Streets of Liverpool

Scotland Road at Bostock Street, 1960

In October, last year, I posted a photograph of the interior of the Parrot Hotel on Scotland Road. I have had a number of requests for an exterior, including one from the daughter of a previous landlord. In fact, I have had so many requests for photos of different streets and buildings (particularly pubs) that I will do a bit of catch-up in the next few weeks.
The two photographs today show what were to be the final years of Scotland Road before the road widening and building of the Kingsway Tunnel took out is heart. The bottom image shows the view looking up from Scotland Place (soon to be the site of Liverpool Polytechnic (later JM University). Within little more than a decade, all the buildings in the photograph had been demolished and replaced by roads.

Scotland Road at Scotland Place, 1958

Peacock Inn by William Gawin Herdman

In earlier blogs, I have lamented the scarcity of pre-1880 photographs of Liverpool. I have the odd image but they hardly represent a substantial body of work. However, the occasional early gem surfaces from time to time and I am grateful to Coin Weekes for allowing me to post this fascinating photograph of the Peacock Inn, which once stood on Park Road, near to High Park Street. Once thought to have been the residence of the keeper of the Ancient Park of Toxteth when it was a royal hunting park, it was probably constructed in the early seventeenth century. Judging by the top hats and also the dress worn by the girl on the right, I reckon the photograph dates to about 1870. Why the group is gathered is not clear but it is the earliest photograph of a Liverpool pub I have come across. By way of contrast, I have also reproduced an earlier painting of The Peacock by WG Herdman.
The building was of a style once common in Liverpool. The artist Brierley painted many such cottages in the 1830s but all were demolished in the town centre with the last one surviving well into the first half of the twentieth century.

Two photographs of the same block on Brythen Street, with the Playhouse clearly visible in the first photograph to fix the location. A bit of a pub crawler’s dream – with The Old Royal next to Quinn’s Oyster Bar, Roberts (bird dealers), The Dart and The Old Dive on the opposite corner.
I have already posted a number of photographs around the Williamson Square/St John’s Market area. The destruction of the network of streets and squares to make way for the new market, road widening and (abandoned) civic centre scheme was one of Liverpool’s most significant architectural losses. My reason for resurrecting my opinion is the visit of Unesco officials to determine the threat posed to Liverpool’s World Heritage Status by Peel Holdings’ proposed Liverpool Waters development.
It is reassuring that the issue is being discussed at this stage. In the 1960s, the heritage lobby would have been brushed aside as an irrelevance. Today, the balance has shifted but is Liverpool Waters a threat or a necessary, even essential, scheme to create a future for the city? I am fairly clear where I stand. Unlike the 1960s redevelopment, which removed over a century of character and history, the Peel proposal is on derelict land which has been vacant for decades. The physical integrity of Pier Head is not threatened, the key issue is the visual impact (which has already been badly compromised by the Mann Island development). I cannot say I am a great fan of skyscrapers unless they are of a very high architectural quality – and most in this country are not. I prefer the human scale of smaller buildings in a more intimate setting where a restored Stanley Dock could take pride of place. Clearly Peel will have a strategy that will accommodate revisions to their plans and I hope that the public can have some input. Development at all cost is not the issue – even with 12,000 jobs at stake – but what future Liverpool has got without an ambitious plan.

I have many photographs of Liverpool pubs, particularly from the early years of the twentieth century. Brewers, in particular Walkers, took photographs as part of the licensing process and there are substantial ledgers of their pubs in Liverpool Record Office.
Interestingly, the breweries were only interested in the exteriors – often with the manager and staff standing proudly in the doorway. Interiors are much rarer and this is the first I have seen from the turn of the century. It was taken in 1908 by well-known Liverpool photographers Brown, Barnes and Bell of 31 Bold Street and published as a real photographic postcard. Such postcards were a lucrative source of income for photographers and they would sell their services to shops, pubs and even householders. The cards were usually produced in small numbers and, as a result, are quite rare (and expensive to buy nowadays). Everything could be made into postcards, from important moments such as the 1911 Transport Strike (by local photographers Carbonora), to more local events such as garden parties, road accidents and the like.
What I particularly like about the interior of the Parrot is the dress code of the barmen, all very proper, to the sign advertising Jones’ Knotty Ash beer at 2p a pint. Judging by the till, a customer has just paid for two pints (at what is still only 2p in modern money).
Many thanks to Martin Lewis for allowing me to reproduce today’s photograph (which found its way over to Seattle).

I am guessing that the year is 1965. The John Moores Centre (top left) appears to have been finished, with a nearby crane working on Phase 2. The pub on the corner of Fontenoy Street and Great Crosshall Street (the road running up from Byrom Street the left), is the Australian Vaults with Holy Cross Church prominent just beyond.
The tenements, euphemistically named Fontenoy Gardens, without a blade of grass in sight, are split by the tunnels for Waterloo Goods station, across the road from Waterloo Dock. Further along the docks, the ‘Three Sisters’, the chimneys of Clarence Dock power station are another landmark. With the exception of the JM Centre, all these features have now disappeared in the reshaping of the city over the last thirty years – although the refuse lorry is little different from its modern counterpart (at least some things were designed to last).

The Whitehouse, Duke Street

The Oakfield

Two more pubs from Kevin Casey’s new book Closing Time: The Lost Pubs of Liverpool.
The Whitehouse must be the best known closed pub in the city, thanks to the Banksy painting, and the Grade II building sold this week at auction for £114,000 (probably much less than expected when Banksy paintings are so highly valued). Depending on where you read up on the graffiti, the mural is of a rat holding either a machine gun or a marker pen. The big problem is that the future of the painting is in the hands of planners – who must approve of any changes to the front of the building. Possible The Whitehouse will become a pub again – but the cost of renovation will not come cheap.
The Oakfield is a typical nineteenth century pub in the suburbs which has lost its customer base and is no longer viable. Kevin’s book is full of similar cases of once-flourishing businesses left high and dry by recession, changing habits and depopulating neighbourhoods. There no longer is room for a pub on every corner but what becomes of the empty buildings is anyone’s guess.

Athol Vaults

The Lambeth

Pub closures are nothing new. Hundreds shut in the 1950s and 60s as neighbourhoods were cleared in the massive slum clearance programmes. Now a whole range of problems has resulted in another wave that has led to many ‘locals’ putting up the towels for the last time. Faced with the smoking ban, cheap supermarket alcohol, changing social habits (more people staying in to enjoy home entertainment) and the migration of younger drinkers to the city centre – the pressures on pubs have never been greater (and that is not taking into account the effect of the recession).
Once familiar landmarks are being demolished or are standing empty with no expectation of reopening – and this inspired Kevin Casey to document their demise. Over 80 pubs are documented in his book Closing Time: The Lost Pubs of Liverpool and they represent just a fraction of locals that have closed in the last few years.
Should we care? That is a difficult question at a time when alcohol consumption is a national issue. But Closing Time puts forward the point that the neighbourhood pub had a controlling effect on those who drank there. Generally, people behaved themselves and drank sensibly because they were in their own community (and pub landlords were a tough breed). The pub was the centre of social and sporting activities and had a role to play in the community. Not all pubs are lost – but their survival (and fascinating architecture) is truly under threat. A book well worth buying (said the publisher).

119 Limekiln Lane c1900

Langsdale Street c1900

It is now over ten years since I published Freddy O’Connor’s Pubs on Every Corner series (four in all). What astonished me then was the incredible number of pubs – many of them faithfully documented by the brewery (in both cases here by Peter Walker’s). Liverpool was the first city to embrace brewery-managed pubs. In most places, the pubs were owned by landlords or run by tenants. Walker changed all that and introduced an efficient pub system with strict rules laid down by the brewery. The result was the Walker family grew very rich but, also, Liverpool inherited brewery-built pubs like the Philharmonic which had few equals.
Both the pubs shown here were more modest. The Langsdale Street pub was run by Catharine Kip, who stands proudly outside (whilst one of her customers is leaving with a jug of ale from the other door. Langsdale Street ran down off Shaw Street (see map below).

Both photographs come from the Walker archive, now in LRO. The brewery photographed all its pubs for licensing purposes and stuck the photographs in large ledgers with the address of each one. Other breweries, such as Higsons, did the same – but unfortunately their archives have not been kept intact, although there are a quite a few in private hands, as I discovered when I put together the books with Freddy. What we really do need is a collaborative effort to bring such photos into the public arena. They are part of Liverpool’s history and add to our understanding of how the city grew. The internet opens up a fantastic opportunity to share images which sacrificing ownership – and I hope this blog will encourage like-minded collectors to join in. I would be delighted to post other people’s photographs if they wish to contact me.

The street is initially hard to place – but there at the bottom of James Street is the newly built White Star building and, above it, James Street station with its hydraulic tower (which was destroyed by enemy bombing). So the view we are looking at is from Derby Square, from the statue of Queen Victoria. Preeson’s Row is still there in theory – it was a street that ran along the river side of Derby Square, along the line of the old castle ditch. Picton’s indispensable Memorials of Liverpool is, as so often, my guide to its history. Back in the 17th century, it was called Tarlton’s field. Alderman Thomas Preeson built the first houses, living himself on the opposite side, fronting the castle fosse. A stone in front of the house was dated 1660. In about 1721, the buildings of the castle were removed and a small square, Derby Square, was formed for a new market.
So what has happened to these old streets such as Sea Brow, Prison Weint, Redcross Street, Benns Gardens and Preeson’s Row which were all part of the history of Liverpool? Occasionally, like Redcross Street, the name survives in a meaningless context but the rest have been swept away and an association with the old town lost forever.
The pub on the corner, in the photograph, is the Queen’s Hotel, which was destroyed during the War, and rebuilt. It has had a name change recently but, no doubt, will resurface as the Queens sometime in the future as is the trend (remember the Brookhouse, which was painted a shocking yellow and renamed The Scream before the pub chain came to its senses).

Burlington Street 1890

Temperance March c1895

There is a substantial number of contemporary accounts of life in nineteenth century Liverpool. Journalists such as Hugh Shimmin wrote extensively about slum life, usually sympathetically but invariably looking at drink as the underlying cause of poverty. Invariably, middle class response to the threat of the ‘underclass’ was to lobby for tighter controls on the sale of alcohol – with a growing number arguing for total abstinence. Signing the ‘pledge’ (not to drink) and supporting temperance organisations such as the Band of Hope attracted national support – even if, like most bandwagons, it eventually ran out of steam.

The first photograph, of Burlington Street, is one of a series taken by Liverpool photographer N. Stephen, a committed anti-drink campaigner, and used as lantern slides in temperance lectures. The second photograph, which looks as if it has been taken somewhere near Abercromby Square, shows what appears to be a well-heeled crowd about to start their procession. The distance between the two locations is only a couple of miles in distance – but light years in comfort, opportunity and life expectancy. A century on, one might ask ‘what has changed?’