TV team’s peek into city’s pioneer dock
Apr 19 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post
LIVERPOOL is to take centre stage in the biggest archaeological dig which TV’s popular Time Team have been involved in.
On Monday, Channel 4 broadcasts The Lost Dock of Liverpool which documents the unearthing of the world’s first commercial wet dock, a creation which turned what had been a tiny fishing village into one of the greatest ports on the planet.
Tony Robinson and the team joined the massive 42-acre £1bn Liverpool One project as they uncovered a similar state of redevelopment 300 years ago when the place was just a seven-street settlement sitting on the muddy pool which gave it its name.
The completion of the so-called Old Dock by engineer Thomas Steers in 1715, which converted the pool into a wet dock controlled by floodgates, changed all that. It set the pattern for future dock systems worldwide, helping to turn Liverpool into the second city of the British Empire.
The broadcaster, actor, and comedian told the Daily Post: “We were filming there last autumn and what was fun was whereas we’re usually three days on site and then just go away, in Liverpool we kept on returning over a period of about two and a half months so we got a very vivid picture of what was being done.”
This centred on what was Canning Place, built over the original Old Dock when it was filled in during 1826 as the port expanded.
“We saw the dig through the layers of 20th century garbage, to the Victorian tenements until we reached what we were looking for,” said the man who formerly played Blackadder’s cohort Baldrick through the ages. “I think two of the most dramatic things was being able to see the homes of the dock workers of the 19th century and to ultimately find the dock on the pool that led to the name Liverpool.”
One more memorable feature of this Time Team Special is that, unlike other “digs”, a significant part of what has been exposed will not be covered over again.
He said: “In this case, the most spectacular feature will be left behind because the retaining wall of the original old dock, I believe, is to be used as part of the new visitors’ centre.
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