What were they used for and where as the entrance to them?
Or were they part of the courts?
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What were they used for and where as the entrance to them?
Or were they part of the courts?
As far as I know, they were the cellars from old pubs, general buildings from the 1700s.
The picture is of the basement area of the old Customs House which was located on Canning Place (now Chavasse Park) which took a direct hit in the May Blitz of 1940. I have very fond memories of a incident that occured in that bombed out basement one very wet summers evening about 1952/3. Mind you when I arrived home about midnight, soaked to the skin and looking like a drowned moggie, I got battered by me nan. But hey, I thought it was well worth it.;)
They were something else I wanted to photograph but left too late... Some were the customs house, some weren't. I talked to a bloke at the book launch for the Liverpool Blitz Diary book (I forget the author) and he was saying that the Echo had said they were all filled in after the war, but this guy said a lot of them were still standing in the 60s, as he used to play there as a kid. They were then later demolished and basements covered.
Does anybody have any more photos? I remember walking down there and seeing that collapsed lift car and some old bottles and things.
They were there open until about 1967, when the site was cleared for the new modern buildings there (now demolished). The basement walls were left up to ground level and all the rubble removed. I assume the walls were left to reinfoce any foundations that infilled.
The walls were very thick as the picture shows and you could walk on them no problems - two kids abreast. We used to jump the walls. It was like a maze in there.