Streets of Liverpool

Ask any teenager in 1963 where they would most like to be and there was only one answer – Liverpool. But – when your grandmother starts strutting her stuff on the dance floor, it’s time for a quick exit. The Cavern re-opened, after shutting for financial reasons, in July 1967. Harold Wilson, the then-Prime Minister cut the ribbon with Jimmy Saville, Bessie Braddock and Ken Dodd in tow. Enough warning there to say this place is no longer cool. The centre of the creative universe just a few years ago had become yet another dull club living on past reputations.
The Swinging Sixties had a massive liberating effect on music, the arts and fashion. Sadly Miss Wartski seems to have hit the wrong tone. Lesson one in marketing – get a good, memorable name. Wartski somehow doesn’t sound quite right.
I am not sure where the shop was – I think Bold Street – but thanks again to Pat Weekes for two memorable images.

Hope Street is one of the few Liverpool streets that has improved considerably in the last forty years. Buildings have been cleaned up, the completed Cathedral makes a dramatic ‘ending’ to the streetscape, the Georgian buildings have found new uses and even newcomers, like the Hope Street Hotel, fit is seamlessly. Last weekends Hope Street Festival saw the area come alive, with dozens of food and craft stalls, live entertainment and open buildings, including the Masonic Hall. Having watched the Queen Mary depart last Thursday to fireworks and the cheers of thousands, it really does feel as if Liverpool is reclaiming its crown as England’s most exciting city.
What we need is more of these events, not paid out of the public purse but by self-interested businesses and organisations who all benefit. Liverpool has never been short of imagination, what these festivals and activities prove is that there is a willing audience prepared to give a good idea a chance.

I am very fond of the Bluecoat Chambers. I did, after all spend over 17 years there, running my different businesses. One thing that divided opinion was the Saturday art market held on the railings. How long it had been there, I don’t know but it was free pitch for any artist willing to brave the elements.
You didn’t have to like the art. Much of it was too garish to my eye but it brought a welcome dash of colour to the rather drab School Lane.
There were more than a few in the Bluecoat who wanted the artfest to disappear. It brought no money to the building and it probably upset artistic sensibilities. Whatever the reason, possibly the refurbishment which closed the building down for three years, or maybe the economic climate which made standing in the cold and wet rather unattractive if takings were low, the artists have gone.
I would love to see a determined effort to encourage them back. Liverpool city centre has changed almost beyond recognition; as a tourist destination in particular. Walking around, you are constantly aware of the different languages – French, Spanish, Italian, Polish etc. – and it feels that, at last, Liverpool has broken through into the consciousness of mass tourism. There is a constant need to add to the visitor experience and this is one (free) way of promoting the city and giving artists a chance to earn a living.

There is no doubt what the celebrations are about. The slides taken by Pat Weekes are all dated 14 May 1967 – an auspicious day for all Roman Catholics since it marked the consecration of the new cathedral. St Andrew’s Gardens, or the Bullring, in its shadow, made the most of the occasion with a giant street party and some form of theatrical entertainment.
The hardened news photographer had long left after taking photographs of all the going-ons at the cathedral but for the enterprising amateur photographer, the real action was elsewhere, as Pat’s photographs show. Photographs of official events are invariably dull – usually choreographed line-ups of dignitaries and staged events. Historically they provide a record but there is usually much more fun to be captured away from the main action – from children tucking into jelly and jam tarts to earnest priests explaining ecumenical matters to respectful parishioners.

61 Lime Street, c1912

Church Street, 1928

In a much earlier post, I wrote that a history of shops in Liverpool was overdue. There is plenty to write about from the first purpose-built department store in Europe (in Compton House where M & S is now), the great Welsh retailers David Lewis, Owen Owens and TJ Hughes, the Vestey’s and their Dewhurst butchers chain, the once-exclusive Bold Street and so on.
Liverpool with its extremes of wealth and poverty supported a wide range of shops catering for those at either end and the ones in the middle. The first Woolworth’s store was in Church Street and Harrods were close to opening their only store outside of London on the site then occupied by St Peter’s church. They pulled out and Woolworth moved across the road and built the fine shop now occupied by Top Shop.
Marks and Spencer were another company attracted to the city and they opened a shop in Lime Street in 1903. The top photograph is of a slightly later date because The Picture House (later renamed The Futurist) built in 1912 is clearly visible next door. The facade above the shop front is showing signs of age – and it is no better today.
M & S had opened their first store in Manchester in 1894 and quickly built up a reputation for their high principles, buying only British produced goods and offering a no-quibbles returns policy that was unique at that time. In 1928, the company moved into a substantial part of Compton House and have remained there ever since. The store was extended in the 1970s and a further extension to front Williamson Square has been planned but not, as yet, carried out. Hopefully, the development will take place before too long and help revamp what is now a rather poor quality city square.

Upper Dawson Street c1895

St John’s Gardens c1900

My last post emphasised child poverty at the turn of the twentieth century. Today’s photographs show two different aspects of life at that time.
The top photograph was taken at the back of St John’s Market. The street is thronged with traders and shoppers. McKenna’s bar is prominent (licensee Catharine McKenna), with Hassons (poultry and game dealers) next door. Out of 13 buildings listed in Gore’s 1893 Directory, 5 were public houses and one was a restaurant (or eating house). Apart from a hairdresser and a mariner, all the rest were in the food trade.
The second photograph is of St John’s Garden, which had just been laid out following the removal of St John’s Church. The bookshop shown in the previous blog had been demolished at the time of the photograph to make way for the Technical School. It is hard to work out the ages of the couple sat on the bench – I guess they look about 60 but they both look careworn and could be much younger .At least public statues have their uses judging by the number of men congregating on its steps.

William Henry Street c1895

William Brown Street c1895

I was going to write about the new Museum of Liverpool but my two attempts to walk round have both been aborted after less than 20 minutes each due to the amazing number of people visiting. With the outside temperature in the mid 20s, it wasn’t the time to make any critical analysis, so I will wait until September when I expect it will get much quieter. My initial impression is that too much space has been allocated to the entrance/atrium, which has created congested gallery space, but I need to see how the exhibitions work without such a volume of people. The very positive note is that over 100,000 people have been through already – an encouraging sign of the level of interest in Liverpool’s history.
Today’s posts reflect the darker side of that history. Child poverty has never been eradicated from Liverpool and these photographs of barefooted boys are a reminder of how tough life was a century ago. The first photograph is, I am reasonably certain, of William Henry Street. Blackledge & Sons had a small chain of bakers shops and this one seems to be the most likely location (on the corner of Canterbury Street). (The only other possibility could be Great Crosshall Street). I am not sure what the boy of the left is carrying – maybe a bunch of flowers for his mum.
The second photograph is of Bentley’s bookshop in Shaw’s Brow/William Brown Street (on the site of where the Technical School – now part of Liverpool Museum – was built a few years later).

Upper Duke Street 1977

Seel Street 1980

Duke Street 1971

After my last post about School Lane and Hanover Street, I received a mixed postbag. Whilst most agreed with me that Liverpool had lost a valuable chunk of its early history, others felt the Liverpool One development was a substantial improvement on the semi-dereliction that existed before. My point was that the gradual chipping away at these streets happened before the conception of the Grosvenor plan – by which time the few remaining fragments were indeed rather meaningless. Certainly I would not argue against the Liverpool One effect – it has transformed the city centre, created much-needed jobs and raised the image of Liverpool.
To labour my point again, I have posted three photographs of the Duke Street/Seel Street area. Virtually all the early Georgian terraces have been removed in the last 30 years. Of course, preservation is nearly always an expensive option but there was little will to save them. The houses on Duke Street collapsed through neglect in the 1990s, the terraces on Seel Street were even more recent victims. Upper Duke Street may look grim in the photograph but renovated and repainted, the houses would be a far more interesting streetscape than the JMU building which occupies the site. We never seem to learn any lessons. Once gone, an important part of the city’s history disappears and no matter how many museums are built heralding the achievements of the city, the real heritage has already been dispatched.

School Lane, 1970

Hanover Street, 1970

I worked in the Bluecoat Chambers for over 15 years and loved the small group of buildings at the Hanover Street end that had survived against all the odds. Too small to be commercially viable, they were, nevertheless, a very visible reminder of an earlier Liverpool. Hornby Lowe’s Cutlery Stores, with its superb frontage, was in business from at least 1879. The shop, with its macabre display of hunting, fishing and, I suppose, stabbing knives, was living on borrowed time but it had a character that greatly added to the streetscape. Looking at my 1867 Gore’s Directory, the buildings had previously been occupied by an oyster dealer, a chandelier maker and a gas fitter. In 1857, Charles O’Donnell, a policeman, lived in the Hornby Lowe shop.
Once land values began to soar in the 1990s, their days were numbered. Few property developers have any respect for history; what are a few eighteenth century buildings when there is money to be made. The row of very early houses and warehouses on Hanover Street were demolished one by one until the Liverpool One development swept away the last surviving building. Sadly, their demise followed the standard practice of removing buildings one by one on the grounds that they are beyond repair until there is no cohesion to the street, leaving the surviving building like a single tooth only too easy to extract. This sad pattern has removed whole layers of history – buildings not of great architectural merit but of importance because they were examples of Liverpool’s first great wave of prosperity. Had someone suggested in the 1980s that the Shambles in York should be pulled down because they occupied valuable development land, there would have been a national outcry. The shame is that Liverpool lost so much with hardly a whimper.

Norton Street 1971

London Road 1973

Moss Street 1973

Norton Street 1976

London Road 1979

Following on from my blog about the demise of TJ Hughes, I have posted several images of London Road at the end of its ‘glory days’. All the photographs were taken in the 1970s and show the road was still a busy retail centre with nearly all the shops trading.
Perhaps it wasn’t too surprising. Liverpool still had a population of 610,000 at the time of the 1971 Census, although this was substantially down on the 1961 figure of 745,000. The decline continued and the last Census in 2001 registered a population of 441,830. A decline of that magnitude has to impact on the whole city and London Road has been hit very hard by the loss of its immediate population. Looking at the photographs, it is sad to see the subsequent loss of a number of fine buildings. I particularly like the showroom on Norton Street in 1976 with its impressive Gothic windows. Fortunately many of the buildings have survived although many are run-down. The Prince of Wales pub on the corner with Moss Street has always intrigued me. I have never been inside it (it seems to have been closed since the early 1980s) but it is a real gin palace on the outside with statues in niches and a chateau-style roof.
What is the future of London Road? I feel it is too far away from the city centre to have any hope of a retail revival and can only see a continued neglect, particularly once the focus of TJ Hughes is taken away. Change is inevitable but it is sad to see such a marked decline in a once buoyant area.