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Nov 22

A new final draft website

This blog is the companion to www.historic-liverpool.co.uk, a website about the history, growth and expansion of the city of Liverpool, and the surrounding area. That website has been in production for about four years, on and off, with too many false starts and rewrites for a sane man to handle. But now the bare bones of the site are there: all the links should work, you can find out a hell of a lot about the city and its suburbs, and it shouldn’t look too shoddy either.

Please visit and take a look around, and if you like what you see, or have any suggestions for how I should be developing this website, then please send me an email. Of course, if you’d like to encourage my love of Liverpool history, take a look at my Amazon Wish List!

Nov 21

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‘On the Waterfront’ conference addresses heritage in a fading port

A conference currently taking place in Liverpool is the first of a series to look at the problems facing ports where heritage is often at odds with the needs of development in a city past its shipping heyday.

The three day event, On the Waterfront, sees speakers such as English Heritage’s Chief Exec Simon Thurley, as well as its former chairman Sir Neil Cossons, and Culture Company international director Sir Bob Scott.

Organiser Louise O’Brien stressed that “It’s not a conference about Liverpool“, and indeed future hosts of the conference include Shanghai, Lagos, Niagara, Gdansk, and next year’s hosts Marseilles. She is part of the Historic Environment of Liverpool project, a partnership between various Liverpool organisations and English Heritage which is coming to a close, and hopes to draw together the issues that have been discovered, and the common factors threatening the historic cores of world ports. O’Brien stresses that, although there have been a number of regeneration conferences this year, this is the first to put heritage at the core.

Today is the last day fo the conference.

Oct 8

Liverpool Buildings commended

The Bluecoat in Liverpool has been named one of the top 20 best heritage-led regeneration schemes.

Also, the Liverpool Architectural Society’s Design Awards have recognised the buildings in the city which have left their mark (in a positive way, of course!), although the Awards don’t cover the most recent buildings, such as those which make up Liverpool One. The shortlist can be viewed on the Liverpool Architecture Society website.

Aug 28

Changes to Liverpool Listed Buildings to mark International Slavery Remembrance Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aug 27

Formby dunes under threat

The Telegraph is reporting that the National Trust has identified the Formby dune landscape as one of ten threatened coastal features. Each piece of the coast so named will be significantly altered by the encroaching sea in the coming years, with sea levels expected to rise by up to 1.5 metres by 2100. The National Trust has given up hope of trying to protect them, and will let the sea and weather take its natural course over the coming decades.

The Formby sand dunes are part of a large scale landscape of Shirdley Sand which has been laid down by the wind since the last Ice Age. The coastal dunes spread from north Liverpool to Southport and beyond, and are only the most visible sandy features in a series which stretches inland in Sefton and Crosby, with some now-hidden dunes reaching up to 125m in height. The features are also havens for wildlife.

Aug 21

Liverpool’s comic past – defying the cynics

I just watched A Comics Tale, narrated by Alan Bleasdale. It’s part of the BBC’s Liverpool season, and concentrated on Liverpool’s comic past, and was filmed in 1981. Throughout, it trumpeted Scousers’ humour, how it brought them through the bread strikes (“aweful tha’, everyone down the Pier Head in pigeon suits”).  Even though it maintained that tone throughout, always highlighting the problems (Toxteth, unemployment), right at the end, Bleasdale’s narrative suggested ‘we’re dying, but at least we think we’re going out in style’. So it seems that whatever other people think, we thought it first! What’s more, it shows that whatever people say, they’ll always be proved wrong by Liverpool’s determination and stubbornness.

Now on BB4 is a programme about the men who run the Magical Mystery Tour, which is the psychedelic rainbow bus I used to see driving past my school a decade ago.

Aug 21

New Gilmoss community plan scrapped

The Liverpool Echo is reporting that a planned community for an area formerly occupied by Gilmoss has been scrapped. Originally the housing development was to include the involvement of Tesco’s, but in later years the supermarket giant pulled out and the new estate was to be housing only. The area was identified in 2006 as a ‘grot spot‘, and the final four roads were demolished earlier this year. Now David McClean have pulled out of the scheme to build 600 new houses, and the scheme lies in tatters.

Aug 13

Leave! Before it’s too late!

Although according to one report, it already is too late. Policy Exchange, a ‘right-of-centre’ Think Tank have branded Liverpool (among others) as beyond help. All the regeneration efforts are wasting money – this city on the north west coast will never be as rich as London, so what’s the point? Well, rather than telling us Merseysiders to do ourselves a favour and take a long run off the Pier Head, Tim Leunig and James Swaffield suggest we pack our bags for London. They go on to say that Liverpool has lost the very reason for its existence now that the port is no longer in its Victorian heyday.

Messrs Leunig and Swaffield have concluded that there is no other reason for continuing the rich adventure of life if you are not making as much money as possible. Now that the port of Liverpool is not what is was, Liverpool should just bite the bullet, and shut up shop. Then we can all move to London and start raking in the cash. Of course, Mr. Leunig is London based, but did come to Liverpool once, when researching “cotton towns”, so clearly he knows what he’s talking about…

The Liverpool Echo details the story, as I’m sure will many other sites who object to Bradford, Newcastle, Manchester and Sunderland being dismissed so easily. They also publish his email address: t.leunig@lse.ac.uk. Let him know what you think.

Jul 31

Two Liverpool landmarks go head to head with a Texan toilet in architecture awards

The Liverpool Blue Coat Chambers building and the Liverpool Echo Arena have made it to the shortlist of the first World Architecture Festival Award, after winning the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) North West awards this year.

Jul 31

Liverpool hosts Tall Ships Race

Over the weekend of 18th to 21st of July, Liverpool played host to a fleet from all over the world, preparing to take part in the 2008 Tall Ships Race. The boats sailed down the River Mersey on the Monday, but not before filling the old and new dock systems with vessels like those which graced the Empire’s second port over the course of the last 200 years. Up to 800,000 people visited the city over the four days, 200,000 of which thronged the shores of the Mersey to watch the Parade of Sail on the Sunday. 50,000 actually boarded the boats to look around for themselves.

The Albert Dock, Canning Dock, Canning Half-Tide Dock, Sandon Half-Tide Dock and Wellington Dock were all full of ships, including training vessels for Brazilian and Mexican crews, as well as more home-grown vessels such as the Glaciere of Liverpool, raised from the bottom of Collingwood Dock.

The ships’ journeys can be followed from Sail Training International’s website.

Liverpool Quay by Moonlight, by John Atkinson Grimshaw
Liverpool Quay by Moonlight, by John Atkinson Grimshaw
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