Houghton Street was once a busy street connecting Williamson Square and Clayton Square. It is still there but one side is taken up by St John’s Market and the other by what were George Henry Lee’s and Owen Owens. This is an interesting colour photograph taken just before the buildings were demolished to make way for the new market. There is not a lot I can add to my previous comments about the destruction of this area. Even the landlords of St John’s appear to have thrown in the towel and have abandoned the complete refit indefinitely.
I can remember that when the precinct caught fire (in the 1980s – my memory fails me), architects gathered at their club in Bluecoat Chambers and toasted its demise. They celebrated too soon. Unfortunately the fire damage was repairable and the Market continued to trade. There are a few other buildings I would raise a glass to if they were to be consumed by fire (no casualties of course): the black glass buildings on Mann Island and St John’s Market topping the list.
David Lewis Hostel and Theatre
Great George Street, 1980
Two more photographs taken by Stan Roberts. Somewhat ironically, he has dated both photographs 1st April 1980.
This was no April Fool’s joke, unfortunately, just the end of a fine institution that had served the city well for over 70 years. My recollection was that the street and hostel had been cleared several years earlier – but Stan was never wrong. One of my earliest memories of Liverpool was going to a meeting at the University Settlement on Nile Street, which was one of the streets that ran up the hill from Great George Street to the Cathedral. The building was part of a shabby Georgian terrace but it had life and character.
David Lewis was one of those larger than life characters who illuminated Liverpool life in the nineteenth century. He had arrived in Liverpool as a 16 year-old and went on to establish Lewis’s Stores as a household name. Deeply religious and philanthropic, he left considerable funds in his will towards charitable purposes (he had already helped fund the Northern Hospital). The David Lewis Hotel (or Hostel) was built in 1906, initially as a place for seafarers. It had sports facilities and a theatre, which staged concerts for the local community (apparently it could seat 1000 people). It doubled up as a cinema, gaining its licence in 1914. I remember it as a community venue in the early 1970s when it was running as a successful youth club. Its fire certificate expired in 1977 and, as the photograph shows, its demolition followed in 1980. Another fine building to add to the lengthy ‘Lost Liverpool’ list.
Pier Head 1911 (the Liver Building is minus its Liver Birds)
Pier Head 2000
Pier Head, May 2010
It is easy to cast oneself as yet another moaner who is always finding fault with any changes. I’d like to think I have a positive attitude to change and I have welcomed many of the recent developments that have transformed the city. I am a big fan of the new Museum of Liverpool and see it as a graceful addition to the waterfront along with the Arena. However, the destruction of one of the best cityscapes in the country makes my blood boil.
The waterfront has always been restricted to the people of Liverpool and the first view taken in 1911 shows a scene that would have been enclosed by storage sheds along the Dock Road. However, the opening up of the vista, particularly from 1984 with the landscaping around Albert Dock, created a magnificent view that lifted the spirits as you walked or drove past. The view through the arch became a favourite photo opportunity – framing the Pier Head in all its glory. My view taken in 2000 captures a scene that must have impressed any visitor to the city. (I used a similar shot for the cover of Quentin Hughes’ Liverpool City of Architecture to highlight the best view in the city). So what have they done? Taken away an iconic view that sold the city for three blocks of black glass-faced speculation that have changed the waterfront for generations (or at least until they pull them down). Why there? Why black when virtually every building in Liverpool is either brick or white stone? We talk about listing buildings. The space around Mann Island should have been declared public open space and landscaped accordingly. Shame on all those who voted for the development (which only got through on a casting vote).
The public are treated with derision by decision-makers. Remember the Fourth Grace fiasco when the public were asked for an opinion and then completely ignored. The obsession with filling every space with commercial buildings is wrong-minded and damages the city’s heritage. We need more open space not less. We have been palmed off with a little patch of green in Liverpool One when what we should have are swathes of green across the city centre. Whoops – I have turned into a typical moaner in three paragraphs.
I have to be a bit careful about cinema locations after my post about the Gaumont, but this is a queue for the Futurist on Lime Street in the early 1950s. The main point of interest is the man with his godly message. I remember him as late as the 1980s in Church Street, still pushing the same proclamation. He seemed remarkably good-natured, although I suppose after 30 years he had survived every insult and witticism anyone could throw at him.
There is a long tradition of photographing street characters. John Thompson had started the genre in 1870s London and it was then developed by many other photographers, particularly after hand-held cameras became widely used in the 1890s. Amateur photographic societies often included a category for street photography in their annual competitions and Liverpool had, in Charles Inston, one of the greatest exponents. Today’s streets perhaps lack the variety – back in the 1950s there were escapologists, strong men having paving slabs shattered with sledge-hammers on their chests as well as the singers, violinists and whistle players – but is still plenty of life to be captured and kept for a future generation.
I reckon I’ve been a bit serious with my recent blogs, so here is an image from 1969 that should raise a smile or two. The Swan was pulled down a few years back for road improvements but I don’t think it ranks highly on the list of lost buildings. As for the mini skirts, they were amongst the last to be seen for a time as the long, flowing skirts, loon pants etc. took over. The police, as always, are on the lookout for crime on the streets.
Here is a photograph of the building on the right of the previous blog. Before the road was widened, Dale Street projected a block further down (towards the Tunnel) to a junction with Byrom Street. I thought that identifying everything in the photograph would be plain sailing but, unfortunately, after hours of checking through various Gore’s and Kelly’s, I am still short of answers. Blackburn Assurance, the building on the far left replaced a block of slum property including Chorley Court (see earlier post) in the 1930s. The pub on the corner of Fontenoy Street was the Red Lion – although my last mention of it is in 1927. The pub seems to have been converted to offices, including the famous solicitors’ partnership of Silverman & Livermore, whose names will be familiar to all students of Liverpool’s criminal history. The Liverpool Co-operative Society have an entrance in the centre of the block, although the main facade was along Byrom Street (they owned Unity House, which can be seen with two posters of Winston Churchill – was this in recognition of his death in 1965?). By this date, however, the Co-op was no longer trading. In fact, it is not listed in the 1964 Kelly’s (it is in the 1962 edition), which suggestes the block was being cleared out before demolition. The lamp standard on the left is another of Herbert Rowse’s designs for the Tunnel approaches.
I have just returned from a few days break – so straight back into the 1960s. The photograph was taken before Byrom Street was widened- removing the buildings on the right. What catches the eye is the amazing art deco street light that was positioned in front of the Queensway Tunnel entrance. Herbert Rowse, the architect of India Buildings, Martins Bank and the Philharmonic Hall, was commissioned to put the style into Basil Mott’s great engineering achievement. He wasn’t too happy about it, complaining: ‘the engineer too often feels he can cover up his mistakes by calling in an architect to add pretty things to hide them.’
Whatever Mott’s mistakes were, Rowse, who was inventing a new decorative style for the modernist movement, did a brilliant job including designing the lining of the tunnel with a dado of black Vitrolite glass framed in stainless steel. (Les Cooper, ex-Stewart Bale and one of the partners of Elsam, Mann and Cooper photographers was very proud of his kitchen which he fitted out with left-over Vitrolite panels. I wasn’t quite so keen on it but it would have looked incredibly modern in the 1930s when he fitted it).
The lighting pylon was a particular feature which marked either end of the tunnel (the Birkenhead one survives). Another own goal for Liverpool when the one in Haymarket was unceremoniously pulled down sometime in the 1960s. Rowse, Liverpool’s finest architect of the twentieth century, deserved better.
I had never come across the annual Orange marches until I came to Liverpool. My first experience was when I worked in Seel Street in 1974 and heard an incredible thumping of drums and the wail of bagpipes. Rushing up to Berry Street, I was mesmerised by a long procession of pipers, drummers, baton carriers and serious looking men and women with orange bands all marching in time. Above all was the sight of numerous King Billys (all women dressed up with flowing wigs) with their consort, Queen Mary, alongside them.
This was the Dingle contingent marching to catch the train to Southport and, in the early 1970s, they made up a sizeable crowd.
Sectarianism is one of those unspoken aspects of Liverpool’s history and the violent riots of the early twentieth century have been pushed back from memory. However one views its historical past, I am surprised that the annual parades have not been better documented. They are a fascinating part of local history and judging by recent thinly attended parades, might follow Judas burning and other once common ceremonies into folk lore. Photographs like these two are not about partisanship but about recording for posterity – although I am not sure whether the three girls in their yellow costumes would be quite as keen.
I suppose you have to be a certain age but back in the 1950s and early 60s, the Saturday film show aimed at children was a fantastic institution. The films usually had a Hollywood B movie feel to them, with a preponderance of ‘cowboys and indians’. For adults, the 1950s were, at the start, difficult years as the country adjusted to post-War life but talk to most of those (now 50+) who were kids at the time and a different picture emerges – of freedom to roam, play in the streets and be your own age.
The Gaumont, in Camden Street off London Road, was one of four to bear that name in Liverpool (the other three were at Dingle, Anfield and Allerton). Originally named the Trocadero, it was renamed the Gaumont in 1950 and was the first cinema in Liverpool to install CinemaScope with stereophonic sound (in 1954). Its close proximity to the Odeon on London Road was its undoing. The final straw came when the Odeon converted to a multi-screen (four screens by 1973). The Gaumont limped on until its final performance in May 1974. It had a brief life as a snooker hall but was demolished in 1996. It may have gone but for a generation of kids it was a magical place for a few hours every Saturday morning.
The area around the Custom House was a warren of alleys and narrow streets, its last remnants disappearing in the early 1970s to make way for the Law Courts and the proposed new Canning Place development. A description in the 1930s conjures up a lost world: ‘ …when I first stepped from Litherland Alley, near Canning Place, into Ogden Weint. It would not appear that with any stretch of the imagination this exccedingly narrow by-way could belong to a modern city … Ogden Weint is so narrow that even two pedestrians have difficulty in passing one another without rubbing shoulders. The large stone flags are very unevenly placed and at night time when the passage is dimly illuminated by flickering yellow light from a gas lamp, one has the feeling of passing down the alleyway of an old sailing ship, and the little doorways, resembing those of ships’ cabins, serve to accentuate the impression.’
The Trawler was the last of the pubs along Strand Street to be demolished. The photograph shows it sometime in the late 1960s under the name Frayne. In my Gore’s Directory of 1910, James Frayne is listed as the landlord of The Mersey Vaults at 11, Strand Street. In 1927 (and in 1931), he is listed in Kelly’s at The Trawler at 12 Strand Street – so he obviously had a long career in the licensed trade. Pubs are a good barometer of the dynamics of a neighbourhood. Their decline in recent years a clear indication of changing patterns of behaviour and, in the case of the Dock Road pubs, the catastrophic decline in the economic activity of the area.
