when we’ve explored all that the exhibitions and exhibitionists have to show us, there’s just time left for a browse in the bookshop followed by a big slice of cake in the café.

What’s your role in the Museum that is Liverpool? Are you a curator? A visitor? A guide? An exhibit? 🙂

Image: Monument to Edward VII, Liverpool, by mira66 via Flickr (CC-by)

Recommended Reading

Ben Johnson’s famous Cityscape painting will be on display in the new Museum of Liverpool. The painting is a painstaking illustration of Liverpool – a bird’s eye view from above the River Mersey, and is available in paperback from Amazon. Click on the cover on the left to order.

Museum of Liverpool in the news

• In Pictures: Museum of Liverpool (BBC)
• New Museum of Liverpool: All our coverage of the opening in one place (Liverpool Echo)
• Museum of Liverpool: what happens next with Phase 2 (Liverpool Echo)
• Liverpool’s Museum opens with McCartney show (Guardian)