John Johns, the first Minister to the Poor in Liverpool – the first minister of the Liverpool Domestic Mission – died more than half a century before Ullet Road Church was built. Yet his memorial can be found there. In fact it is one of many memorials. When Ullet Road Church was built in 1899, purpose-built cloisters were added to house the many memorials which had covered the walls of their former Chapel on Renshaw Street.
Renshaw Street Chapel, Liverpool
But John John’s memorial wasn’t added with those from Renshaw Street. His memorial originally was placed in the Domestic Mission, and it was only after it was demolished in the 1970s that it was it removed to Ullet Road and kept in store for some years before being fixed in one of the entrances to the church.
Portrait of John Johns aged 18, held in Ullet Road Church and taken from ‘Liverpool Unitarians’
Using some of the memorials, including that of the Rev John Hamilton Thom, one of the founders of the Domestic Mission, this video tells the story of John Johns and his work as the first ‘minister to the poor’: ‘a medium of kind and Christian connection’, as Joseph Tuckerman put it. In this case a connection between the wealthy congregation of Renshaw Street/Ullet Road and the growing numbers of poor living in the same city.
Click on the video below to see the story of Rev John Johns, first minister to the poor in Liverpool:
Rev John Johns (1801-1847). First minister to the poor in Liverpool
This memorial near Liverpool’s Pier Head is dedicated in honour of the Heroes of the Marine Engine Room. It is often referred to as the ‘Titanic Memorial’ because the original intention was to commemorate those lost in that disaster. The RMS Titanic was registered in Liverpool and the headquarters of the White Star Line was not far from the Pier Head, indeed the building is still there to this day. Although the Titanic didn’t visit Liverpool there were many local connections with the ship and there are a number of Titanic memorials in the city to this day.
But the original idea of the memorial was to commemorate the 244 engine room staff who remained at their post after the ship struck the iceberg on 15th April 1912 keeping the ship’s systems running as long as possible to help people escape as the ship sank.
However, by the time it came to be erected, two other major naval disasters needed to be commemorated. The first was the sinking of the Empress of Ireland which was another Liverpool-registered ship which had regularly made the crossing from Liverpool to Quebec between 1906 and 1914. On 29th May 1914 it sank after a collision in the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River with the loss of 1,012 lives. The next year, during the First World War, another ship with very close Liverpool connections was sunk by a German U-boat on 7th May 1915. This was the Lusitania which was sunk about 11 miles off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,201 lives. It was a brutal attack on a passenger ship which also included a number of American citizens at a time when the United States had not yet entered the war.
The Memorial to Heroes of the Marine Engine Room in front of the Liver Building
So when the memorial was unveiled in May 1916 it was dedicated to ‘All Heroes of the Marine Engine Room’. It was designed by Sir William Goscombe John and is seen as one of the first memorials to commemorate the heroism of working men who are depicted on the memorial. As Terry Cavanagh puts it in his Public Sculpture of Liverpool it is ‘a rare example in Liverpool of the commemoration not of a single, high-ranking individual but of the “ordinary” workers of the city’.
The west face of the memorial: Two engineers, one holds a stoking-hatch lever and the other a spannerFigures on the east face: Two stokers, one holding a cloth, the other a shovel. The four figures above, on the corners, represent the elements and, at the very top, four female figures represent the sea
Something like £4,000 was raised from donations around the world before August 1912 to build the memorial. When it was finally unveiled on 9th May 1916 it was done with very little ceremony although it still attracted large crowds, many of them mourners of people who were lost on the Titanic and the Lusitania, although by then the intention was to honour all maritime engine room fatalities incurred during the performance of duty.
Memorial to the Missing of the Naval Auxiliary Personnel of the Second World War
Many more memorials have been added to the Pier Head since the Second World War including the Merchant Navy War Memorial (Memorial to the Missing of the Naval Auxiliary Personnel of the Second World War), the Merchant Navy Memorial dedicated to the men and women who gave their lives in both World Wars and have no other grave than the sea, and an area with a succession of memorials of sailors of different nationalities who served in the Second World War including Belgian, Dutch, Chinese, Norwegian, and Polish merchant seamen and other servicemen and women. In addition there are plaques remembering the sinking of the SS Arandora Star, torpedoed off the coast of Donegal in 1940 with the loss of over 800 people, mainly non-combatants; HMT Lancastria which was sunk while evacuating servicemen at St Nazaire on 17th June 1940 with the loss of about 6,000 people (said to be the worst disaster in British maritime history); and a memorial to the ships that repatriated 20,000 people held in captivity in the Far East up to the end of the Second World War.
Merchant Navy MemorialIn memory of members of the Polish Navy and Polish Merchant Fleet
Video: The Royal Liver Building clock strikes 4 o’clock
The solid and imposing structure of Canning Street Presbyterian Church was a feature of that corner of Canning Street and Bedford Street for about 120 years.
I’ve mentioned this church before and used its image as it appears in an aerial view of Liverpool painted from a hot air balloon by John R. Isaac in 1859 and published in New York. (This can be viewed on the Library of Congress site. You can also read the original post by clicking on this link – Seven Churches in Liverpool in 1859 viewed from the air). Below Canning Street Presbyterian Church can be seen in the centre of this section of the picture:
Detail from Liverpool, 1859, part of Birkenhead, the docks, and Cheshire coast Library of Congress
In fact of the seven churches mentioned in that post I have blogged about most of them at one time or another (Hope Street Unitarian Church, the Catholic Apostolic Church and Myrtle Street Baptist Church can all also be seen in this image) but recently I acquired a press photograph of Canning Street Presbyterian Church taken in 1931:
The picture is a bit dark but it shows the edifice built in 1846 and finally demolished in the 1960s. It was built by a denomination of exiled Scots, members of the Free Church of Scotland, which became the Presbyterian Church in England. Later this body united with the United Presbyterian Church (at a ceremony in Liverpool in 1876) to form the Presbyterian Church of England. In 1896 the minister, the Rev Simeon Ross Macphail observed that fifty years previously increasing numbers of Scottish emigrants to Liverpool were not inclined to join the local churches which called themselves Presbyterian but were by then Unitarian in theology. This would be true by the 1840s, although it was not the case a couple of generations before when Scots newly arrived in the city, perhaps influenced by the theological moderatism of the Church of Scotland, were often happy to make common cause with the dissenters.
Canning Street, in its prime location in the wealthiest part of the city flourished for decades until it followed the trend to move out of the by then less fashionable Georgian area of the city to the suburbs. In 1931 they sold up and built a new church in Allerton (now Allerton United Reformed Church). It was at this point that this photo was taken as it was sold to the German Church in Liverpool who moved their location from the very centre of town to Canning Street.
A German-speaking Lutheran congregation had existed in Liverpool since at least 1846. Meeting in various places over the years they had sufficient capital in 1871 to purchase what had been known as Newington Chapel. This had been founded originally as a break away from the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth. Unhappy with the appointment of an Arian (or Unitarian) minister in 1775, a group of Congregationalists built their own chapel on Renshaw Street. From 1811, with the appointment of Rev Thomas Spencer, this congregation grew rapidly and built Great George Street Chapel as a suitable base for his oratorical powers. Unfortunately, Thomas Spencer never took up his place in Great George Street Chapel, when he drowned in a swimming accident in the Mersey, but the congregation moved nevertheless and continued to flourish under the leadership of Rev Dr Thomas Raffles. In the best tradition of non-conformist awkwardness a small minority of the congregation refused to move and stayed in Newington Chapel, stayed, in fact, until 1871 when the German Evangelical/Lutheran Church was able to buy the meeting-house from them.
This congregation remained here until 1931 when the Cheshire Lines Railway Company purchased the site from them for £14,000. That was a good price and more than enough to buy Canning Street Church for just £4,000 in that year, the building being formally opened for Lutheran worship on 25th October 1931.
The site of the church today
Canning Street Church– Deutsche Kirche Liverpool
The German congregation has worshipped on that site ever since but in the 1960s they demolished the old church and replaced it with a rather plain building which doesn’t really catch the eye.
A view of the corner of Canning Street and Bedford Street today. The German Church is opposite the viewer, the site of the one-time Catholic Apostolic Church can be seen on the far left.
No pictures or text may be reproduced from this site without the express permission of the author.
I was back on Lime Street about ten or eleven days after the previous post (Digging up History on Lime Street). Lime Street is most notable for a number of things: the railway station that bears its name and, of course, St George’s Hall.
A pensive and solitary Benjamin Disraeli emerges from the classical splendour of St George’s Hall
But as I went past the road works I noticed that all the setts/cobbles had been removed as well as the old tram lines. I also noticed that a very deep hole had been dug in the road.
Stopping to take a picture a voice from behind me asked ‘Are you in the habit of taking pictures of large holes in the road?’ It was one of the work men who seemed pleased that someone was photographing their handiwork. He and his colleague explained that all the setts had been taken away to be re-used by the Council and that the tramlines had been taken away for scrap. They were widening the pavement, adding a cycle lane and – inevitably – narrowing the road. The hole, apparently, was to allow the planting of trees which would form a barrier between the cycle lane and the road.
Further up the road, in front of Lime Street Station, they have already planted trees and I suppose these will be something similar:
There are a lot of road works going on and safer and well-landscaped roads can only be an improvement but I can’t help wondering what they expect to happen to the current volume of traffic. In the meantime the streets are busy with diggers, barriers and cordons:
St George’s HallLooking along Lime Street towards St George’s Hall
Detail of St George’s Hall, by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes
They are digging up the streets of Liverpool city centre all over the place at the moment. This is very much the case on Lime Street where they seem to be widening the pavement at one point and presumably planning to lay a new road surface.
Lime Street is a key thoroughfare in the city’s history. It has undergone some ‘development’ in recent years most notably with the controversial demolition of the old Futurist Cinema which I photographed when efforts were being made to save it. I never posted those pictures at the time although I might do in the future. The Futurist dated back to 1912 and deserved to be preserved. Over the road is the art deco frontage of the former ABC Cinema which is in some sort of limbo but also deserves preservation. I have some interesting historic photographs of Lime Street in times gone by which I might post up at some point. But walking along Lime Street now you are coralled behind a large fence, beyond which a digger is removing the old setts which can be seen in part of the road.
The orignal road surface revealed
It is interesting to see what once constituted the road surface in Lime Street. The digger is scooping up the setts, noisily shaking them about to remove all the excess debris, and then piling them high at the side of the road.
Digging up the setts
Setts piled up
But the other thing this work seems to be exposing is some of the old tramlines on Lime Street. Disused for seventy years and probably unseen for almost as long the tramlines have been uncovered by the digging.
Some of the tramlinse
Further tramlines opposite the ABC Cinema
What will happen to the old tramlines? Presumably the old setts are going to be sold off or possibly reused somewhere by the Council. I don’t know what you do with old tramlines, but it is interesting to see them, and interesting to reflect on what lies below the surface of our streets.
Driving through the maze of roadworks in Liverpool my eye caught this ‘ghost sign’ on the end of a building in Berry Street. It was revealed when the building next door was demolished last year. It’s an intriguing glimpse into the past.
It’s interesting because, although it is quite clear, it isn’t complete either and is not all that simple to date. Outdoor what? Prices? It’s hard to make out. Are these prices for single bottles of pints or half-pints or are they for bulk purchases? Certainly it is a brewery sign, but because the whole sign is not legible it is hard to tell what exactly is being offered. Over 2 shillings for a pint of beer seems very high for the 1960s, which really is the latest this could date from.
The fact that it mentions the beer (if it is beer) is ‘supplied in screw stoppered bottles’ suggests a much earlier date than the 1960s. Who in the 1960s made an advertising feature of ‘screw stoppered bottles’? In fact this detail suggests a much older date for the sign. Screw stoppered bottles were invented in 1872 by Henry Barrett and used for over 100 years. Made of ‘vulcanite’, or vulcanised rubber, they must have made the portability of beers and other liquids remarkably simple. Nicola White, who has made a lot of interesting videos about her mudlarking on the Thames, has found many examples of these type of bottle tops and has written a very interesting article about them here.
The surviving artwork makes the advertisement look quite old. The gold frame that surrounds the message suggests, to me at least, an early date, pre-First World War possibly. In this case the prices must be for bulk purchases. It is a pity the top of the advertiement is missing, but a fascinating piece of history nonetheless.
The view along the road
The picture is taken on the corner of Roscoe Lane. Peeping above what was once the pub/hotel which bears the sign is the top of Liverpool Cathedral. On the right you can see what was once Great George Street Chapel, you can read more about that building on this blog here.
This Sunday’s service was filmed on location in Liverpool. It is a praise service, intended also to show our appreciation of all those who contribute music to our services during the lockdown. In the video we visit Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, the site of the Hope Street Unitarian Church – which are all located on Hope Street – and travel out to the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth, originally built in 1618.
The reading is Psalm 98 and is read by Rosemary Neill of Downpatrick. The organists are: Laura Patterson, Downpatrick; John Strain, Ballee; and Alfie McClelland, Clough.
The hymns sung are:
Onward Christian Soldiers (Mission Praise, 543)
Father Hear the Prayer we Offer (Hymns of Faith and Freedom, 299)
And can it be (Mission Praise, 33)
City of God, how broad and far (Hymns of Faith and Freedom, 299)
Breathe on me, breath of God (Hymns of Faith and Freedom, 177)
All the places visited in the video have been mentioned one way or another on this blog and the following links will give more information about them:
Also uploaded this week – Time for a Story: The Promise
The story of St Dunstan, 10th-century Abbot of Glastonbury (the ruins of which Abbey can be seen above), Archbishop of Canterbury and the person who devised the Coronation Service still used by British monarchs today. Filmed at Downpatrick with pictures from the British Museum and animation by InkLightning.
Special Offer from Dunmurry – Rev Mac Floral Designs
A Celtic Way was printed in 2007, by Very Rev William McMillan. The 96 page hard back book contains a wide range of colour images of Rev Mac’s floral arrangements, garden and travels.
Dunmurry congregation have copies of this book to give away. If you would like one, please email: firstdunmurrynsp@gmail.com
Copies can be collected from The Manse, Dunmurry by prior arrangement. If you would like a copy posted, please request bank transfer details. P&P is £4 (UK only).
I bought this black and white print of a view of Paradise Street dated 17 April 1973 for a small amount on eBay recently. I was interested in seeing it because Paradise Street as it was before the building of the Liverpool 1 shopping development has been so completely obliterated. It is today forgotten and it takes some effort to recall it to mind. Not that Paradise Street in the 1970s deserves to loom large in anyone’s memory, even at the time it had the feeling of something like a backlot to the city centre, a place where there was nothing much to see, a place that existed as an adjunct to the streets and places that mattered.
A lot of it was car parks and this picture clearly shows the new multi-story car park which was then just being completed in 1973. A brutal and functional building, it wasn’t very pleasant although it was handy enough. Its contemporary neighbour the Holiday Inn, seen on the left of the photograph, was little better to look at. But the multi-story wasn’t the only car park on Paradise Street. On the opposite side of the road, not visible in the picture, was a street-level car park complete with parking meters. I can’t be the only person straining to remember this entirely forgettable piece of streetscape because another photograph of Paradise Street featuring the corner of the street-level car park sold just after this one on eBay for about £5. But that car park must have been somewhere near the site of the Paradise Street chapel of 1791.
Paradise Street, Chapel
I have written before about this chapel which had an unusual history and ended up as a music hall. To some extent it enshrined the fortunes of this city centre street – from a well to do residential neighbourhood with its fashionable chapel and the home of the first US consul, to a seedy street with a licentious and dangerous reputation. Later still it became a commercial area (and the old chapel a warehouse) and later still Nazi bombs in 1941 finished off what was left and prepared the ground for the 1970s car parks and cheap hotels.
Click on the above image to read about the history of Paradise Street Chapel/Royal Colosseum
So let’s compare then and now views of Paradise Street.
Paradise Street April 1973
Paradise Street February 2020
The only buildings which remain are at opposite ends of the road. On the right in the 1973 picture is a red-brick building and the Eagle pub. The red-brick building is still there and is today a tapas bar, but you can’t take a picture from the same spot because there is so much furniture outside. Just visible next door is what was the Eagle pub, originally the US Consul’s house and which still carries an American eagle above the front door. Everything else has been redeveloped except for the post-war building at the far end of the street behind which the tower of the Municipal Buildings on Dale Street can still be seen. This was for many years Horne Brothers, the gentleman’s outfitters. In my youth I had to be a customer there because they had a monopoly on the provision of uniforms for my school. An at least annual visit there was inevitable. But I had another connection with Horne Brothers in that I was sent to the barbers shop in the basement to get my hair cut. This was done by Mr Cannon, one of the team of barbers who worked in the gloom of the basement. You had to make an appointment and my appointment was always with him. Unknown to me then it was Mr Cannon who first cut the hair of the Beatles. In volume one of Mark Lewisohn’s excellent book All These Years he tells how when Brian Epstein took over their management he sent them to Mr Cannon to get their first Beatles hair cut. Had I known anything of this back in the 1970s I would have asked him about it, but such things were of little general interest in the 70s. But although the building is still there Horne Bros has long gone, it was turned into a McDonalds years ago.
No pictures or text may be reproduced from this site without the express permission of the author.
‘Then and now’ pictures can be interesting and informative. Standing outside the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth on 4 August 2019 I thought I would try and get a shot of the building from approximately the same position as the print that I have of the same view dating from about one hundred and fifteen years previously.
You can read about this photograph from between 1901 and 1904 and see some details from it here.
Whenever I take pictures of buildings I spend a lot of time trying to keep cars, buses, people, street furniture etc. out of shot. But, of course, for the historian it is the other details that often make the photograph useful and interesting. I picked this spot for the picture without referring to the old print and was half inclined to try and get a nice big Arriva bus coming up Park Road at the same time but there was a limit to how long I wanted to stand in the road! It’s a busy place and I suspect modern buses travel faster than old trams. So no buses in the picture but still a view that enables us to compare ‘then’ with ‘now’.
The picture at the top of the page is the wildflower meadow at St Agnes Field on the edge of Sefton Park.
Having written about the tram travelling up Park Road and past the Ancient Chapel recently (click here to view that post) I recently acquired this modern print of a photograph dating from about the same period of a tram taken on Croxteth Road.
For me it is very easy to identify this as being taken on Croxteth Road just at the junction with Brompton Avenue. Just out of shot on the right was Sefton Park Presbyterian Church, then still the church of John Watson, otherwise known as best selling author Ian Maclaren. This tram stop was, according to a number of accounts, identified by the conductor to passengers as “Dr Watson’s Church”. I have written about this Church before here.
It must have been an important junction, the trams seem to have made relatively long stops there, they certainly appear on postcards of Sefton Park Church, the crew happily posing for the photographer, so they must have had reason to hang around.
Detail of a postcard view of Sefton Park Church, showing a tram waiting in the same spot
There are also clearly extra crew members included here in the photograph, with an inspector stepping on to the tram. Was this, perhaps, a place where crews changed over? On the top deck you can see the seats that could be pushed to face the other way when the tram got to the end of the line.
And to the right of the tram stand an elegant Edwardian couple.
velvethummingbee 