Category Archives: Travel
Liverpool One: The Grosvenor Development Growing
The deadlines for Liverpool city centre renewal now loom. Whilst the Big Dig continues to present us all with challenges, Liverpool One, the enormous Grosvenor development, is becoming a discernable entity.
Lewis’s, Lime Street And Liverpool Losing Out
Liverpool city centre is in a state of flux, as the Big Dig re-routes and bewilders in equal measure. The aim is that the city centre will become a pleasant, business-friendly place to be. The disgraceful state of Renshaw Street, linking Lime Street Station to the city south end, sadly belies that intent. It’s scruffy and delapidated; does it have to be like this?
The steel-grey vistas above are what first greet visitors to Liverpool’s city centre. The once-mighty Lewis’s department store and the street from there to the main train station look much as some of us recall them thirty years ago, except perhaps they are less well scrubbed. And to add to this we now have the challenge of the City Centre Movement Strategy (CCMS) ‘in action’ every time we come into town.
The Big Dig as a way of life
To those familiar with Liverpool’s city centre the Big Dig has become a way of life. Intended to make the heart of Liverpool ‘fit for purpose’ for the celebratory years of 2007 and 2008, this now seemingly perennial feature of the city centre experience feels to have become a liability for Liverpool’s citizens, rather then an opportunity to enhance our future.
Many are asking whether a city which has suffered so much digging of holes and diversion of traffic in all directions can actually survive as an economic entity until the works are finally completed. The word is that some local businesses are going to the wall, especially in the train station area around Liverpool Lime Street, RenshawStreet and the Adelphi Hotel (not, it seems, itself under duress).
Enterprise endangered
Certainly, there have already been casualties. Heart & Soul, Chumki Banerjee’s signature bistro restaurant just around the corner on Mount Pleasant, has closed and Lewis’s Ltd (quite a different retail company from John Lewis) is rumoured after many years – it was founded in 1856 – to be folding imminently (mid-May 2007). There are also suggestions that
some other long-established local stores are at risk.
A relaxed approach to regeneration?
No-one denies that improvements to the city centre are required; but many question the apparently relaxed approach the City Council and others have taken to achieving this.
Work on the Big Dig seems at best to be nine-to-five, and nobody, as far as one can tell, has a responsibility actually to clean up the grimly grey and crumbling retail and commercial buildings along Renshaw Street from Lime Street.
Take a fresh look – and freshen up!
Is it surprising that businesses in this well-established part of town are feeling the pinch? Who would choose to walk from Lime Street up to Lewis’s along a street resembling the set of a 1960s kitchen sink melodrama, when they can instead take the
crossing outside the station into the pedestrian zone?
Perhaps some city leaders need to walk this walk, as well as talking the theoretical talk about the local infrastructural wonders we can soon expect.
Support the positive
There will always be brave souls who find a way forward. Fleur Hair and Beauty, previously located in the now-collapsing Lewis’s department store, has taken a walk across the road to the Adelphi Hotel Health Club, where the business can re-consolidate. No doubt there are others too who have faced the future and re-grouped.
Things are never static, especially in the world of enterprise, and to some extent this is good. That, however, does not excuse the failure of city local leaders to address problems which are beyond
the control of all but the very largest businesses.
Challenging market conditions
This is a city with more than the usual proportion of small and medium sized enterprises (compared to large ones – but still low in proportion to the public sector). These SMEs, often owned and run by individuals who actually live in Liverpool, have little slack in their business plans to accommodate civic laxity.
Not all businesses are equally effectively run, but Liverpool can’t afford the luxury of just letting private sector interests go to the wall without any support.
Nurture the positives
As I have said before, Regeneration Rule No. 1 has to be:
First nurture the positive assets you already have.
It’s not just the interests of visitors to our 2007 and 2008 celebrations that we must protect. The concerns of local workers and entrepreneurs are also core.
They, after all, are the people who hope still to be here in 2009.
Fleur Health & Beauty
Spindles Health Club
The Britannia Adelphi Hotel
Ranelagh Place (Renshaw Street)
Liverpool L3 5UL
0151-709 7200 x 044
And a happy PS: Fleur has now re-opened her salon in the ‘rescued’ Lewis’s, to run alongside the Adelphi salon – Lewis’s, Ranelagh Street, 0151-709 7000.
What’s The 2008 Liverpool European Capital Of Culture Year For?
Liverpool ‘s 2008 European Capital of Culture Year will be upon us in just a few months. But deep divides remain between artists, civic leaders and many local people about what the 2008 Year is ‘for’.
Alex Corina has taken the plunge into controversy on developments with the Liverpool’s plans for the 2008 European Capital of Culture Year. He’s reinvented Edvard Munch’s The Scream as The Liverpool Scream, just as in happier times he produced the Mona Lennon.
How do we measure success?
Despite the intentional playing to the gallery in all this, there is a very serious issue to be considered here. It concerns the rationale/s which lie behind the 2008 culture programme.
For many (not all) in the Culture Company I gather that one of most important ‘real’ ways that success will be measured in 2008 is number of tourist beds (i.e. overnight stays) which are achieved during the year.
The local artists’ perspective
I can see why this is a significant measure, but it’s not the message which most ‘community arts’ people in the city want to prioritise. They, like some Culture Company officers, seek to develop their communities by using ‘culture’ as a socially helpful way to bring people together.
This is however obviously much harder to measure and has less immediate impact on the seriously challenging sub-regional economy (though longer-term it would be good).
A view from cultural institutions
And then of course there are the ‘high arts’ bigger organisations which no doubt see the major outcome for themselves as being numbers of tickets sold for shows, concerts, whatever.
Again, a very valid perspective, and we need to recognise that if these organisations were not to benefit from 2008 ‘celebrations’
they would be in serious trouble in 2009 – which would mean the loss of many very accomplished artists and performers who currently work in the city(but often choose not to live here because the additional employment opportunities are so much better in, say, Manchester – see below).
Nurturing home-based professional artistic talent?
But the requirement to sustain the big arts organisations, though vital for Liverpool’s future status, still ignores the need – not at all as yet recognised as far as I can judge – to support locally-based fully trained and professional artists and performers with very high levels of skill who want to work in the city simply as artists and performers, not as community-based animateurs.
An edgy approach
This may be difficult when, for instance, the new Liverpool
Commissions stream requires that applicants offer something wacky and on the edge; which is good for some, but sounds absolutely daft if you are a historically-inclined fine arts person or a classically trained musician.
Playing to the local Liverpool gallery, which prides itself on being on the edge, is understandable, but it won’t impress many others from elsewhere; and why aren’t local professional artists being respected as artists in their own right – or so it might appear – in the same way as visiting ones?
I have already asked How Will We Know That Liverpool 2007 & 2008 Were Successful? And that debate continues.
At least three views?
In the meantime, I’m still not sure what the answers might be, but they seem to coalesce around the three views above:
1. tourist spend / beds
2. community cohesion and capacity building
3. (potentially) retention of high-level artistic skills in the city
Where’s the dialogue?
Unfortunately however there seems to be very little dialogue between those who promote each of these perspectives.
Indeed, I’m not sure it’s possible to do this under the present ‘consultation’ arrangements, with occasional meetings of large numbers of people – professional artists and others with very different experience together – in sports halls and the like.
Bringing the issues into focus
If Alex Corina’s current activities can help everyone to focus on
the ‘what’s 2008 for?’ message whilst there’s still at least a little bit of time left, that will be excellent.
As a city resident I’d like to see everything succeed so that proposed cultural ‘villages’, respected highly-skilled professional artists and performers, and our tourist trade all flourish ; but we’re still a way from achieving this.
A matter of urgency
The dialogue does need to be getting somewhere, and pretty quickly, please.
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
The cherry blossom in Liverpool’s Sefton Park has been very early this year; it has already offered much delight to those who stroll along the middle lakesides, the blossoms pink, cream, white and even cerise. But one tree is still in glorious full bloom as we reach May Day eve.
See also: Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Friends Of Sefton Park
Prague Old Town, Celetna Street
Controversy has arisen about how much of a contemporary style Prague’s Old Town (Stare Mesto) should have. Modern commercial pressures inevitably vie with the demands of centuries of architectural tradition. Brilliant sunshine here blends these features into a whole.
See also:
Camera And Calendar
Snowstorm And Magic In Prague At Night
Impressions Of Prague
Carbon-Neutral Villages, British And Czech Alike
SuperLambBanana
SuperLambBanana may be kinda cute, but, made of steel and concrete and 17 feet tall, he’s no lightweight. Created in 1998 by Taro Chienzo for the Art Transpennine Exhibition, he abides in Liverpool city centre, be/amusing all. He’s been Friesian (black and white), pink and sometime graffitied, but ‘really’ he’s yellow.
See more photographs of The City of Liverpool here: Photographs of Liverpool & Merseyside;
and photographs of elsewhere, here: Camera & Calendar
Click here for more information on Super Lamb Banana, alias ‘Superlambanana’.
Big Ships And Big Ambitions For Liverpool
There’s much emphasis in city centre regeneration on Liverpool’s waterfront. Plans for great ship visits are vital to the city’s resurgence; as are plans to improve the city’s road system. This photograph, taken today (7 February 2007) near St. Nicholas’ Church in the business and commercial district, gives a glimpse of what may be to come.
Carbon-Neutral Villages, British And Czech Alike
Self-sufficiency in energy is an ambition shared by many. Increasingly we are recognising that carbon-neutral living must be for real. Communities in Ashton Hayes, near Chester in the U.K., and Knezice, an hour east of Prague in the Czech Republic, provide different real-life examples of how this might be achieved.
Co-incidence or, perhaps, rather more than that? Perhaps the renewable energy agenda is at last becoming mainstream.
Liverpool Anglican Cathedral And St. James’ Cemetery And Gardens
The Cathedral Church of Christ, Liverpool, designed by the then-22-year-old (later Sir ) Giles Gilbert Scott’s, is built on St. James’ Mount at the southerly end of Hope Street Quarter. Bishop Francis James Chavasse, second Bishop of Liverpool, decided to build it in 1901 and King Edward VII laid the Foundation Stone on 19 July 1904. The Cathedral was consecrated twenty years to the day later, but not until October 1978 did Queen Elizabeth II attend a service to mark completion of the largest of our Cathedrals in Britain. And now the civic value of St James’ Cemetery and Gardens is also recognised.
See more photos of Liverpool’s Cathedrals and celebrating communities on Hope Street here [Liverpool’s Two Cathedrals] and below….
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Read more about:
Hope Street Quarter
Liverpool Cathedral
St. James’ Cemetery And Gardens
The Friends of St James’
Liverpool’s Two Cathedrals
Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993; Risen Christ was installed was installed one week before Frink’s death)
Tracey Emin (b.1963; Emin’s Cathedral work, Roman Standard – or ‘bird on a stick’ – was her first public art installation; she intends to do another one for the cathedral in 2008)
See also photgraphs at
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King and
Calendar & Camera .
Liverpool’s Ancient Chapel Of Toxteth, Dingle Gaumont Cinema, The Turner Nursing Home & Dingle Overhead Railway Station
One of Liverpool’s most significant and fascinating historic areas is barely known even by the city’s own residents; so Monday Women arranged a visit. The area lies in the heart of Toxteth – Dingle, comprising four adjacent sites: the early seventeenth century Ancient Chapel of Toxteth (the original place of worship of astronomer Jeremiah Horrox or Horrocks), the Turner Nursing Home built by Alfred Waterhouse in 1882-5, Dingle Overhead Railway Station, constructed deep underground and opened in 1896, and the Dingle Gaumont Cinema, erected on the site of the old Picturedrome in 1937.
The general perception is that Liverpool has few really serious historic sites. Interesting architecture, Yes, in abundance; ‘old’ buildings, No. On Saturday 16 November 2006 several dozen members, families and friends of Monday Women and CAMPAM set out on a beautifully sunny afternoon to discover why this perception is not always accurate.
The Ancient Chapel of Toxteth
We congregated first in the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth, opened especially for us by its warden, Annette Butler. She and local historian Christina Clarke (to both of whom we owe enormous thanks) had a remarkable tale to tell about the history of this simple and appealing building, constructed variously at times between 1604 and 1618. The Chapel is now owned, and used, by the Unitarians, but was built and developed by Puritan dissenters from the Church of England.
The site of the Chapel is that of the thirteenth century royal hunting Park in Toxteth, sold late in the sixteenth century to the Earl of Derby. He in turn sold it to Puritan families from around the Lancashire towns of Bolton and Ormskirk who were seeking more freedom of conscience in their religious practices, using a place which had been Crown property and was thus not subject to parish law or to enforcement of regular attendance at the parish church. [See: The History of the Royal and Ancient Park of Toxteth
Even with sunshine outside, the inside of the Chapel feels dark and close (perhaps in part because the winters of the seventeenth century were bitter), the pews being closely placed, but with an appealing and open gallery area above them, and an impressively large pulpit at the centre of the south wall. Over the centuries the building itself has been considerably extended, not least to adapt the previous schoolhouse (built in 1611) into the access point for the organ loft.
In contrast to the closeness of Toxteth Chapel itself, our visit to the graveyard found it calm and airy, with dappled light through the mature trees, as we examined the columned arcade and headstones of such local luminaries as Richard Vaughan Yates , who devised Princes Park, and the cartographer Richard Horwood [A to Z of Regency London
Jeremiah Horrox or Horrocks (1618 or 1619 – 1641)
Amongst other fascinating plaques inside the Chapel is one commemorating the brief life and momentous work of Jeremiah Horrox (as spelt on this plaque; or Horrocks as often spelt in the reference books). Horrocks was the youthful astronomer who first observed the transit of the planet Venus, on Sunday 4 December – 24 November by reference to the Julian Calendar then in use – 1639. (There is an anecdote, possibly apocryphal, that he calculated this rare occurrence and had to pre-empt much of the Curate’s duties he may have performed in Hoole, Lancashire, that day, in order to observe the transit via a telescope he constructed himself, reflecting the sun’s image onto a piece of card.) [Jeremiah Horrocks,Astonomer (1618? – 1641) and His Times: No.6 (Chorley Civic Society Occasional Papers)
Dingle’s Gaumont Cinema
Toxteth Chapel is on the north-western corner of Park Road (running parallel to the River Mersey) and Dingle Lane (which goes from Princes Park directly towards the river). On the south-western side of this junction is a cinema now unused for its original purpose, the Gaumont, designed by W. E. Trent FRIBA, FSI (Chief Architect of Gaumont-British) specifically to accommodate the large fan-shaped curve of the roads at this corner, and opened on 29 March 1937.
The Gaumont Cinema, an art deco building erected on the site of the old Dingle Picturedrome (photo in Edwardian A-Z and Directory of Liverpool and Bootle: South Liverpool Part 3
It is said that the projection room was the first in Britain to have the Gaumont ‘projectomatic’ system which automatically changed the reels during projection of films, as well as controlling the houselights and stage curtains. There was also a Western Electric Mirrorphonic sound system.
Sadly, the Gaumont lost its originally intended function in September 1966, to become a Top Rank Bingo Club which opened in January 1967. We were not therefore able to go into the building to see more as we passed on to the south-eastern corner of this ‘site visit’ and the next venue of our Monday Women trip in November.
The Turner Nursing (or Memorial) Home
The story behind the Turner Nursing Home is very sad, but the outcome is a testament to the positive thinking of Mrs Charles Turner, wife of the Liverpool Member of Parliament who was also first Chairman of the Liverpool Docks and Harbour Board – the tale of which Board we shall continue at the next and final stop of our Dingle-Toxteth ‘tour’. The entire Turner Memorial Home project commemorates Anne Turner’s husband Charles Turner MP (13 June 1803 – 15 October 1875) and their son Charles William (16 October 1845 – 13 September 1880), who died tragically.
In memory of her husband and son Mrs Turner commissioned the architect Alfred Whitehouse to build a strikingly asymmetric and strangely attractive ‘home’ for retired and ‘distressed’ gentlemen – a function which it still has. In the entrance lobby there is a lovely marble statue of the two male Turners, father and son, created for the opening of the Home in 1885 by the London-based sculptor Sir William Hamo Thorneycroft R.A. (1850 – 1925). This sculpture seemed to fascinate our younger companions on this visit, perhaps because it is actually so sympathetic and life-like.
The red ashlar, turreted Home has a chapel, almost church-sized, with an arcade of octagonal columns and stained glass windows (by Heaton, Butler and Bayne); and beyond the spacious communal living areas we saw wide lawns sweeping down towards the River Mersey. This is a gracious reminder of times gone by, still of great value to the community, which shows us just how elegant Dingle and Toxteth must have been a century or more ago.
Dingle Overhead Railway Station
Finally on this special afternoon, as the light drew in, we retraced our steps to Kedlestone Street, the road opposite the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth, and to what appeared to be a short side-alley leading to a mechanics’ garage. Few of us had any idea what would come next…. As we approached, the owner, Nigel, opened the doors and we were led down an alarmingly steep slope to another world – the world of the legendary Liverpool Overhead Railway designed by leading engineers of the time, Sir Douglas Fox and James Henry Greathead…. a return to the time of the ‘Dockers’ Umbrella’ and Liverpool’s great era of engineering and transport.
This was the site of Dingle Station, the final stop of the Overhead Railway route from Southport, Seaforth, Litherland and Aintree, via the city centre and the frantically busy docks, to the south end of the city. Interestingly, especially in the light of current-day debates elsewhere in Liverpool, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board had on a number of occasions from 1852 onwards had travel route proposals rejected or returned for modification in the light of the increasing demands for public transport to and from the city centre.
Eventually however, in 1888, a group of prominent businessmen formed the Liverpool Overheard Railway Company and obtained the powers of the Dock Board by an Act of Transfer. Work on the elevated railway therefore began in October 1889. [See: Seventeen Stations to Dingle: Liverpool Overhead Railway Remembered
Dingle Station opened for passengers on 21 December 1896 and closed to the public fifty years ago, on 30 December 1956. The station platform (a full 170 feet by 28 feet) has now been demolished, but the tunnel and entrance subway remain in use as a car repair business, Roscoe Engineering. There is also an astonishing extension to the station – a kilometer long passage from this point to an opening on the Herculaneum Dock ‘down by the river’, and thence to the docks via the factory site of the Herculaneum Pottery which, though the company closed in1840, must have triggered a lot of local industry.
Some of us, hugely curious, then made our wary unlit way down to the Herculaneum tunnel entrance and 
back, and others, less nimble, used the time to learn more from our host Nigel about the remaining features of the station (the red buffer 
hidden behind mechanics’ equipment; the sturdy hooks and notices…). And finally we returned to Park Road as the day ended, much enlighted by our visit and debating energetically how future generations would see the places we had visited – places which (as evidenced by the enormously ambitious commissions in Toxteth – Dingle a century or so ago, engaging the most prestigious architects, designers and engineers the nation had to offer) had in times past witnessed great wealth and opportunity and then, nearer to the present day, distressing poverty and huge challenges.
‘Which way now?’ was the question on everyone’s lips as we hit the road for home.
See also: History of Liverpool
Sudley House: Victorian Home Of A Mayor Of Liverpool
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book ‘E-store’…..
Dreaming Realist 