Liverpool in the Pouring Rain Liverpool in the Pouring Rain

Liverpool in the Pouring Rain A Pilgrimage with my Pevsner On the corner is a banker with a motorcar The little children laugh at him behind his back And the banker never wears a mac In the pouring rain... - Very strange - Paul McCartney Something of a trite tripper I had hoped for brilliant photogenic sunshine when I booked my cheap rail return. What I got when the 25 th September 2012 dawned was torrential rain, with a taunting tease of peeping sunshine when I boarded the train at Bloxwich. As the train from Stafford passed the Sow and the other Staffordshire rivulets on its way North I noticed that those streams were bankfull. By the time we reached Crewe the rain was teeming down and as we passed over the Weaver and the other rivers of the Cheshire Plain I could see that they were within a foot of spillage. At Lime Street the rain was so heavy that I had reluctantly to pull on my rain trousers, though with my boots and my Goretex jacket they afforded a cosy armor that gave me an impunity that few other city walkers knew. With my fortifications completed by my newly Fabsiled backpack I felt the careless confidence of some vole who might, if flood obliged, retire to snug security, immune to all elements until the storm had passed. The central streets were nearly vacant and almost ghostly, their eerie calm if anything accentuated by the little coteries of smokers who cowered sheepishly in the doorways of the mighty office buildings, or the few or two buses and taxis that emphasised the urban desert rather than civic amenity. Liverpool is a city of splendor and suggestion in which each new turn discovers an imposing prospect of aesthetic arrangement. In this and some other regards it may be England’s only truly metropolitan settlement, if we except London. Both cities have been dreadfully damaged by war and by recessions of trade, but much remains to please the antiquarian and the unprejudiced stroller. The current population of the contiguous built-up area ( not all of which is politically Liverpool ) is about two million. Some areas of waste remain in a city whose population has halved since 1931, though the most shocking examples of dereliction have now happily revived. Liverpool is currently, in an economic sense, the fastest growing settlement in the British Isles, though of course this is against a background of a major European recession, and starting from a very depressed base. In the worst of the Thatcher years, 52% of Liverpool’s working-age males were unemployed. The port complex is mostly abandoned, though in a strictly areal sense it probably remains the largest dock complex in the World, and ironically The Seaforth Dock in its far North handled more tonnage last year than Liverpool ever handled in its heyday. Notwithstanding that, Liverpool dock employment is now 800 rather than 20,000 and manufacturing has evaporated. Liverpool is like no other British city. Those familiar with Ireland, and in particular Dublin, will recognise with pleasant recollection the many demotic street bronzes, the Georgian terraces, the over-stated neo-classicism, the ubiquitous churches ( once more numerous ), and of course the soft culture of music, of drink, of courtesy and the maritime. LIVRRAINcForNet.doc Page 1 of 24 18:48 Tuesday, 19 March 2019 Liverpool in the Pouring Rain James R Warren By the time I reached the aptly named Water Street, center of Liverpool’s commercial pomp and power, the Royal Liver Building was lost in a fog of rain beyond the sodden sandstone of The Old Town Hall. The Old Town Hall dates from 1749 and is by John Wood of Bath. Opened in 1754 it initially functioned as a commercial exchange, as did the open-air Exchange Flags immediately North of the edifice at some point in history. The building has a sumptuous eighteenth-century interior including elements by Wyatt. Wyatt’s dome was added in 1802. The Exchange Flags now accommodate the Nelson Monument. The Old Town Hall stands at the crossing of four of medieval Liverpool’s seven streets: Dale, Jugglers’ ( now Castle ), Water and Moor. In contrast, The Royal Liver Building, insurance offices, is a steel- framed reinforced concrete structure of 1908-11 by Walter Aubrey Thomas, and is clad in granite. The towers are three hundred feet high and for many decades this made the Royal Liver Building the tallest habitable structure in the British Isles. The clock faces are the largest in the World. The towers are surmounted by bronze Liver Birds, the heraldic symbols of The City of Liverpool, fantastic creatures with seaweed in their beaks, who are said to represent the cormorants who inhabited the liver ( i.e. muddy ) pool or tidal inlet, friends and tutelary competitors to the poor fishermen who first settled this bleak and chill place. Liverpool Old Town Hall looking down Water Street to a distant Royal Liver Building LIVRRAINcForNet.doc Page 2 of 24 18:48 Tuesday, 19 March 2019 Liverpool in the Pouring Rain James R Warren The Damp Dejection of Defeat at Sea The Nelson Monument is a bronze group set on white ashlar. It is by Wyatt and Westmacot and dates from 1813. Four vanquished foes: St Vincent, Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar, sit enchained atop the granite plinth, their nudity spared according to the Rites of War by drapes upon their laps. The surmounting tableau reifies the apotheosis of the Hero of Trafalgar as a naked demigod stepping upon a de- carriaged cannon to grasp the hand of Νίκη , as Death discards his cloak, an enemy flag, to grasp the hero’s heart. The iconography of the Monument is extremely complex and I am not the man to unravel it, but the sword upraised in Nelson’s left and remaining arm may be impaling Napoleon I’s personal monarchies of The French Empire, The Kingdom of Italy ( basically Veneto and Romagna ), The Protectorship of the Confederacy of the Rhine, and The Grand Duchy of Frankfurt: Other interpretations are obviously possible. LIVRRAINcForNet.doc Page 3 of 24 18:48 Tuesday, 19 March 2019 Liverpool in the Pouring Rain James R Warren The Victorious Group of The Nelson Monument The ensemble’s bronze bas-reliefs upon martial themes are not shown here. The monument was funded by public subscription to which the powerful Liverpool merchant and anti-slavery campaigner William Roscoe was a major contributor. Whilst the slave trade had been abolished by the time subscriptions were canvassed in 1807, slavery continued in the Empire, and there is speculation that the four chained men may have been added to remind the public of the evils of bondage. The group was laser cleaned for the Trafalgar Bicentenary in 2005. There are several other important sculptures on Exchange Flags. A conspicuous feature of Liverpool, especially the eighteenth and nineteenth century layouts, is the number of streets and monuments that honor naval heroes and their victories, to which local merchant princes play a secondary and supporting role. For example, the most elegant street in the town was Rodney Street, LIVRRAINcForNet.doc Page 4 of 24 18:48 Tuesday, 19 March 2019 Liverpool in the Pouring Rain James R Warren but Roscoe Street was only its mews, whilst on sunlit uplands Gambier Terrace overlooked the sea. Gambier Terrace is now eclipsed by the Anglican Cathedral, the largest Protestant church in the World, and itself paid for by the Vestey family. William Hope, an otherwise forgotten maritime merchant, had his house on the site of the Philharmonic Hall, in the street that now bears his name. The fact that the Protestant and Catholic Cathedrals were subsequently built at opposite ends of Hope Street is an irony not lost on the cheeky Liverpudlians, whose own sectarianism thankfully withered when Ireland became independent between The Wars. Both the English and the Roman churches had hoped to out-do each other by building the largest fanes on Earth at their respective ends, but cash constraints made them have to be content with smaller, though nevertheless megalomaniacal, structures. The merchants were not ignorant of to whom their wealth was due: In fact they were not ignorant at all, as their generous bequests to galleries and institutes of learning attest. A little further down Water Street, at Number 14, is the remarkable Oriel Chambers Building of 1864. It has a cast-iron frame and expanses of plate glass. The architect was Peter Ellis. The floors are supported by shallow brick arches, that enhance the fireproofing qualities of the construction and echo the design of Bage’s revolutionary flax mill at Ditherington ( 1797 ). The oriels accommodated desks that received light from the top and side as well as the front. The Oriel Chambers Building is some years younger than a number of Glaswegian cast-iron framed commercial buildings, the most comparable of which may be Gardner’s Warehouse, a furniture showroom ( now a bar ) in Jamaica Street. ( 1856 by John Baird ). The Oriel Chambers Building LIVRRAINcForNet.doc Page 5 of 24 18:48 Tuesday, 19 March 2019 Liverpool in the Pouring Rain James R Warren All of these ferrous-framed structures are direct ancestors of the mild- steel framed skyscrapers. Beyond Water Street, and even more Appropriate LIVRRAINcForNet.doc Page 6 of 24 18:48 Tuesday, 19 March 2019 Liverpool in the Pouring Rain James R Warren Tower Buildings and Our Lady and St Nicholas beyond the modern boulevard New Quay The Tower Buildings are at the bottom of Water Street. Also by Walter Aubrey Thomas they were completed in 1910.

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