This is my last visit to the 1890s for a time. It was an important decade architecturally, starting with the completion of the University’s Victoria Building and the Royal Hospital (both by that master of red brick, Alfred Waterhouse) and ending with work commencing on the Royal Insurance Building and the Philharmonic Hotel. In between, Liverpool Overhead Railway, the White Star Building, the Palm House and Ullet Road Unitarian Church were completed – along with Kensington and Everton Libraries.

Impressively, only Liverpool Overhead Railway is no longer with us – a sad loss and preventable, as was the case of the Custom House. Along with the Sailors’ Home, these are Liverpool’s greatest post-War architectural losses. The Custom House was firebombed but its structure remained intact. There was a public campaign to save it – perhaps lacking the intensity of that to save the Overhead Railway, which was raised in Parliament – but after years of war, the Council’s intent to restructure the city won its way. Very sad looking at the photograph. Imagine had they all survived what an amazing collection of buildings Liverpool would have had with a bit of foresight.

A Francis Frith photograph of Albert Dock and the Custom House. The date is approximate but it is certainly pre-1878 because Lyster’s Albert Hydraulic Power Centre (or The Pumphouse as it is now known) has not been built.

Frith is the great pioneer of Liverpool photography – and he was active from the early 1850s. Annoyingly, although there are hundreds of his early photographs of other English towns and landmarks (in particular cathedrals, abbeys and churches), I have come across no photographs by him pre-1870. I still hold out hope that there are photographs in some collection – there are still many unexplored sources. If there are 1850 photographs, they would coincide with the completion of St George’s Hall, so I would expect it to be the most likely candidate (Frith and Company photographed it many times in later years). I would hope that the waterfront would feature but, in many ways, the view shown above would have looked quite similar to a photograph taken in the 1850s. I would not expect to find heavily peopled photographs, photographic plates were far too slow to capture movement and photographers generally settled for unpeopled landscapes and building shots.

Nevertheless, the 1870s photographs give a strong impression of an important seaport and underline the great loss to Liverpool’s architectural heritage when the Custom House was first firebombed and then unnecessarily demolished after the War.

Two photographs from the same collection taken in the 1870s. Frustratingly, I cannot identify the photographer although there is a barely visible blind stamp on one photograph. The presence of the blind stamp suggests a professional photographer – and there were a number in Liverpoolat that time making a living selling local views. There are 36 photographs in total – showing familiar and unfamiliar Liverpool landmarks but all taken from slightly unusual vantage points. The two of the Custom House are cases in point – for the focus seems to be the pump house to the Albert Dock (which of course survives). The bottom photograph gives a clear idea of the height line of the buildings along the dock road – with the prominent spire of St George’s Church standing high above surrounding warehouses. The rows of barrels along the quayside have markings – but nothing clear enough to identify their contents.

Are there any other collections out there from this period? I have a rare copy of Francis Frith’s album of a similar period but surely there are other collections of photographs pre-1875. I have stereo views and the odd individual image going back to the 1860s but I still think that there are images out there which will bridge the gap from c1850 to 1875 which will add significantly to our knowledge of how Liverpool looked at the height of its economic power. If anyone has knowledge of these rare images, I would be grateful for the information.

Pavement artist outside the Custom House, 1894 Newspaper sellers, James Street, 1894 I am fascinated by old photographs of Liverpool, particularly the candid street photography of the 1890s and early 1900s. This was a time when technology took a great leap forward: motor cars, airplanes, moving pictures to name but three. Photography was revolutionised by the impact of portable cameras using the newly introduced roll film which, coupled by the clever marketing of Kodak, allowed people without darkrooms to send their film to be processed at a relatively low cost. This democratisation of photography, comparable to the introduction of digital photography in recent years, meant that it was possible for those on modest incomes to indulge in a creative activity that had been previously restricted to the well-heeled. Street photography was a vogue that had spread throughout the burgeoning amateur photographic society movement. Competitions were held annually with awards for the best candid photograph. In Charles Frederick Inston, Liverpool has one of the great exponents and his work was recognised nationally. Today’s two images, however, belong to a different tradition – travel photography. They were taken by a Charles A Swift in 1894. I know nothing more about him except that these images were part of a much larger album of images taken in Liverpool and Chester, Dresden, Prague and other central European locations. I am guessing that Charles Swift was an American tourist on his own Grand Tour. Disembarking in Liverpool, he spent a few days travelling around the city and Chester before moving on to Germany. Like most tourists, his interest was centred around what he saw on the street: the pavement artist outside the Custom House and the newspaper girls in James Street (many of the European photographs are of a similar nature). Helpfully, he has captioned his photographs although both are easy to locate. The sign on the warehouse on the right reads Dodd and McNeilly, who were merchants at 4 Hanover Street. The newspaper girls look relatively well-dressed and are selling the Liverpool Mercury, which was later absorbed into the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo. Behind them is St George’s Crescent. I am still managing to acquire photographs of interest – thanks to that other great innovation, the internet. It is exciting to think that there are still undiscovered images out there that will add to our growing picture of Liverpool in the last 150+ years.

In the early nineteenth century, Liverpool adopted a number of place names from London. Soho Street and Islington being two obvious ones. I assume naming a church St Martin-in-the Fields is another nod to the capital city and, at the time of its consecration in 1829, it would have drawn respectful comparisons with its counterpart. Erected by the Government at an expense of ?20,000, it was designed by John Foster Jnr. who, along with his father John Foster Snr., was responsible for much of Liverpool’s Classical Revival. Between them, their list of buildings is astonishing, although some of their finest examples no longer survive, amongst them the Custom House, St John’s Market and St Catherine (Abercromby Square), St Martin’s Church is another lost building – like St Michael’s (Pitt Street) and St Luke’s (Berry Street) a victim of the 1941 May Blitz. It is a forgotten church and images of it are quite rare. My lantern slide is inscribed The Black Church, by which it was locally known Surrounded by Silvester Street (the church on the left is St Silvester), Vauxhall Road, Blenheim Street and Limekiln Lane, it occupied a large tract of land. My 1835 map of Liverpool shows it surrounded by newly laid out streets, with industry and housing rapidly encroaching. It was built of red sandstone but had turned black thanks to its proximity to local industry (although most Liverpool churches had similarly turned black – it was clearly a local landmark). It would appear that its congregation had largely deserted it by the early twentieth century. This is not too surprising, by the mid-1840s it was in the heart of Catholic Liverpool following the mass Irish immigration resulting from the Irish Famines. The church remained a shell until the early 1950s and was eventually cleared to make way for a children’s playground. St Martin’s Cottages (the first purpose-built council housing in Europe) were obviously named after then (and they suffered a similar ignominious fate, although at the hands of the Council, in 1977).

It is time to move on from the last post – the chocolate must be long past its sell-by date. Today’s image intrigues me. It was taken by J. Mayle, photographer of 28 Bold Street. The date is probably mid-1870s. Mayle lived in West Derby from 1864 to 1872, working as a photographic artist, before moving to Derby (Derbyshire). The firm continued in Liverpool under the name J.Mayle and Sons until at least 1908 – so the dating of the image might well be out by a few years. It is, however, the subject matter that is interesting. Of course, there is always a strong possibility that the interior is not in Liverpool at all. It has a grandeur that could only match it to a very limited number of buildings. The Town Hall and St George’s Hall are both ruled out (I know what they look like). The Custom House is a possibility but it was built in a strict Classical style to the design of John Foster, the Town Surveyor. James Picton, in his Memorials of Liverpool (a must read reference book – even if published in 1873), was unimpressed by the building, which he considered dark and dingy. The dome was supported internally on Ionic columns – which rules the Custom House out of consideration. This leaves only one secular building with a dome – the now demolished Exchange Newsroom. The Exchange Building (on Exchange Flags) was originally a fine Georgian building, which opened in 1808. After fifty years, it was decided to replace it with a more commodious building and in 1862 work started on its replacement, a Gothic building designed by TM Wyatt in a style described as Flemish Renaissance by Picton – who added that the Newsroom “is a noble apartment, free from all obstructions and well-suited for its purpose.” The new building opened in 1867 yet, like its predecessor, was to survive for little more than half a century with work starting on its replacement (the current Exchange Buildings) in the 1930s. The War stopped work temporarily and demolition and replacement was completed by the early 1950s. I have searched in vain for an interior photograph of the Newsroom. The date of its opening is close to the date of the photograph – so it would have been of interest as a symbol of the new Liverpool. Can anyone throw any light on this?

The Strand c1865



The Great Dry Dock, 1890 Liverpool 800, that fine book published to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Liverpool’s first charter, describes the area around the Custom House as Sailor Town. Maybe it is not a commonly used expression but it is entirely appropriate, for this small area was the centre of Liverpool’s shipping trade. Sadly, although remnants of The Strand survived into the mid-1970s, there is little left to excite the keen historian wishing to make sense of the Port’s history. Only the Baltic Fleet survives of the many public houses that would have been thronged with visiting sailors. Heap Mill is a rare warehouse survivor in an area in which the predominate building was the tall, filing cabinet structures that lined every street. The top photograph is an early view, with the Custom House’s impressive classical facade dominating the street. The position of the dome indicates what a huge building it was (although it apparently had a rather dingy and depressing interior). Its position is approximately where the Hilton Hotel now stands, facing the Albert Dock. The second view shows the facade of the Custom House from the Albert Dock. The repair of the old wooden ships must have been coming to an end. There are two ships in the dry dock, with a small gathering of bystanders unknowingly watching a dying trade in ship maintenance.

Amene Mir asked recently whether I had any photos of St Michael’s Church in Upper Pitt Street. I am happy to oblige with this view of c1920. Liverpool suffered serious losses to its architectural heritage during the last war. The Custom House was undoubtedly the single most important loss. The shell remained and it could have been rebuilt, but the City Fathers, in their wisdom, decided it had to go. The future of St Michael’s church on Pitt Street was less in doubt – it was comprehensively damaged in the May blitz of 1941 and finally demolished in 1946. Standing in a square between Kent Street, Upper Pitt Street, Cornwallis Street and Granville Street, it was one of the most elegant churches in Liverpool (and one of the last remaining Georgian churches in the city centre). Closely modelled on St Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square, building was commenced in 1816 and completed ten years later. It was replaced by a small, mediocre modern building, its size perhaps in keeping with the shrinking local population.

The whole area around Pitt Street up to Great George’s Square is a disappointment, a hotch-potch of apartment blocks, warehouses and, worst of all, the maisonettes on the east side of Great George’s Square, once reckoned to be the finest of Liverpool’s squares. The Baltic Triangle is showing great signs of improvement; hopefully the same spirit will cross over Park Lane in the near future.

Old Post Office Place 1913 Hale Street 1913 I have been asked many times which were the most important buildings that Liverpool has lost over its relatively short life (little more than 300 years since it began its transformation from small market town to a world city. Only the Bluecoat Chambers of 1717-25 and the Town Hall – which was substantially reconstructed in 1807 – remain of its eighteenth century key buildings). Of course there is quite a list of buildings: the early city centre churches, the Custom House and the Sailors’ Home among the most important losses. However, it is not the individual buildings that I think were the biggest casualties but the overall townscape, such as the network of streets around St John’s Market and Queen Square and the old ‘sailors’ town around Canning Place, Wapping and Mann Island. These areas represented the early, haphazard port of the mid-nineteenth century, a maze of small streets and alleys off the main streets, housing hundreds of small businesses of a multitude of trades.

Old Post Office Place was one of these ‘lost’ streets. Its starting point is still there – the Old Post Office pub on School Lane – but its existence was wiped out after wartime bombing levelled the area. The site was purchased by Littlewoods for its post-War site and Post Office Place was absorbed into the new Church Street. In the photograph, the building at the end of the street is Bon March? (later taken over by George Henry Lee – now John Lewis). The clock advertises Oldfields, diamond merchants and jewellers.

Hale Street is another street that has vanished under post-War development. It was a narrow alley connecting Dale Street with Tithebarn Street (it was between Moorfields and Vernon Street). Fortunately, other alleyways such as Hackins Hey, Hockenhall Alley and Eberle Street have survived and give character to the city’s commercial centre. The building at the top of Hale Street is Exchange Station but I do not know which factory the chimney belonged to.