The courts and back streets of Liverpool’s slums were private places where few outsiders ventured. In 1856, the journalist Hugh Shimmin railed against ‘the old, dilapidated courthouses, with their fetid air and small squalid rooms’ which ’still form the only dwellings which are supposed to be within the means of the labouring and casually employed poor … the Liverpool courts present scenes of social degredation and misery which it will be almost hopeless to induce people who have no practical acquaintances with the habits of the people to believe.’
Photographers tended to avoid the slums, probably with good reason. The hand-held camera allowed some anonymity, but most amateurs stuck to the street scenes around Pier Head and St John’s Market. You will not find Ben Jonson Street (rather inappropriately named after the dramatist and poet contemporary of Shakespeare) in Gore’s Directory because it is not listed (along with all the other surrounding courts and backstreets. The population was so numerous and transient that there was little value adding the current occupants to its list). This view of the street (which connected Comus Street and Scotland Road) is particularly interesting in that the raised viewpoint has captured a candid scene that contrasts with the later photographs of the City Engineer’s Department where a plate camera was used at street level. My immediate thought is that the photographer is sitting on the upper deck of an omnibus as it passed along Scotland Road.
The doss-house with its sign ‘good accomodation for travellers’ (sic) reminds me of the ubiquitous sign outside public houses offering good food and fine ales. When did you ever see a sign offering bad food or bad accommodation? The thought of a night in such a place does not bear thinking about.
Photograph courtesy of Liverpool Record Office.
Just a brief post to add some missing images of lost buildings. The photographs supplement the previous posts and give a better idea of why I have included these buildings in my blog. They are
Canada Dock hydraulic tower (photographed 1875)
Kent Square c1935
Goree and Overhead Railway 1947
Cotton Exchange 1907
Following on from yesterday, my next choice is a building that has got progressively worse each time it has been rebuilt:
8 Exchange Buildings. The smaller photograph (taken in 1860) is a view of James Wyatt’s elegant building (1803-9), in perfect sympathy with the Town Hall (for which he was partly responsible). Tastes changed and, in the 1860s, the building was replaced by one in the more flamboyant (and less sympathetic) Gothic style (top photograph, 1886). Needless to say, the modernists had their way in the 1930s – replacing it with the current vaguely neo-classical building.
9 Duke’s Dock Warehouse. Built in 1811, this was one of Liverpool’s most grievous losses according to Quentin Hughes – who gave it considerable space in his seminal book Seaport. A magnificent early six-storey warehouse, it was demolished for no benefit by an insensitive Mersey Docks and Harbour Board.
10 Cotton Exchange. Another example of trying to modernise unsympathetically. The original building (1905/6 by Matear and Simpson) was a grand Edwardian baroque statement of the importance of the cotton trade. Its replacement is unintentionally a weak nod to the post-war decline in confidence.
11 Canada Dock hydraulic tower (1858). Perhaps Jesse Hartley’s weirdest building – a medieval castle on the banks of the Mersey.
I am guessing at the year 1880. It certainly is not much later, the Bon Marche building (with a flag on top) was built in 1878 and still looks quite new. On the right is St Peter’s Church, which was dismissed by architectural critics as being a poor copy of the school of Christopher Wren. Consecrated in 1704, it was sold by the diocese (to Woolworths) to fund the building of the Anglican Cathedral. The church was demolished in 1922 and the site is now occupied by the Top Shop store.
The main focus of interest is the building on the left, what is now Marks & Spencers. When I was working with Quentin Hughes on Liverpool City of Architecture, we had numerous discussions about which significant buildings to include (for either architectural or historical reasons). For some reason, this building was left out although it was possibly the first purpose-built department store in the world (pre-dating Bon Marche in Paris by five years). Completed in 1867 for JR Jeffrey, the store faced a losing battle to pay off the cost of building it and, in 1871, it closed its shutters. Sadly, the strain was too much for Jeffrey, who died a few months after the faiure. The store reopened as the Compton Hotel with retailing on the ground floor. In the world of retailing, this is a hugely significant building and, when I complete my revision of City of Architecture it will get the recognition it deserves.
Back in the 1980s, I bought a broken up album of Liverpool photographs. Taken in the early 1880s, they covered a rather eclectic range of buildings including the Masonic Hall on Hope Street, the Orphanage on Myrtle Street as well as the Custom House, Town Hall and Sailors’ Home. There is evidence of a photographer’s blind stamp on the edge of one photograph but it is indecipherable. The quality of the set does suggest a professional photographer, perhaps compiling an album of Liverpool views for his own interest.
The photograph of Water Street is typical, centering on the Cunard Company headquarters. Posters advertise voyages to New York on the Atlas (which was nearing the end of its life at the time having served the company since the early 1860s). Oriel Chambers is shown in its original street context and looks so well ‘bedded in’ that it is difficult to understand the criticism its architect, Peter Ellis, received from a hostile press.
I am fascinated by the enigma of Ellis. Why is so little known about his subsequent career? Did he really only design two buildings (Oriel Chambers and 16 Cook Street)? Is there any research out there that can add any meat to the bones? Please add a comment if you know more.