111 Places in Liverpool that you shouldn't miss E-Book

Julian Treuherz

• Herausgeber: Emons Verlag
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Serie: 111 Places ...
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 246

Beschreibung

Liverpool's unique history as an international port and a cultural melting pot has given it a character all its own. The city has produced music that conquered the world and is home to more historic buildings than any other British metropolis outside London. It features two magnificant cathedrals and many world famous museums. But beyond it's renowned exterior, is a labryinth of places hidden and unknown. This deliciously offbeat guidebook will lead you to a different Liverpool: down tunnels, up skyscrapers, and into secret bars, speciality shops, and disused factories. You will see Balenciaga trainers and football trophies, rolling bridges and disappearing statues, Liver Birds and suitcases, extravagent cakes and cast-iron churchs. Explore Britain's first mosque. Wander a roof garden of wild flowers, where different species bloom each month of the year. Marvel at the world's most expensive book or largest brick building (27 million bricks!). Relax in a hip tea bar with over 50 varieties of tea (loose leaf, naturally); or visit a place where you can drink Dandelion and Burdock with your fish and chips. Think you know Liverpool? Think again! Whether you're a first-time tourist, a repeat visitor, or a longtime local, prepare to be charmed and surprised by 111 eccentric and unusual places you'd never expect to find in the city best known for football and the Fab Four. Liverpool ist einzigartig: Seine Geschichte, der internationale Hafen, die zahlreichen historischen Gebäude und die Musik, die von hier aus die Welt eroberte, geben der Stadt diesen ganz eigenen Charakter. Zwei prachtvolle Kathedralen und viele weltberühmte Museen runden das Bild ab. Aber hinter dieser Fassade gibt es ein Labyrinth von versteckten und unbekannten Orten. Dieses Buch führt Sie zu ihnen: unter die Stadt, auf einen Wolkenkratzer, in geheime Bars, in besondere Geschäfte und in stillgelegte Fabriken. Entdecken Sie rollende Brücken, hippe Tee-Bars und verschwundene Statuen.

Leseprobe

111 Places in Liverpool That You Must Not Miss

Peter de Figueiredo and Julian Treuherz

emons: Verlag

Imprint

© Emons Verlag GmbH // 2016 All rights reserved Text: Peter de Figueiredo and Julian Treuherz All photographs © Peter de Figueiredo except: Active Learning Laboratory, Holt’s Arcade, John Lewis Pedestrian Bridge, Mathew Street on Saturday Night, Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Port of Liverpool Building: © Patrick M. Higgins Photography; Angel Field: © Andy Thomson, BCA; Burne-Jones Windows: © Historic England; Chambré Hardman’s Kitchen: © Cavendish Press; Della Robbia Room: Philip Eastwood, © Williamson Museum and Art Gallery; Loophonium: © David Tomlinson; The Music Room: © Mark McNulty, courtesy of Liverpool Philharmonic; The Portrait Wall: © Helene Binet, courtesy Haworth Tompkins; Queensway Tunnel: © Stuart Rayner, courtesy of Merseytravel; Salammbo: © Mark McNulty, courtesy of National Museums Liverpool; Town Hall: © Liverpool City Council; Williamson Tunnels: © Chris Iles, Friends of Williamsons Tunnels; World Cultures Gallery: © National Museums Liverpool Design: Emons Verlag Maps based on data by Openstreetmap, © Openstreet Map-participants, ODbL ISBN 978-3-96041-030-0 eBook of the original print edition published by Emons Verlag

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Table of contents

Foreword

1_10 Rumford Place | Smuggling and espionage in the American Civil War

2_69A | Browse for curios in an Aladdin’s cave

3_A Case History | Heaps of luggage scattered on the pavement

4_Active Learning Laboratory | The colourful world of engineering

5_Adelphi Hotel | Where Roy Rogers’s Trigger took a bow

6_Alma de Cuba | From Latin Mass to Latin-American bar

7_Anfield | Tour the stadium, visit the museum, buy the kit

8_Angel Field | An inspiring symbolic garden

9_Another Place | The iron men on Crosby Beach

10_The Art School Restaurant | Raising the bar for Merseyside dining

11_Baltic Bakehouse | The quest for the perfect loaf

12_Baltic Triangle | Where Liverpool’s creatives work and play

13_Bascule Bridge | Seesaw in dockland

14_Berry and Rye | Secret speakeasy with classic cocktails

15_Bidston Hill | A windmill, an observatory, and a lighthouse

16_Birkenhead Park | Crossing the Alps in Birkenhead

17_Birkenhead Priory | Worship and warships

18_Black Pearl | Pirates at art

19_Bling Bling Building | A palace for Herbert, the King of Bling

20_Bluecoat Display Centre | Contemporary craft shop and exhibition space

21_The Bluecoat Garden | Yoko Ono is waiting for your wish

22_The Brink | Shampagne cocktail anyone?

23_Bucket Fountain | A 1960s kinetic sound sculpture with water

24_Burne-Jones Windows | A Pre-Raphaelite vision of paradise

25_The Calderstones | Megalithic rock art in a parkland setting

26_Camp and Furnace | Post-industrial party venue

27_Canning Street | The Georgian Quarter

28_Casbah Coffee Club | Where the Beatles played before they were the Beatles

29_Chambré Hardman’s Kitchen | For fans of fifties kitchenalia

30_Chavasse Park | The place to let your credit card cool down

31_Christopher Columbus Statue | The discoverer of America was the maker of Liverpool

32_Cow & Co Cafe | Coffee, waffles, music, magazines, and design

33_Cricket | Where the wives and girlfriends shop

34_Crowne Plaza Liverpool – John Lennon Airport | Liverpool in the golden age of flying

35_Dafna’s Cheesecake Factory | Like Grandmother used to bake

36_Dazzle Ferry | See the city from the river

37_Delifonseca Dockside | Shop and eat in a foodie's Aladdin’s cave

38_Della Robbia Room | Birkenhead shows its artistic side

39_Dream | The angel of the North West?

40_Duke’s Terrace | Liverpool’s sole surviving back-to-back terrace

41_Eleanor Rigby Statue | For “all the lonely people”

42_Eros the Second | See it better in Liverpool

43_Everton Tower | The lit-up lock-up

44_Festival Gardens | Japan-on-Merseyside

45_Florence Institute | Where Gerry Marsden learned to play the guitar

46_Fort Perch Rock | Maritime fort with a quirky museum collection

47_Fountain in Williamson Square | Watery words by a Liverpool poet

48_Freedom! Sculpture | Campaigning against slavery then and now

49_Granby Four Streets | Winner of the Turner Prize

50_Hilbre Island | Walk on water to a peaceful nature reserve

51_Holt’s Arcade | New York style

52_Hornby Library | A temple to the art of the book

53_Hoylake and West Kirby War Memorial | Monument with a view of the River Dee

54_John Lewis Pedestrian Bridge | An architectural twist

55_K6 Telephone Box | The smallest inside the largest

56_Kitty Wilkinson Statue | Her-story is made

57_Lark Lane | Shabby chic and first-rate food

58_Leaf | Teabags not allowed

59_Lime Street Rock Cutting | Outstanding feat of railway engineering

60_Liver Birds | Here, there, and everywhere

61_Liverpool One Bridewell | Eat and drink in a police cell

62_Liverpool Overhead Railway | The Dockers’ Umbrella

63_Liverpool Resurgent | Aka Dickie Lewis

64_Loophonium | A musical joke by a Liverpool wit

65_Lunya | Liverpool “meats” Catalonia

66_Maray | The world’s first falafel and cocktail restaurant

67_Mathew Street on Saturday Night | Where Liverpool comes out to play

68_Museum of Dentistry | Teeth, tiles, and Tate

69_The Music Room | New vibes at the Phil

70_National Wildflower Centre | A haven for bumblebees

71_The Nelson Monument | A hero for Liverpool traders

72_News from Nowhere | Bookshop run by the real Amazons

73_Old Dock | Where it all began

74_Old Hebrew Synagogue | A masterpiece of opulent Orientalism

75_Olwen’s Staircase | Art gallery with a unique attachment

76_Opera for Chinatown | The forgotten histories of the Liverpool Chinese

77_Outhouse | More than just a glass box

78_Panoramic 34 | Sky-high bar and restaurant

79_Penelope | It’s all unravelling

80_Peter Kavanagh’s | Charming pub with eccentric collection of curios

81_Philharmonic Dining Rooms | Liverpool’s artistic pub

82_Port of Liverpool Building | For those that do business in great waters

83_The Portrait Wall | The Everyman for everyone

84_The Pyramid | Monument to a forgotten railway engineer

85_Quaker Burial Ground | A secret garden transformed into an urban oasis

86_Queensway Tunnel | An engineering masterpiece in the Art Deco style

87_River Wall | Cyclopean stonework on a heroic scale

88_Rolling Stone | Six tons of marble that move with miraculous ease

89_Roman Standard | The budgie on a stick

90_Salammbo | Erotic or artistic?

91_Ship and Mitre | For serious beer drinkers

92_Sodality Chapel | A glimpse of heaven

93_Southport Pier | … but where’s the sea?

94_St George’s Plateau | Where people come to share their joy and grief

95_St James’s Gardens | A melancholy but dramatic cemetery-turned-garden

96_St Luke’s | The bombed-out church

97_St Michael’s in the Hamlet | An iron church in an iron village

98_Stanley Park | Liverpool’s forgotten green lung

99_Sudley House | An unexpected stash of Turners

100_Superlambanana | The new Liver Bird?

101_Thomas Parr’s House | Home of a slave trader

102_Tobacco Warehouse | Guess the number of bricks

103_Town Hall | At the heart of the city

104_U-boat Story | See inside a German submarine

105_Utility | Form follows function?

106_Western Approaches Command Centre | Secret World War I bunker

107_Whisky Business | For connoisseurs of the amber liquid

108_White Star Line Building | Head offices of the owners of the Titanic

109_Williamson Tunnels | The mole of Edge Hill

110_World Cultures Gallery | Rare artefacts from all over the world

111_Ye Cracke | Tiny pub frequented by John Lennon

Gallery

Maps

Foreword

Liverpool is a small city with a big history. Historic architecture, sporting events, museums and galleries, and the city’s world-famous musical and theatrical heritage have all contributed to its character, but it was the port that gave Liverpool its distinctive cosmopolitan outlook. The mixed population of natives and immigrants created a culture of verbal humour and creativity that singles Liverpool out from other British cities. Liverpool is not genteel or understated. When it is grand it is very grand, when it is poor it is very poor, and when it is original it is inimitable.

Liverpool’s recent history has been unhappy, its fabric hit by the blitz, its economy decimated by changes in global trade, and its people often ill served by local politicians. But it is a resilient city. In the 1990s it began to rediscover its pride; warehouse conversions and new apartment blocks encouraged city-centre living, and neglected historic buildings were restored. The year 2008 was the annus mirabilis, when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture, and the Liverpool One retail zone opened. Both attracted millions, locals and visitors alike, and stimulated a revival. Cruise liners began to return to the Pier Head. Boutique hotels, good restaurants, artisan bakeries, and coffee houses blossomed in previously down-at-heel areas such as Bold Street and RopeWalks. The city’s famous pub culture was supplemented by stylish cocktail bars, and a new creative quarter emerged in the still edgy Baltic Triangle. Even written-off areas such as Granby Street are fighting back.

All this has given us plenty of material to choose from. Our selection is personal, led by a shared taste for the quirky, which has taken us to some offbeat places; but it has also led us to neglected corners of classic Liverpool attractions such as the two cathedrals, the museums, the magnificent cultural quarter, and the peerless waterfront. We hope you have as much fun exploring this book as we have had writing it.

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1_10 Rumford Place

Smuggling and espionage in the American Civil War

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This pleasingly modest brick building was the headquarters of a covert operation during the American Civil War to support the Confederates in defiance of official British neutrality. The oldest part is the 1830s Georgian-style frontage in the second courtyard, the only surviving example of an early office building in central Liverpool. This was the address of Fraser, Trenholm and Co, the British arm of a shipping firm based in Charleston, South Carolina. When, in 1861, the Union began the blockade of the Confederate ports in the South, the company drastically changed direction. It became the unofficial European banker for the Confederates and began to break the blockade, running goods to the South and smuggling cotton out.

James Bulloch, a Confederate agent, arrived in Liverpool in 1861 and went to 10 Rumford Place with a shopping list that included pistols, warships, and 4,000 pairs of flannel drawers. The Confederacy had no fleet and no access to supplies because of the blockade. Through Bulloch, orders were placed with Merseyside shipyards for the Florida, built by Miller and Sons in Toxteth, and the Alabama, built by Laird in Birkenhead. Both were spirited out of Liverpool, and inflicted great damage on Union vessels, although, due to espionage carried out for the American consul in Liverpool, two ram ships built by Laird for the Confederates were seized by the British government.

Info

Address 10 Rumford Place, Liverpool L3 9DG | Public Transport 5-minute walk from James Street station | Tip Round the corner on Chapel Street is Liverpool Parish Church, dedicated to Our Lady and St Nicholas, patron saint of sailors. Known as the Seamen’s Church, it has a weathervane in the form of a ship.

Liverpool also had a curious role in the ending of the Civil War, usually said to have been on April 9, 1865, when the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Unionist general Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. The war actually ended in Liverpool seven months later. The Confederate ship Shenandoah had been at sea and unaware of Lee’s surrender. It sailed into Liverpool and it was in the Mersey on November 6 that the Confederate flag was lowered for the last time.

Nearby

Western Approaches Command Centre (0.062 mi)

The Nelson Monument (0.093 mi)

Town Hall (0.124 mi)

Holt’s Arcade (0.13 mi)

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2_69A

Browse for curios in an Aladdin’s cave

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The long, narrow interior feels like a slightly musty souk, piled high with bric-a-brac of all kinds – antiques, collectibles, Asian art, kitchenalia, vintage clothing, and good old junk, displayed on a jumble of shelves, ledges, and tables or in vitrines, interspersed with straggly houseplants and potted palms. There are extraordinary, fascinating, rare, and useless objects everywhere: clockwork toys, Soviet porcelain, a copy of Ken Dodd’s Diddymen Annual, a bit of famille rose, a Korean figurine, Murano glass, suitcases with old luggage labels, Art Deco scent bottles … As you progress further into the shop, past the racks of clothes and hats – including an unusually large collection of cream and beige corduroy jackets, towards the vinyl and books at the back, you regress into a dreamlike state, induced by the sound of ambient music and the faint smell of incense. While you browse, you’ll discover things you haven’t seen since your childhood – a pair of 1960s nylons, a chunky 1950s white telephone – or things you have never seen at all, such as a pair of lavender bags made to look like tiny ballet shoes.

As the owner Trevor explains, the shop was not planned, it just evolved. He started out selling 20th-century decorative art and vintage clothing in Birmingham in 1976, moved to Liverpool to a stall in the legendary Aunt Twacky’s Bazaar in Mathew Street, and in 1977, opened a shop in Renshaw Street. This is his third shop in the same street; the tall, narrow Arts and Crafts frontage was formerly Quiggins Marine and Architectural Ironmongers, who supplied the Titanic and the Liver Building. Although the address is No. 75, he brought the number 69A from his previous shop.

Info

Address 75 Renshaw Street, Liverpool, L1 2SJ, [phone], www.69aliverpool.co.uk | Public Transport 10-minute walk from Lime Street station; 8-minute walk from Central station | Hours Daily noon−6pm| Tip Meditation fans will love the Olive Tree (61 Renshaw Street), selling fair-trade products, yoga mats, singing bowls, reiki candles, incense, and essential oils.

A fixture at 69A is a fat ginger cat called Murdoch. He is usually to be found sleeping in the sun on a ledge near the door, but beware! He is liable to appear from nowhere and leap onto the counter just as you are trying to pay.

Nearby

Maray (0.043 mi)

Leaf (0.062 mi)

News from Nowhere (0.062 mi)

St Luke’s (0.099 mi)

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3_A Case History

Heaps of luggage scattered on the pavement

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Walk along Hope Street, and at the top of Mount Street, you will find an intriguing sculpture, punningly entitled A Case History. It was the result of a competition organised by the nearby Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts. The winner was John King, who had worked with the American architect James Wines on a similar piece at Salford Quays representing barrels, bales, oil drums, and machinery.

The original idea behind the suitcases sculpture was to evoke the arrivals and departures of the people who converged on Liverpool from all over Europe intending to emigrate to America – those who stayed as well as those who were merely passing through. When it was decided to place the work in Hope Street, it was made site specific. It includes a parcel from Penguin Books addressed to The Liverpool Poets (Adrian Henri lived in Mount Street), and another, marked Fragile, destined for the Hahnemann Hospital, the first homeopathic hospital in Britain; its building is still on Hope Street. A guitar case with a Concorde flight label to New York has Paul McCartney’s name on it; he supplied a real guitar case to be cast by the sculptor. McCartney attended the Liverpool Institute when it was a boys’ school. So did George Harrison and the comedian Arthur Askey, also name-checked on luggage labels.

Info

Address Hope Street, Liverpool L1 9BZ | Public Transport 10-minute walk from Central station; CityLink bus from Liverpool One bus station to Hope Street | Tip Nearby, with a colourful Superlambanana outside, is 60 Hope Street, one of Liverpool’s best restaurants.

The case labelled Uncle is for “Uncle” Kwok Fong, who worked with Asian seamen sailing from Liverpool. There is a suitcase for Josephine Butler, who worked with prostitutes at the workhouse on Brownlow Hill, and one for the activist Margaret Simey, who lived nearby. You will also find labels for John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe. Both went to the Liverpool College of Art, which used to be next door to the Institute. A Case History conjures up a whole world of fascinating people associated with the area. Perhaps in the future, today’s movers and shakers will receive similar recognition.

Nearby

Ye Cracke (0.05 mi)

Chambré Hardman’s Kitchen (0.106 mi)

The Music Room (0.118 mi)

Roman Standard (0.118 mi)

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4_Active Learning Laboratory

The colourful world of engineering

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Liverpool is famed for its townscape, with well-known landmarks like the Liver Building, Radio City Tower, and the two cathedrals. In 2009, the remodelling of the University of Liverpool’s engineering department created a futuristic addition to the city’s skyline. The centrepiece is the Active Learning Laboratory, a seven-storey glass box, which appears to hover in the night sky like something from another world, glowing in an endlessly changing sequence of colours. The building, designed by Sheppard Robson and Partners with Arup Lighting, cleverly wraps a new skin of fritted glass panels around the existing columns of a 1960s brutalist tower. The façades are made up of two layers of glass sandwiched together with a dotted pattern imprinted on the outer layer. The translucent dots provide a surface onto which light is reflected from hundreds of LEDs housed inside, creating the glow.

The lighting can be programmed to display simple numbers, letters, and geometric shapes as well as an infinite array of rotating colours and morphing designs and patterns. It has been used to celebrate significant events such as festivals and saints’ days; for example, the façades were illuminated in blue to mark World Diabetes Day, raising awareness of the disease and the university’s important research into its treatment and cure. For the Liverpool Biennial, artist Paul Rooney created a strange artwork called He Was Afraid, consisting of a sequence of international maritime signal flags forming words recalling the unsettling power of the past. At a more functional level, the new, 21st-century structure not only makes an iconic visual statement, but also exploits cutting-edge LED technology and electronic solar tracking equipment to reduce energy consumption and running costs.

Info

Address Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L69 3GJ, www.liv.ac.uk/engineering | Public Transport 12-minute walk from Lime Street station or Central station | Tip On the opposite side of Brownlow Hill is the Liverpool School of Art and Design, another of the city’s best contemporary buildings, which frequently holds public events and exhibitions (www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/events).

Nearby

Rolling Stone (0.075 mi)

Museum of Dentistry (0.13 mi)

The Portrait Wall (0.205 mi)

The Pyramid (0.255 mi)

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5_Adelphi Hotel

Where Roy Rogers’s Trigger took a bow

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When the Adelphi opened, in 1914, it was the most luxurious hotel outside London. The grand scale of the present building, larger than its two predecessors on the site, is a testament to Liverpool’s importance in early-20th-century transatlantic travel, when its customers were wealthy passengers en route by ship to America. The once elegant rooms have seen better days, but the ghosts of a more glamorous past hover around the public rooms on the ground floor, and in some of the bedrooms that have not been modernised. From the marble entrance hall, a set of steps makes a dramatic approach to the vast top-lit Central Court, which is lined with pink marble pilasters and tall archways opening onto restaurants on each side. Beyond this is the impressive Empire-style Hypostyle Hall.

The Adelphi shot to fame in 1997 with the excruciating reality TV docusoap, Hotel, which recorded the back-of-house antics of the unruly staff. It memorably featured an indoor barbecue that smoked out the banqueting hall, leading to acerbic verbal exchanges between the chef and the deputy manager, who coined the famous catch phrase “Just cook will yer.”

Info

Address Ranelagh Place, Liverpool L3 5UL, [phone], www.britanniahotels.com | Public Transport 5-minute walk from Lime Street station; 3-minute walk from Central station | Tip The Central Pub, opposite Central station at 31 Ranelagh Street, has an eye-catching interior lined with Victorian glasswork, mirrors, decorative plasterwork, and panelling.

Many famous guests have stayed at the hotel, including Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frank Sinatra, Laurel and Hardy, Judy Garland, and the Beatles. Bob Dylan can be seen waving to his fans from the balcony of his room at the Adelphi in the documentary Don’t Look Back. The most unusual guest was the cowboy Roy Rogers’s horse, Trigger, who visited his master’s bedroom on March 8, 1954. Rogers was in bed with the flu and felt too ill to greet his many fans who were gathered outside on Lime Street, so Trigger stood in, rearing up on his hind legs outside the front of the hotel. The celebrity quadruped then mounted the staircase and took a bow from a first-floor window, much to the delight of the onlookers.

Nearby

Liverpool Resurgent (0.031 mi)

Utility (0.155 mi)

Leaf (0.18 mi)

69A (0.186 mi)

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