Nov 4
The Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse could possibly be described as the poster child of Liverpool’s failure to protect its heritage. But perhaps its fortunes are about to change with a project in the works to regenerate the whole of the north docklands.
A project to map all the blue plaques in Britain has had a recent surge of additions to its Liverpool collection.
OpenPlaques is a project to “collect and open up data about plaques and the people they commemorate”, which involves placing all the information about blue plaques and the people they are dedicated to on an OpenStreetMap map. Read more
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…
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
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
Sep 13
A quick tour through five bits of Liverpool that have survived 800 years of town and city.
Aug 18
Following on from the success of last year’s event, dozens of historic buildings will be open for the public – for free – as part of September’s Heritage Open Days.
English Heritage will co-ordinate as usual, although the event relies primarily on volunteers, building owners, civic societies and other societies. Read more
Aug 11
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 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.
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.
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).
Jul 19
A press release from the new Museum of Liverpool: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mediacentre/displayrelease.aspx?id=960
Jul 18
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:
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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 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)
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.
July 2011 marked 30 years since the violence in Toxteth which would hang a cloud over the suburb of Liverpool for decades, at least in the eyes of the public at large.
It came to symbolise the economic problems of early 1980s Liverpool, and helped cement the stereotype of inner city, unemployed Scousers which probably lingers in some circles today.
Local press paid a lot of attention to the anniversary, quite rightly, but whenever the name Toxteth is mentioned (in these circumstances or elsewhere) it conjures up little else for the majority of people. I remember the first time I was old enough to find that the phrase ‘Toxteth Park’ was one that didn’t quite fit with what I thought the area was all about.
So I hope this little article and the accompanying longer page on the History of Toxteth can redress the balance, and put Toxteth’s situation in 1981 into some historic context.
Toxteth Park entered history as a pair of medieval manors – Toxteth and Smeedun (Smithdown). Around the time of the Norman Conquest these became part of the large West Derby royal hunting forest, including Simonswood and Croxteth Park in its bounds.
Toxteth Park remained a walled royal park for hundreds of years after this, only being developed for agriculture and later houses and industries when it was dis-parked by James I in 1591.
Once dis-parked, Toxteth was quickly converted to pasture for animals, and later the richer merchant classes turned it into one of the first fashionable suburbs. Large houses were the first to be built on the land, and these can still be seen surrounding the Victorian Parks of Sefton and Princes.
As with all of the early suburbs, economic development soon turned the area into a landscape of industrial units and housing, created by the southern docklands, warehouses and workers homes. This was one of the fastest transformations of inner Liverpool, with thousands of terraces and back-to-backs spreading across the landscape from the river to Edge Hill.
It was part of the engine house of Liverpool’s Victorian heyday, but it also sowed the seeds for its decline over the next 100 years.
With the decline in the docks in the twentieth century, Toxteth suffered more than many. It’s population were so tightly tied to the waterfront industries and commerce that mass unemployment was the inevitable side effect when the focus of Britain’s trade shifted from the west to the south coast ports after the World Wars.
Post-war slum clearance also took its toll, ripping the heart out of communities and shipping them out to satellite estates like Cantril Farm and Kirkby.
The process continued through the decades, coming to a low point at the end of the 1970s. By 1981, relations between the local population and the police were at a low. The arrest of Leroy Alphonse Cooper under the despised ‘sus laws‘ was the spark which lit the dry kindling.
The Toxteth Riots were national news, and took place in the context of similar unrest in Brixton and Moss Side. Whether the government were already moving into action or not, the 1980s saw some reinvestment in Liverpool.
The Albert Dock scheme was part of this, as of course was the Liverpool Garden Festival. Whether this directly helped Toxteth is a topic for discussion, but a slow and steady trend can be seen through the creation of the Merseyside Development Corporation in the early 80s, through successive waves of development and the gradual renewal of Toxteth in the 90s and 2000s.
So when we remember the riots, remember also the long history of Toxteth as a forest, a park, a suburb, a bustling industrial sea of terraces before the problems began. See how Toxteth’s history is intimately bound up with how the riot came about. And see the process of regeneration which began slowly in the late 20th century, and carries on into the 21st.
If you’re interested in the full history of the township of Toxteth, head for the History of Toxteth article on Historic Liverpool.
Image credit: St. James’s Church, Toxteth, by SPDP via Flickr.
Continuing our look at the men and women who have had the greatest impact on the Liverpool landscape, this time we examine the work of Jesse Hartley, dock engineer.
Jesse Hartley (1780-1860) is best known as the architect of the Albert Dock. But this was just one of his achievements as Civil Engineer and Superintendent of the Concerns of the Dock Estate in Liverpool from 1824 to 1860, and his career was one which changed the face of Liverpool. It’s a landscape we can still see today, and his buildings continue to affect how we move through and how we deal with the built environment of the city.
Jesse Hartley was born in Pontefract, Yorkshire, and trained first as a mason. Although he later expanded his skills into engineering and architecture, this was to influence his building style for the rest of his life.
His approach to architecture was almost scientific. Contracted to build ‘new warehouses on the south side of the Salthouse Dock’ he first built models at the Trentham Street Dockyard nearby to test his designs. He closely specified the quality of bricks which were to be used, established his own stone quarry in Kirkmabreck, Scotland, and built the Oak, a coaster to bring the stone from this quarry to Liverpool.
The Albert Dock is Hartley’s most famous legacy, and displays some of his revolutionary ideas. Among his breakthroughs was the use of sheet metal below the timber floorboards. This design which could withstand fire for 40 minutes unchecked, and was influential in future developments of the dock estate, as well as fireproof mills throughout Lancashire.
The dock was one of the first in the world to have warehouses right at the waters edge. Dock gates kept the water at a constant level whatever the tide, allowing ships to berth at high tide, unload straight into the warehouse, and leave as soon as the water level in the river allowed.
In addition, the Albert Dock warehouses were ‘bonded’ warehouses, which meant that customs dues were not paid when cargo moved from between boat to quay. Instead they were paid when stock was moved out of the warehouse, so further decreasing the time a ship needed to wait in port.
Unloading ships into the Albert Dock was a streamlined affair.
Although Hartley is best remembered for the Albert Dock, there are dozens of buildings along the waterfront built to his designs, and which display his signature style and attention to detail:
Many of these buildings show Hartley’s signature ‘cyclopean’ architecture. This involves using massive pieces of stone as the bulk of the wall, with smaller stones hand-shaped to precisely fill the rest (see links above). The colossal boundary wall seen all the way down Regent Road was also Hartley’s idea – in this case to reduce theft.
Hartley also designed a dock-wide railway system, to transport goods around and also to help in the building of new docks. He designed improved gates and locks at the Liverpool end of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal. He also designed lighthouses, chain pumps, mills and beam engines. He was a true multi-skilled engineer.
Some food for thought:
So not only did he change the face of Liverpool; his works continued to influence the shape of the city’s regeneration in the 1980s, and arguably into the new millennium.
Would there have been enough foot traffic at the Pier Head to warrant the Echo Arena, the new Liverpool Museum or the Leeds-Liverpool Canal extension not Hartley’s monumental architecture given a canvas on which to paint the revival of the city? Would Liverpool One have been possible (or even necessary) without the docks to act as a second centre of gravity in the city centre? Hartley’s contributions mean we can never forget our port heritage.
Of course, it’s possible to see the opposite as true: the Albert Dock is no aesthetic masterpiece. Had Liverpool managed to break free of the weight of the docklands perhaps the focus of attention would not have been split between the river-front at one end and St. John’s Market at the other (and London Road beyond).
But whether you see him as a boon to Liverpool’s past, present and future, or a historical albatross around the neck of Liverpool, preventing coherent regeneration (or both), there’s no doubt that Jesse Hartley changed the face of the city he found. He left an architectural legacy that still shapes the way we feel as a port town, and the discussions about how we shape the Liverpool of tomorrow.
A lot of the information in this post (where not otherwise linked) came from Nancy Ritchie-Noakes short but excellent book Jesse Hartley: Dock Engineer to the Port of Liverpool 1824-60 (Merseyside County Council/Merseyside County Museums, 1980)
Image: ‘jesse hartley‘ by lizjones112, released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Linen Theme by The Theme Foundry
Copyright © 2025 . All rights reserved.
