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.
Another week and another Liverpool institution hits the buffers. TJs is the last of the great Liverpool department stores. Blackler’s, Owen Owen’s and Lewis’s have gone and George Henry Lee has been absorbed into John Lewis. Even that seemingly ever-present high street name Littlewood Stores is no more. Liverpool was once the centre for retail innovation (I have already covered the history of Compton House, now home to M & S, and its place in retail history).
Sadly, the charm and character of places such as TJ Hughes is being lost. Remarkably, in Liverpool, it had survived outside of the main shopping area by relying on its reputation and goodwill. That was clearly not enough. Its core business was to offer good quality goods at bargain prices. Today, Primark, Poundstretcher and Home & Bargains amongst other offer similar cheap and cheerful goods and the competition has clearly pushed TJs into a corner. Administration does not necessarily mean the end but the future of London Road will be bleak if the store closes its doors.
The view of the photograph is clear enough, looking to the Custom House and beyond, but I am puzzled as to where it was taken from. The dock in the foreground is empty, the remnant of George’s Dock, but I had assumed it had been filled in at the time Mersey Docks and Harbour Board building had been erected in 1907.
The rooftop shown would indicate it was taken further along the road – Goree Piazzas and Brunswick Street are to the immediate left – roughly from the position of the Cunard Building. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to when the dock was finally filled in and where the camera is positioned.
That problem aside, I have often thought what was the ‘best’ year to have enjoyed Liverpool’s architecture. My own choice is slightly later than this photograph – probably the late 1930s. The Blitz and post-War destruction had yet to inflict devastation on the fabric of the city and the new buildings (Pier Head, India Buildings, Martins Bank, the Philharmonic Hall, the Mersey Tunnel and the Anglican Cathedral) were all positive additions. The photograph illustrates three key losses: the Goree and Custom House (to wartime bombing, although salvageable in both cases) and the Overhead Railway (through financial pressures). A real tragedy for Liverpool.
I am often asked if I have photographs of the Stadium in Bixteth Street. I have only a small number, including this one taken in September 1950, when Tom Bailey and Jim McCann topped the boxing bill. The venue was opened by the Earl of Lonsdale in 1932 and became the main venue for boxing and wrestling in the city.
For many, its particular attraction was the regular rock concerts held there, particularly in the 1970s. In earlier days, Louis Armstrong had played there in 1956 and The Beatles appeared well down a Gene Vincent concert bill in 1960. The 1970s concerts had an astonishing array of talent, which to my eternal shame I missed out on completely. In 1971, Led Zeppelin appeared, followed by David Bowie, Jethro Tull and Frank Zappa in 1972. In 1973, it was the turn of Queen, followed by Steely Dan, Captain Beefheart, Bad Company and Judas Priest in 1974. The final concert was held in December 1976 with Ultravox and Eddie and the Hot Rods. Of course, I have omitted dozens of other artists but the shortlist will give a good flavour of the calibre of artists, with tickets rarely more than £1.50.
By the time the final acts played their last chords, the Stadium was badly run down. The management had been badly shaken by the horrendous gang-rape of a young girl during a concert there which reflected on the decrepit state of the venue. However, for the greatest part of its 40 plus years, it made a glorious contribution to the sporting and music history of Liverpool.
First of all, many thanks to all those who replied about the last post. Without any doubt, the church in the photograph is All Saints, Bentley Road (demolished in 1974).
Today’s photograph is of Coronation celebrations in Pitt Street. The scene is full of animation, in particular the group of children playing house in the foreground. They have made a kitchen out of a hole in the ground and borrowed a fireguard, table and teapot. The rest is all down to imagination. Behind the girl sitting on the right is a large builder’s mallet – so I guess the impromptu house was short-lived.
Will the next Coronation be celebrated so enthusiastically? That will be interesting.
Princes Dock 1976
Paradise Street 1978
Sea Brow/Strand Street 1975
Three more panoramas of central Liverpool in the 1970s. The photographs were taken by Stan Roberts, who, in each case, pieced together several images to extend the street view.
All three show how much Liverpool has changed in the past forty years. Virtually all the buildings in the photographs have been demolished – the last act being the removal of the Mersey Mission to Seamen (on the corner of James Street and Sea Brow/Strand Street: the white modern building on the far left) this February. The warehouse with the Golden Shred advert is on the corner of Redcross Street.
This is the Liverpool I remember well from my early years in the city with warehouse after warehouse dominating the streetscape.
Princes Dock retains its perimeter wall but all the sheds were lost in the 1990s. The dock had long since ceased as a working dock although the sheds were used to house Liverpool Museum’s Large Objects Collection for many years. The change of use to hotels and offices is logical but the architecture of the new buildings is mundane and not of a high enough standard to reflect the importance of its World Heritage setting. No doubt, within a relatively short time, they will be replaced, hopefully by better buildings.
The car park in Paradise Street is included as an example of the nadir of Liverpool’s fortunes. With virtually no inward investment and little incentive to spend on quality, this shocking bus station-cum-car park was hastily assembled just yards from the premier shopping area. How did they get away with it? A truly shocking example of disrespect for the fine architectural tradition of the city. Fortunately Grosvenor had better ideas for the site and I doubt any tears were shed as it was reduced to rubble.
