Decline and rebirth
The start of World War I in 1914 saw the beginning of a decline in
Liverpool's fortunes. The passenger liners moved to Southampton, which had
better tidal conditions, but were themselves later superseded by air travel.
Liverpool's substantial banking and insurance businesses moved to London as
part of the general concentration of the nation's business leadership in the
capital. World War II brought death and destruction to Liverpool. Large
numbers of Liverpool seafarers were killed and much of the central area was
destroyed by German bombs, especially in May 1941. Liverpool was the most
bombed British city apart from the capital. But the port remained open, the
only British port to stay open throughout the war.
In the later part of the twentieth century, more docks were built but
the mechanisation of dock work meant that, while currently handling as much
tonnage as ever in its history, the port now employs only a few hundred
people instead of the 15,000 who once worked in it. Industrial plants such as
Tate & Lyle's sugar refinery and Meccano of Dinky toys and Hornby trains
fame were closed. (Henry Tate and Frank Hornby were Liverpool men). New
industry preferred to be in the southeast of England successive governments
favoured the south east for the headquarters of the growing number of public
sector departments. The population of the city fell from nearly 800,000 in
the 1940s to about 450,000 as the twentieth first century dawned - but it is
now rising again.
The twentieth century saw re-housing in suburban council-controlled
estates, the earlier ones of good standard, the later ones less satisfactory.
Many of the mid-twentieth century blocks of flats were so bad that they have
since been demolished. The condition of many of the houses built in Victorian
times for the rich had seriously deteriorated. Many were torn down. Others
are now being refurbished. Housing for Liverpool people and industrial
estates spilled over into neighbouring boroughs.
National policy was slow to tackle the decline in this and other northern
areas. Britain's expanded commercial and political links with other European
Union countries made matters even more difficult. The success of the Liverpool
and Everton football clubs and the rise of the Beatles and a large number of
other pop groups and entertainers of all kinds seemed to be all that
sustained Liverpool in the 1960s and 70s. Severe riots in the Toxteth part of
the city in 1981 drew attention to the city's plight and there followed the
government supported International Garden Festival of 1984 and the beginning
of financial assistance from the European Union's Regional Development Fund.
The European money and changes in British government policy sparked new
commercial and industrial development which has now led to something of a
boom, at least in the centre of the city.
New streets as the town grew
From the 1700s, the town started to grow. Lord Street was laid down,
running east from the site of the Castle. It took its title from Lord
Molyneux of the family which became Earls of Sefton. Where Lord Street joins
modern Paradise Street a bridge was built over the Pool in 1672. When the
building in which McDonald's is now situated was built after the devastation
of World War II, the remains of an old bridge were found deep underground.
After the bridge over the Pool was built, a new street called Church Street
was laid down and named after St Peter's church which stood for over a
century until 1922 where Top Shop now is. A brass cross is set into the
pavement outside the shop to mark the site. The Athenaeum (older than its
namesake in London!), moved in 1922 from its original building in Church
Street to a new building on the site of the churchyard site. St Peter's was
temporarily the Anglican Cathedral after Liverpool was made a diocese in
1880, while plans for the present enormous Cathedral were being drawn up.
When Church Street was widened at this point in Victorian times, graves had
to be moved. It was found that water flowing underground had turned some of
bodies in them to stone. This water was flowing from the Moss Lakes which
were in the area where the main part of the University of Liverpool is now
situated. Water from these lakes still flows, from a fountain in St James'
Garden behind the Anglican Cathedral.
From the junction of Lord Street and Church Street, Whitechapel and
Paradise Street go north and south, built over the upper part of the Pool.
Whitechapel, so named because of a nearby chapel, led up to the old bridge
over the Pool at the bottom of Dale Street. It was originally called Frog
Lane because of a colony of frogs there. It had a reputation for being a
place of "ill repute". Paradise Street was named after a London
street where Thomas Steers, who built the first dock, once lived. It led down
towards Canning Place where a large, domed Victorian classical building
housed the Customs & Excise until it was destroyed by bombs in World War
II. Paradise Street is now the centre of one of the biggest retail
developments in Europe, Liverpool
One. At the top of
church Street was once the Washington Hotel. Garibaldi, who led Italy to
independence, once stayed there on his way to New York.
Leading out
of town
From the Dale Street bridge over the Pool Scotland Road was built in the
eighteenth century as a new route to the north, one of two original turnpike
(i.e. toll) roads out of the town. Scotland Road became the focal point of
Irish immigration into Liverpool. (In 1847/48, 300,000 Irish people came a
the twelve month period, some going on to the United States, others remaining
in the city.) Their story is commemorated in St Anthony's church in Scotland
Road, where many thousands of Irish descendants are buried in graves beneath
the Church.
The streets off Scotland Road were places of terrible poverty. Thousands
lived in stinking courts and mean terraced houses. The houses where Irish and
other immigrants lived spread eastwards up Everton Heights, where in the
previous century merchants lived in large villas with well-tended gardens.
The graveyard of St George's Church at the top of the hill commemorates some
of them. Scotland Road itself was the scene of much evening drunkenness and
violence until well into the twentieth century. It saw many clashes between
the Protestant and Roman Catholic communities which continued until World War
and the clearance of bad housing in the 1960s, when people were moved to new
estates on the outskirts of the city. Since the 1960s, sectarianism has
largely ceased to exist in Liverpool and the city, under the leadership of
successive Roman Catholic Archbishops, Anglican Bishops and Free Church
clergy has become a model of co-operation between different parts of the
Christian Church, in which representatives of other faiths are also involved.
The continuation of Dale Street after Scotland Road is William Brown Street
(named after a former Lord Mayor). Further on this becomes London Road, for
centuries the main way out of town. On the left of William Brown Street
several potteries once stood, Liverpool ware being well known here and in
America. The magnificent buildings on this site now - the newly refurbished
World Museum Liverpool, the Central Library which houses the Liverpool Record
Office and the Walker Art Gallery, the finest British art gallery outside
London, make a vista of nineteenth century classical architecture with few
rivals. Across the road is St John's Gardens and behind them is St George's
Hall, said to be the finest nineteenth century Greco-Roman building in
Britain. It contains a magnificent concert Hall and rooms built as law courts
and used as such until a few years ago.
Around St George's Hall - in St John's Gardens and facing Lime Street - is
a superb collection of statues. One is of William Ewart Gladstone, one of
Britain's greatest Prime Ministers, born in 1809 in Rodney Street, Liverpool,
near the Philharmonic Hall. Another statue is of Benjamin Disraeli, another
Victorian Prime Minister, whose Conservative Party had strong support in
Liverpool for many decades and who described the city as the second city of
the British Empire. A plaque in St John's Garden commemorates French prisoners
who were buried there in the eighteenth century when the site was occupied by
a church. They had been prisoners taken by Liverpool privateers,
government-approved pirates who plundered the ships of enemy countries.
Behind St George's Hall is Lime Street. This was first called Limekiln
Lane, from the lime works there. These were closed in 1804 because of the
health hazard which they caused. Nearby, cock fights, dog fights and bare
knuckle boxing used to take place. On Shrove Tuesday it was the custom to
turn cockerels loose in the presence of boys who had their hands tied behind
their backs to prevent them seizing the cocks except with their teeth.
