wow this is just so amazing!
I would have to take a walk around james street then and think that liverpool castle was actually there:D
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wow this is just so amazing!
I would have to take a walk around james street then and think that liverpool castle was actually there:D
E W Cox's article is very interesting for the material it reproduces, but his reconstruction of the whole castle (shown in the colour perspective aerial-view, and accompanied in the article by floor plans and elevations) is impossibly detailed given how little information survived, and how contradictory much of the information is. There was a model based on this reconstruction at Croxteth Hall in the early 1980s, and Cox's work was the basis of the reconstruction at Rivington built c.1910-1920 at the expense of Lord "Port Sunlight" Leverhulme (the replica is a full-size, not scaled-down, recreation, but was never finished because of Leverhulme's death and is rather prone to vandalism, but it's well worth making the trip out to Bolton to see)Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisGeorge
Gareth
Taken from Victoria County History of the County of Lancaster, Vol 4:
A rock-cut passage still runs under James Street, from somewhere near the position of the castle, towards the river. It was entered and examined in May 1862 by Mr. P. M. Coogan (Rep. in vol. 2, p. 132 of the Misc. Rep. in the City Engineer's Office), and a plan and sections were made, showing that it varied in height and width, averaging about 8 ft. in height, and has in its floor on the south side a channel, which, when lately sounded on the suggestion of Mr. Robert Gladstone, junr., has proved to be as much as 7 ft. 6 in. deep. It was again examined by the city engineer in 1908, and a new plan made. That it had some connexion with the ditch of the castle seems possible, and its depth is said to be sufficient to allow the river water to reach the ditch at high water
From: 'Liverpool: The castle and development of the town', A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4 (1911), pp. 4-36. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/rep...p?compid=41370. Date accessed: 24 July 2007.
From The Magical History Tour
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Brilliant picsQuote:
Originally Posted by Kev
Thanks for sharing!
Excellent :handclap:
Great pics, Kev! I've never seen a model of Liverpool Castle before, so that's really cool! :handclap:
Chris
Have u viewed the 4 part video clips yet?
When I was a wee bit younger I used to cycle with my sons to Rivington Pike
to visit the second Liverpool Castle. It was built by Lord Leverhulme between
1912 to 25, Built as a copy of the old Liverpool Castle it was deliberately built
incomplete as a ruin. The estate was given to Bolton and is still standing today.
LIVERPOOL?S lost castle is to be resurrected in the renovation of one of the city?s most important squares.
Derby Square at the end of Castle Street is to undergo a major ?2m revamp in high quality granite to replace the tired brick work currently there.
Once the site of Liverpool?s castle, different coloured granite will be used to mark out where the walls of the fortress would have been.
The work will be one of the final phases of the big dig and is designed to improve the city centre environment, particularly the route to Liverpool One.
The castle, completed around 1235, was built of sandstone and designed to be self-supporting in times of siege.
By the mid-1300s, it had four towers and was surrounded by a dry moat.
It included an orchard, a chapel, a bakehouse and a herb garden.
Some of the most dramatic scenes of the city?s history were witnessed by the castle during the civil war.
In May 1643, the Parliamentarians took Liverpool and the crucial supply route to Ireland.
Royalists gained control of the fortress in 1644 but only after suffering the heavy loss of 1,500 men in just one week of fighting.
But once the Royalists were defeated, Parliament ordered the demolition of the castle.
By the early 1700s, it was in ruins and its bricks were recycled for other buildings.
Today a plaque on the Queen Victoria monument acts as a reminder of the square?s historical importance.
Work on the scheme is likely to start within weeks of the plan being formally approved by the city?s ruling executive board on Friday.
As part of the repaving project, 20 of the existing trees will be removed and replaced with seven new ones.
An additional 11 litter bins will also be in place to help keep the area outside the city?s crown court clean.
Better lights will also be installed.
?This area has historic connections but it is also links into the development at Liverpool One and Chavasse Park,? said Cllr Peter Millea, the city?s regeneration leader.
?We are going to upgrade it with high-quality materials which will make it more attractive for pedestrians in general but also make it much better for disabled people who use the square.?
Liverpool Council officials argued that the Victoria Monument should be refurbished as part of the works. But the North West Development Agency, which is part funding the project, said no money was available for its inclusion.
Work is expected to to be completed around the end of the year.
The ruling executive is also expected to approve ?3.7m of works to Castle Street itself.
When the plan to improve Castle Street was first floated in 2005, the idea was to pedestrianise the road as it formed part of the proposed Merseytram route.
The Daily Post understands that full-scale pedestrianisation is no longer likely.
The council is currently consulting about what exact form the improvements should take.
But the council has said the design will be ?future-proofed?, should the Government agree to provide funding for the Merseytram scheme in future.
It is hoped that work on Castle Street might start in September 2010, following the Mathew Street Festival, and finish a year later.
Liverpool Daily Post
About time too. Hope they get rid of the railings around the monument
This is a great informative thread...I especially like seeing all of the illustrations. I didn't know there was so many of the Castle.
As an artist I've been meaning to try an illustration of Liverpool Castle myself, All of this info here has sparked my interest again...mmmm maybe!
Here is the Pool and castle superimposed on a modern map.
http://i39.tinypic.com/20pvogj.jpg
Why the Pool was mainly filled in I find strange - making land the sad story of Liverpool. Look at how much land was clawed from the river. The Wallasey Pool, OK much bigger, was just dammed off at the river and the banks made in to quays - hence the nice shape of Birkenhead Docks. If The Pool was just dammed off at the river there would have been water right up to Williamson Square, where small boats once berthed. I believe Williamson Square had water problem in the not too distant past when at high tide. By just damming off the Pool would have meant a far larger water area for ships and boast to berth. Filling in and building the Old Dock just does not make any sense.
The city would be much nicer with boats up to Paradise Street.
I like the map Waterways... but i'm not entirely sure I agree with you about the Old Dock. I can see that you like the idea of canals/rivers/waterside right up into the heart of the city, but you seem to fail to understand that was exactly how the Old Dock was. If you look at any Herdman paintings you can clearly see that the boats would come right up to the quayside in the centre of the city at the time... By the time the Old Dock closed it was polluted, smelly and too narrow for the bigger ships of the time.
Williamson Square and the other 'residential' squares were built so that they could be away from the hustle and bustle of trade and the 'smelly' dock.
Incidently from my archives, this may interest you:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3638/...93a8760e_o.jpg
Using the original Pool, would mean far more boats in the enclosed water space. Water would enter the dock and sluices to take any surplus out into the river. It must have been more expensive to have filled the water space than use it. The folly of the original plan was plain. The Old Dock was an immediate success and ships lined to get into it. Pretty quick plans were put down to extend out into the river constructing Salthouse and Canning Docks. When all complete, the Old Dock was then only accessed via Canning Dock with no direct river access.
Redirecting streams and sewers to prevent flooding and contamination was not rocket science even then. Birkenhead Docks, as was the Wallasey Pool, was, and still is, topped up by surrounding water coming in from Bidston Hill.
The newspaper clipping was on about floods in houses that were built on the Pool. If they had left the Pool intact and quayed it off, as at Wallasey Pool, this would not occur. The original drainage path would still be there from the streams which entered the Pool - at the mouth of the current Birkenhead road tunnel. If too water into the Pool then over sluices into the river.
As with now, the reclaiming of land or even putting land there where there was none originally is more profit making than that of any filling in or they wouldn't do it. Ironic really when there's so much barren land to chose from.
The problem with Liverpool has been Lord Derby and Lord Sefton. They owned most of the land and would not sell (the aristocracy do not like to sell, but rent land) or would only sell at inflated prices. Hence reclaiming land from water. Even later the Duke of Westminster builds a tatty looking shopping Mall and takes in rent - you can't buy a shop there, only rent.
This has had a detrimental effect on the city since day one. The city has an abundance of land around it yet it continues to reclaim land from water reducing the attractiveness of the city.
Even Lord Derby's estate at Knowsley curtailed expansion of the city. Read Who Owns Britain by Kevin Cahill. The sooner land laws are introduced preventing this sort of constraining by one or a few individuals over a whole city or town the better. Or just introduce Land Value Tax, and they then pay tax on all land, which they currently do not. Then they will sell off land for others to productively use.
Later the wealthy shipowners and merchants started to own land in and around Liverpool. They would not allow industries other than warehouse or ship related into the city, to keep wages down.
The pool was a smelly bank of mud with a thin creek running through it, only navigable at high tide. Ships, or rather boats, beached to unload.
Blocking off the entrance would have kept the tide and boats out; unless the area behind a river wall was dredged, excavated and tidal gates installed, which is more or less how the Old Dock was built (but with three more sides to form quays for loading and unloading). There was no scope to build the Wallasey-sized 'floats'.
The Wirral side was a more natural harbour but was very poorly connected to the rest of the region (being a peninsular)
Building the Old Dock was clearly a partial land reclamation project. The water in the Old Dock was about 20-25% of the total water that the pool could hold for sea going ships and about 10th of the size if all was dredged up to Williamson Square having only smaller boats at the furthest points. The Liver-pool could have been far larger than the Old Dock by dredging and making one long quay around the pool as what happened at Wallasey Pool to create Birkenhead Docks - which was tidal and smelly mud at low tide as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Why was Wallasey Pool named "Birkenhead Docks? Odd.
To excavate the whole pool would have been a staggering exercise for the time but several options were looked at Thomas Steers' was the best.
As it was, it was a huge risk even at the size of the Old Dock and the city mortgaged its property holdings to do it. A fantastic but successful gamble; but it was enough. Why would they risk more than needed (or in fact more than they had)?
Isn't it called Wallasey West and East Floats?Quote:
Originally Posted by Waterways
It was a staggering exercise to fill it - and most was filled not made into a dock. It would say that it would have been no more expensive to deepen parts of it and build quays.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
Nope. The border runs up the middle of the floats.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
I believe horizontal timber stays were found anchoring the dock walls to the surrounding rock/silt/mud (rather than the dock walls holding back large volumes of infill). This suggests the dock was substantially dug into the muddy banks or maybe half dug in as a 'cut and fill' and there would thus have been minimal fill. I would have thought the rest of the creek almost filled itself in as the creek would not have carried the silt away any longer. Maybe there is a culvert somewhere carrying the original creek, perhaps running into the dock under John Lewis?Quote:
Originally Posted by Waterways
Perhaps someone here has the archaeological report from the recent diggings?
I think so,that waters got to go somewhere!Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
The timbers are to key the walls into the in-fill. The walls would have been built with the timber laid and then in-filled around the walls. Boats would lay up fro Paradise St/Lord St junction and even to Williamson square, although only small boast past the junction.Quote:
Originally Posted by petromax
The pool was shallow and barely useable and narrowed dramatically; it seems the dock was dug into it:
http://thehumanjourney.net/index.php...=57&Itemid=108
a thin channel to the river was maintained (see illustration). On this basis, to dig out the whole creek would have been at fantastic cost and thus unfeasible and in any event wouldn't have suited large ships.
The history of the port has been one of building ever bigger docks to suit ever bigger ships. As it is, it was a spectacular gamble which of course was a great success.
It was never a cuddly little Mevagissey with cutesy little fishing boats but always strove to be a great sea port.
From "Recollections of Old Liverpool" by A
Nonagenarian:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21324...tm#startoftext
...Preeson?s-row was named after Alderman Preeson, who built his house and two others of the old Castle materials. Part of Castle-street is also constructed of the timbers and stones.