Victoria Street from North John Street

Victoria Street at Temple Court


Victoria Street by Crosshall Street
It was heartening to read that the long-disused Produce Exchange on Victoria Street is about to be renovated and converted into luxury apartments. It is a few years since I last poked my head around the, by chance, open door to the auction room – only to withdraw sharply as a couple of rats darted across the floor in front of me. There was talk at the time of other uses but they came to nothing. Hopefully, this new scheme will bring back to life one of the city’s lesser known gems.
Victoria Street is one of Liverpool’s finest streets, yet rarely gets mentioned. It is also one of the city’s newest (if you can call mid-nineteenth century recent) main thoroughfares. It was cut through a densely populated area in 1867/8 to improve the flow of traffic from Castle Street. The map below shows the area in 1850 (the line of Victoria Street continued that of Temple Court before the latter turned at a right angle into Temple Place).

Living in that neighbourhood must have been unpleasant to put it mildly. There is a large iron foundry off Cumberland Street next to a soapery. Elsewhere are breweries, a tobacco factory and an incredibly high density of courts. Picton claimed that some of the last remnants of Crosse Hall could be found amongst the chaos of housing and industry before Victoria Street was cut through.
The final photograph show a section of street that is miraculously unchanged. In fact, I spend four years in Carlisle Building, seen on the left with the gargoyles. The terracotta faced building has an impressive frontage yet is basically a warehouse block. How long before it too becomes luxury apartments?



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