Waterloo Grain Warehouse, 1875
First of all, I must apologise for the relatively few blogs in recent months. This has been for a positive reason – the launch of a new website dedicated to photographs of Liverpool. Fotolore has taken my son Matt and myself over two years to develop and offers a fantastic archive of images from the 1850s onwards. Unlike this blog, which only offers a limited number of images in a chronological order, Fotolore is an ever-expanding image bank that can be easily accessed with simple searches.
Fotolore is starting with a limited number of images (some 500 in total) because we need to test it out on you. We want you to look at it and comment on how easy (or difficult) it is to use and on any other issues you care to raise. That way, we can get rid of any bugs and problems before adding a further sizeable number of photographs (it is much easier to sort out 500 images at this stage than 1000s at a later time).
This is not just an archive to look at. All the images are available for purchase as prints and there is a forum for comments which we hope you will use. It is very important to us that Fotolore develops as an interactive site where thoughts, memories and opinion can be freely exchanged. The site is about making local history alive and that is where you come in.
I also hope to catch up on many of the requests for photographs I have received from readers over the last two years. It will take time but my hope is that we can find images of most streets, schools, pubs and other familiar places over the coming years. The great thing about Fotolore is that is designed to keep on expanding so that 1000s of photographs will become available.
The Streets of Liverpool blog will continue and will get back to its old frequency now the new site is underway. Enjoy Fotolore – and don’t forget to add your comments.

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