Liverpool Architecture and Cityscapes

Few cities which can boast an antiquity at all comparable with that of Liverpool have so ruthlessly obliterated all the visible memorials of their past. Though it is seven hundred years since the borough was founded, it contams no building of any importance which is two hundred and fifty years old and only two (St. Peter's Church and the old Bluecoat School, both apparently doomed to destruction) which carry us back as far as two hundred years. Scores of towns and villages of less antiquity and dignity than Liverpool can at least show a church dating back to the fourteenth century or earlier. But Liverpool has demolished its ancient churches, and rebuilt them in modern style: the church of Walton, which was mentioned in Domesday Book, and is the mother-church of all this district, was rebuilt in instalments during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the ancient Liverpool chapel of St. Nicholas, which had been the centre of the life of the borough ever since its erection in the middle of the fourteenth century, was demolished and rebuilt by our unsentimental ancestors during the same period; the still more ancient little chapel of St. Mary of the Quay vanished altogether. — Muir Ramsay, Bygone Liverpool (1913).

Located at the tidal mouth of the river Mersey where it meets the Irish Sea, the maritime mercantile City of Liverpool played an important role in the growth of the British Empire. It became the major port for the mass movement of people, including slaves and emigrants from northern Europe to America. Liverpool was a pioneer in the development of modern dock technology, transport systems and port management, and building construction..... All through this period, and particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Liverpool gave attention to the quality and innovation of its architecture and cultural activities. To this stand as testimony its outstanding public buildings, such as St. George's Hall, and its museums. — "Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City" (Unesco World Heritage list).

Architecture

Bibliography

Cavanagh, Terry. Public Sculpture of Liverpool. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996.

Friends of Liverpool Monuments. Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City World Heritage Site: Sculptures of the Commercial Quarter. Leaflet available in the tourist information office in the city centre.

Sharples, Joseph, and Richard Pollard. "Liverpool." Lancashire: Liverpool and the South West, by Pollard et. al. The Buildings of England series. New Haven: Yale, 2006. 242ff.

Lewis, David. Walks Through History: Liverpool. Derby: Breedon, 2007.

"Liverpool — Matritime Merantile City." Unesco World Heritage List. Web. 18 July 2016.

Muir, Ramsey. Bygone Liverpool illustrated by ninety-seven plates reproduced from original paintings, drawings, manuscripts, and prints with historical descriptions by Henry S. and Harold E. Young. Liverpool: Henry Young and Sons, 1913. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of Toronto Library.

"Royal Liver Building." British Listed Buildings. Web. 18 July 2016.

Sharples, Joseph, with contributions by Richard Pollard. Liverpool. Pevsner Architectural Guides. New Haven: Yale, 2004.

Sharples, Joseph, and Richard Pollard. "Liverpool." Lancashire: Liverpool and the South West, by Pollard et. al. The Buildings of England series. New Haven: Yale, 2006.

"Spirit of Liverpool" (a National Conservation Centre site). Viewed 13 June 2009.

"The Wellington Memorial (1861-3) and The Steble Fountain." Viewed 13 June 2009.

Last modified 29 July 2021