Liverpool (1): Castle Street and the Catholic Cathedral

Fine Buildings, Old and New

Why Liverpool?

Liverpool

The 6th is Lynne’s birthday (a prime number, since you asked) and we usually go somewhere to celebrate. Last year covid ensured the somewhere was nowhere; this year the somewhere is Liverpool.

Basic English Geography
A little help

Liverpool is 60 miles from home, 80 minutes into the city centre if the M6 and M62 behave themselves. I thought it was further, but then I had never been there before. Lynne had been suggesting the city as a destination for some time but despite the docklands and old centre being the ‘Maritime Mercantile City of Liverpool UNESCO World Heritage Site’ I was reluctant. Was it Liverpool’s reputation as a city well past its prime, or its accent which (to me) always sounds aggressive, or maybe I just had a prejudice I needed to get over?

As we were considering where to go, Travelzoo came up with a Liverpool hotel offer that was hard to ignore; it was time to bite the nettle and grasp the bullet. Then Liverpool played right into my prejudice by losing its UNESCO listing, but too late, we had already booked.

Arriving in Liverpool, Leaving Again and Promptly Returning

The motorways ran smoothly and once in the city’s outskirts we relied on the sat nav to reach our destination. All went well until it instructed me to take the 4th exit from a roundabout. Realising I was about to turn back up the road I had come down, I decided I must have miss-counted exits and promptly turned left. The road immediately dived into the Mersey Tunnel. Two miles later we emerged at Birkenhead, paid the toll, drove round the block, paid another toll and returned. It was the first of two fleeting visits to Birkenhead during our stay.

The huge concrete eyesore by Birkenhead Ferry Dock is part of the tunnel ventilation system.
The design by Herbert James Rowse is (or was) highly thought of

Oddly, I have always wanted to go through the Mersey Tunnel. It was spoken of in awe in the 1950s when I was small enough to be easily impressed. It was the world’s longest road tunnel when it opened in 1934 and remained the longest underwater road tunnel until 1955. It is a tiddler by modern standards.

We had driven through the Queensway (Birkenhead) Tunnel. The Kingsway (Wallasey) Tunnel opened in 1971, and both are predated by the railway tunnel of 1886.

Castle Street

We did better with our second attempt, ditched the car in the appropriate car park and set out to find some lunch.

Coffee and a sandwich felt appropriate so we entered the first coffee shop we saw, sat down and were promptly presented with a menu of high-carbohydrate choices. Only toasted bagels met our light lunch criteria, but no, we were told, they were only served as an accompaniment. Surveying the loaded plates around us, we wondered why anybody would want a plate of carbs and trans-fats with a side order of more carbs.

We made our excuses and left. Looking back, the word ‘coffee’ was prominent but there was a smaller sign we had missed, ‘All Day American Breakfast.’ Breakfast foods, American or British, and even croissant and pain au chocolat, should, I think, stay in the breakfast ghetto.

Lunch at Rudy's

Castle Street, the next left, had wide pavements lined with tables and umbrellas. Rudy’s Neapolitan Pizza looked cheerful, the menu outside offered an antipasto sharing plate, and on a warm late summer’s day (even if September is officially autumn) a glass of wine felt much more attractive than a cup of coffee.

Antipasto, Castle Street, Liverpool

The street is lined with seriously self-important buildings. In the 19th century Liverpool was the world’s busiest and wealthiest port and financial institutions abounded. Liverpool had the first Underwriters Association and the Liverpool Institute of Accountants, incorporated in 1870, was the oldest of the associations that merged to form The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. All these people had to work somewhere, and Castle Street was a favoured location.

Castle Street, Liverpool ('Hospitality' spreads onto the pavement more on the opposite - south facing - side of the street)

The ground floors of these buildings have now been largely colonised by the ‘hospitality industry’ what goes on upstairs is unknown to me.

Liverpool Town Hall

The most important building, straddling the end of the street, is the town hall. A Grade I listed building described by Historic England as "one of the finest surviving 18th-century town halls”, it was designed by John Wood the Elder (who kicked off the Georgian renaissance of Bath – see the Bath post in this blog) and built between 1749 and 1754.

Liverpool Town Hall

James Wyatt designed the 1785 northern extension, and the dome which was added during rebuilding after the 1795 fire. Wyatt also appears in this blog for his work on Plas Newydd, Anglesey.

Gino d'Acampo

Opposit, on the corner of Castle and Dale Streets, is the Liverpool iteration of Gino d’Acampo’s small restaurant chain. It is housed in a building of  uncompromisingly modern design, but in scale with its neighbours and I think I rather like it.

Gino d'Acampo, Castle Street

Pleasant as our lunch had been, Rudy's more upmarket neighbour seemed preferable for Lynne’s birthday dinner, so we dropped in to reserve a table. They had a couple of slots, one far too early, the other after my bed time so we booked for tomorrow, a day late maybe but the right time for dinner was, we judged, more important than the right day.

Aloft Hotel

After lunch we walked 100m up Dale Street and checked into our hotel.

Aloft Hotels are part of the Marriott Group; we generally avoid major chains, but it is not always possible. It is a ‘hip hotel housed in the iconic Grade II-listed Royal Insurance Building.’

Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

Obviously, I did not write that last sentence. I try to use words with precision and there is a gold star for anybody who can tell me precisely what ‘iconic’ means in that sentence. I have also reached an age when I expect ‘hip’ to be followed by ‘replacement.’ The writers of the hotel web site had no such scruples.

Doyle's sketch (Public Domain, thanks you Wikipedia)

The head office of The Royal Insurance Company was completed in 1903. A competition to design the new building had been won by James F. Doyle, whose drawing (left) sees the building as if on a greenfield site, though it would have been as hemmed in then as it is now.

The construction method was modern - it was an early steel frame building – but the decoration, described by Pevsner as sumptuous Neo-Baroque on the grandest scale, must have looked dated when it was built.

The entrance is ornate, though a closer look at the sculpture above the door suggests the sculptor was a cause for concern.

Doorway, Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

The frieze below the window is also remarkable. The soldier-like figures suggest the British Empire is out there comforting widows and their children, building railways across the wilderness and erecting churches to shine light into the world’s darkest places, all these activities protected by the Royal Insurance Company. I would call this Capitalist Realism, a counterpart to the Socialist Realism we have seen in Eastern Europe and beyond – were there. not already a ‘Capitalist Realism’ based on pop art and irony.

Frieze, Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

Inside, the steel frame construction allowed the whole ground floor to be one vast general office. Now it is broken up by the needs of a hotel; reception, restaurant, bar and more being divisions of a single room. We visited the bar twice, once for our ‘welcome drink’ (part of the Travelzoo package) and once for a nightcap. It was hardly lively on either occasion.

Bar, Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

The hotel rooms are just hotel rooms like any other, but I liked the stairwell (though we always used the lift).

Stairwell, Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

The Royal Insurance Company moved out in the late 1980s and the building’s subsequent dilapidation contributed to Liverpool’s reputation mentioned earlier. That it was rescued and refurbished and became a boutique hotel in 2014 is a sign of the city’s welcome regeneration.

Aloft Hotel to the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

From the hotel we took a twenty-minute walk across the city to Liverpool’s Catholic Cathedral.

Liverpool Playhouse and the Radio City Tower

Our route took us past the Playhouse Theatre. Re-opened since Covid has reached its endgame (or is that wishful thinking?) they have a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for the end of September/early October. Behind it is the St John’s shopping centre and the Radio city Tower. At 125m (not including antennae) it is Liverpool’s second tallest building, has three radio studios and a viewing platform. Built in 1969, Historic England described it as “embodying the technological bravura and spirit of the space age.” The ‘technological bravura’ has not aged well (nor has the phrase 'space age') and the number of radio stations that have come and gone in the lest decade suggests all is not well.

Liverpool Playhouse, St John's Shopping Centre and the Radio City Tower

The Vines

Albert B Vines opened a pub, which he called the Vines, in Lime Street in 1867. When Walkers Brewery acquired the site in 1907, they kept the name but had the pub rebuilt by architect Walter W Thomas (not to be confused with Walter A Thomas who was responsible for the Liver Building). If the buildings in Castle Street are self-important and the Royal Insurance/Aloft building is heading towards self-parody, this is outright fantasy. Thomas was responsible for several Liverpool pubs, the Vines and at least one other are now Grade 2* listed. I think it is an eyesore.

The Vines, Lime Street

Silent Witness

From Lime Street we walked up the gentle curve of Mount Pleasant towards Liverpool University and the Metropolitan (Roman Catholic) Cathedral.

Crossing the road, we saw a knot of people in a space between the cathedral steps and the Liverpool Science Park. There were cameras and electronic equipment, busy people buzzing around and large men urging the public to move on. Had they been less keen for us to go, I would not have stayed.

From the cathedral steps we could see two people we recognised as David Caves and Emilia Fox, having a quiet but urgent conversation across the top of low wall, cameras inches from their faces. The current series of Silent Witness was already running, so I was surprised they were still filming - and that this undistinguished little corner had been chosen as a location. Not for the first time we were struck by how quiet and undemonstrative television acting is compared with the stage version.

I have a good, full-face picture of Emilia Fox but if somebody had taken an unauthorised photo of me when I was working and put it on the internet, I would have been annoyed. Well-known people deserve courtesy too, so I am not posting it.

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

Henry VIII’s Reformation abolished the Catholic Church in England and twenty or so ancient Catholic cathedrals became Anglican overnight. For the next 200 years, other than during the brief reign of Queen Mary (1553-8), being a practising Catholic in England became difficult and occasionally fatal.

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

Attitudes were changing by the late 18th century and the first post-reformation catholic church was built in 1786 in Dorset. After further easing of restrictions the Pope felt it was time to re-institute catholic dioceses and in 1850 thirteen new dioceses were created. George Hilary Brown became the first ever Bishop of Liverpool (there was no Anglican bishop until 1880).

Inside Liverpool's Catholic Cathedral

A bishop needs a cathedral and in 1853 Edward Welby Pugin (son of the better-known Augustus Pugin) was commissioned to build one, but the project ran out of money with only the Lady Chapel completed.

In 1891 the north of England became the Catholic Province of Liverpool, making the bishop an archbishop, but still he had no cathedral.

Central lantern, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

They had another go in 1930s. Work on Sir Edwin Lutyens’ over-ambitious design was halted by World War II, restarted in 1956 and abandoned in 1958 with only the crypt completed.

Lynne lights a candle, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

Third time lucky. Sir Frederick Gibberd won a world-wide design competition, work started in 1962 and the cathedral was consecrated in 1967.

The circular design gives every worshipper an unobscured view of the altar and puts the priest in the centre of the congregation, not separate from it, in accordance with the aims of the Second Vatican Council (1962-5).

Abraham and the Ram by Sean Rice, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

The circular shape and soft lighting create an atmosphere of great calm. Most of the glazing is the work John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens, whose richly coloured dalle de verre (slabs of coloured glass set in a matrix of, in this case, stainless steel) in the suspended lantern ensures the light is multicoloured, yet of even strength.

One of the Stations of the Cross, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

The Cathedral was built remarkably quickly and relatively cheaply which has led to some problems with the fabric. It has been called "a thin and brittle take on an Oscar Niemeyer original in Brasilia," (Stephen Bayley) though others believe the resemblance merely superficial. I find it a beautiful and strangely gentle building, as remarkable inside as out and undoubtedly my favourite modern church.

Dinner at All Bar One

With Gino d’Acampo booked for the morrow we selected tonight’s (cheaper) restaurant by perusing websites. After our ‘free’ pre-dinner drink in the hotel we set off, turned down the wrong road from Castle Street, found ourselves outside All Bar One and decided to stay.

Fish & Chips, All Bar One, Liverpool

All Bar One is a chain of 52 ‘stylish city bars in central locations’ (their website). Our only previous encounter with them was in Harrogate in 2018 when it would have fulfilled the description had Harrogate been a city. Liverpool, despite being very much city, is downmarket from Harrogate (most places are), and its All Bar One was darker and scruffier. Even so Lynne was happy with her fish and chips. My Pad Thai was far too sweet, probably from an oversweet cook-in sauce – I doubt that much is cooked from scratch in these establishment.

See also

Liverpool (1): Castle Street and the Catholic Cathedral
Liverpool (2): The Waterfront, The Cavern Club and St George's Quarter
Liverpool (3): Ferry Cross the Mersey and the Anglican Cathedral