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.

There can be no area of Liverpool that has been changed as many times as Pier Head. Almost every decade, a new plan is implemented guaranteeing a ‘world-class’ environment. Never has such an expression been so widely misused. (I can remember only recently the City Council describing the new Williamson Square as ‘world class’ – a particularly inappropriate description for the collection of tin sheds masquerading as shops on one end and a soulless empty area in front). Pier Head traditionally was the only area of the river giving free access to the population, the rest falling under the control of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. It was a place to watch the river, get a ferry ‘over the water’ and understand the source of Liverpool’s greatness.
Today’s photograph of the Landing Stage was taken around 1966 just before yet another restructuring (the Chinese restaurant phase). In the following years, the bus terminus was removed, grass areas were brought in and then taken away and, but probably not finally, a canal cut through the area. Each change is heralded as ‘world class’ and therefore unlikely to last more than another generation. The new ferry terminal is yet another attempt to stamp a contemporary vision on the waterfront but I find it bland and dated.

I have written extensively about the lost buildings of Liverpool but today’s blog is about another lost institution – that of good journalism. If we are to judge a period in history by its newspapers then today’s sad offerings would be an interesting pointer. Both Liverpool Echo and Daily Post seem to have finally abandoned the kind of reporting that was once the hallmark of the best provincial papers. The old adage about today’s paper being tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper could not be more apt (even if they no longer use newpapers for that purpose). Looking back at a golden age of jounalism, I was taken by an 1889 article in the Liverpool Review captioned Eight Hours on the Landing Stage.

During the summer months, the Landing Stage is seen at its best from midday until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. Through the intervening hours, the bridges and approaches are thronged with continuous streams of people on pleasure bent. The greater number of this day-by-day procession are trippers from inland towns, to whom a look at the Mersey and the ships is next to a peep at heaven, and our own Liverpudlian mammas who, when father, dear old struggle, is toiling over his desk, or dodging six months’ bills, take upon themselves the pleasurable duty of giving the children an airing.
Arrived on the Landing Stage, the half-dozen streams of health-hunting holiday seekers converge towards the ferry boats, those plying to Egremont and New Brighton getting the bulk of the passengers. Going down the gangway on to the boats there is, as a matter of course, a good deal of clinging to mamma’s jacket or dress, and a chorus of maternal voices, while a score of maternal eyes anxiously look round, call out, “Now, Charlie, mind where you are going!” “Are you behind me, Cissie?” and a dozen other directions besides.
… Of the boatsmen and hangers-on who dawdle about the Landing Stage from early morn to dewy eve, I can tell you nothing that is not well known; the boatsmen dawdle about for jobs, the hangers-on dawdle, dawdle, dawdle for anything gratis from a copper to a quid of tobacco. The hangers-on who really contrive to enjoy themselves are the hatless, bare-footed, ragged urchins, whose sole ambition in life appears to be to live with dirty, crust hands and face and dodge around policemen. They are remarkably expert at the latter amusement, and on the Landing Stage live in an Elysium of laughter, horse-play and dodgery. PC No. _ and a few others know this to their cost. I must admit that I like these young ragamuffins ‘baiting’ and so do the bystanders.

If only today’s Echo or Daily Post could rustle up such meaningful accounts – but that would be running against the grain of contemporary editorial requirements.