Can't claim to be Wavy Davy Gravy I'm afraid. Used to work on a football mag called 90 Minutes. My Cockernee colleagues thought it highly amusing to call me Davy Liver.
Felt a bit cheeky plugging the book, so hope you don't mind. Over 100 places in the city-centre and suburbs where you'll see the little feathered chaps, on and inside buildings.
Also did a section on Liver Birds in London (old HQ of Martins Bank), Manchester (Free Trade Hall) and other places in UK. Would love to hear from anyone who's seen them in other surprising places, too. They get everywhere. I believe there might be one or two in New York, for example in the old Cunard building over there…
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There is one (included in the Liverpool coat of arms) on a building on Wall Street. I do have a slide (somewhere) with this image but, it is at my northern address and would take Sherlock Holmes to find it. There is/was also a Liver Bird on a building on Washington Street in Boston, MA., not far from the Filenes department store building.
Will certainly plug the website in Space (next issue out Mon 18 Dec), and thanks for your kind comments, Cissie!
Interesting to read Sloyne’s comments about Liver Birds in USA. Here’s a few little extracts from my book…
In 1921, five years after the completion of its landmark Pier Head offices in Liverpool, Cunard opened a second HQ at 25 Broadway in New York – the first major edifice built in the city after the First World War and still one of Lower Manhattan’s most architecturally and historically significant structures. At 22 storeys it towers above its Pier Head cousin, but it shares the same rusticated base (Indiana limestone rather than Portland Stone) of arches crowned with carved keystones and boasts a cavernous Great Hall decorated with murals and reliefs of great maritime explorers, classical nautical scenes, Cunard’s shipping routes and the arms of Liverpool and other British ports…
Above the doorway to the Royal Insurance Company building in New York, opened in 1927 at the corner of William Street and Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, a Liver Bird in relief still accompanies the monogram RIC above the doorway…
And some closer to home in London and Manchester…
At 68 Lombard Street in the City of London are four columns, their capitals featuring three front-facing Liver Birds with raised wings and curled sprigs of seaweed in their bills. A grasshopper sits upon a gable outside. The street was named after Italian bankers from Lombardy who settled here in the 13th Century, and these are the former London offices of Martins Bank, listed on this site as early as 1794 in Kent’s Directory. In 1918, Martins was acquired by the Bank of Liverpool but retained its name and boasted ‘over 560 offices and agents in all the principal towns at home and abroad’ with its HQ on Water Street. The grasshopper refers to the inn where Elizabethan banker Thomas Gresham traded…
Due west at Smithfield market (built 1868) is another Liver Bird, this time below a female statue of Liverpool – along with fellow personifications of London, Edinburgh and Dublin that together represent the major towns to which meat was despatched…
Martins were prolific and familiar exporters of the Liver Bird in the early 20th Century. The Liver Bird and grasshopper from the bank’s old Manchester office are still visible at 47 Spring Gardens (now occupied by fashion boutique Vivienne Westwood). Manchester has another carved Liver Bird on the façade of the former Free Trade Hall on Peter Street. It’s one of several emblems of Lancashire and Cheshire towns that campaigned against the Corn Laws in the 1840s, when the industrial classes overturned the price of grain set by the land-owning aristocracy to counter cheaper imports…
Thanks for mentioning my book, Cissie. Being a newcomer to this site, I started a thread on the Gen Discussion and didn’t realise there was a separate thread about Liver Birds.
I spent three years compiling the Little Book of Liver Birds, eventually recording and photographing over 100 sites in and around Liverpool where you’ll see them. They’re all there in the book, but I’d love to hear from people who’ve found more.
My personal faves are the ones along the top of Exchange Flags, front-facing with wings along, sculpted by the same guys (Thompson and Capstick) who carved the birds on the George’s Dock Building/tunnel ventilation shaft on the Pier Head (along with Liverpool master-sculptor Herbert Tyson Smith).
Originally posted the following on Gen Discussion forum. It’s from a section in the book about Liver Birds in London and Manchester, and also short extracts about LBs in the States…
At 68 Lombard Street in the City of London are four columns, their capitals featuring three front-facing Liver Birds with raised wings and curled sprigs of seaweed in their bills. A grasshopper sits upon a gable outside. The street was named after Italian bankers from Lombardy who settled here in the 13th Century, and these are the former London offices of Martins Bank, listed on this site as early as 1794 in Kent’s Directory. In 1918, Martins was acquired by the Bank of Liverpool but retained its name and boasted ‘over 560 offices and agents in all the principal towns at home and abroad’ with its HQ on Water Street. The grasshopper refers to the inn where Elizabethan banker Thomas Gresham traded…
Due west at Smithfield market (built 1868) is another Liver Bird, this time below a female statue of Liverpool – along with fellow personifications of London, Edinburgh and Dublin that together represent the major towns to which meat was despatched…
Martins were prolific and familiar exporters of the Liver Bird in the early 20th Century. The Liver Bird and grasshopper from the bank’s old Manchester office are still visible at 47 Spring Gardens (now occupied by fashion boutique Vivienne Westwood). Manchester has another carved Liver Bird on the façade of the former Free Trade Hall on Peter Street. It’s one of several emblems of Lancashire and Cheshire towns that campaigned against the Corn Laws in the 1840s, when the industrial classes overturned the price of grain set by the land-owning aristocracy to counter cheaper imports…
In 1921, five years after the completion of its landmark Pier Head offices in Liverpool, Cunard opened a second HQ at 25 Broadway in New York – the first major edifice built in the city after
the First World War and still one of Lower Manhattan’s most architecturally and historically significant structures. At 22 storeys it towers above its Pier Head cousin, but it shares the same rusticated base (Indiana limestone rather than Portland Stone) of arches crowned with carved keystones and boasts a cavernous Great Hall decorated with murals and reliefs of great maritime explorers, classical nautical scenes, Cunard’s shipping routes and the arms of Liverpool and other British ports…
Above the doorway to the Royal Insurance Company building in New York, opened in 1927 at the corner of William Street and Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, a Liver Bird in relief still accompanies the monogram RIC above the doorway…
I'm very pleased to see so much interest in the Liver Birds. I am the Gerry Jones whose site www.gerryjones.me.uk was referred to in one reply. I am trying to get Culture Company to build a Third Lyver Bird, full-size, at ground Level, where all the tourists can photo each other, as public art, for 2008, and for 2011 when the birds wil be 100 years old.
Chris George printed an explanation about this. Here is another version of the same explanation; except you can SING this one, to "In my Liverpool home"
In 1207 when John was the king,
We were ON the Town Seal when they signed anything
We started as Eagles - the bird of St John -
Till they found our original image had gone.
An artist who'd never seen an eagle before,
had seen many cormorants along our sea-shore,
He tried drawing eagles, he tried it for weeks,
But we ended up like cormorants with weed in our beaks.
CHORUS:
Liver Birds are the best. tra-la-la!
Liver Birds are the best.
Venice has pigeons , that's all that they've got.
London has sparrows, that cough quite a lot,
We've got the best that the others have not,
our Liver Birds are the best!"
All together, from the top, hit it! 1,2,3, ....
Gerry.
PS: for the full song, try www.gerryjones.me.uk then Liverpool Lyrics.
The new Amsterdam at Liverpool?
Save Liverpool Docks and Waterways - Click
Deprived of its unique dockland waters Liverpool
becomes a Venice without canals, just another city, no
longer of special interest to anyone, least of all the
tourist. Would we visit a modernised Venice of filled in
canals to view its modern museum describing
how it once was?
Giving Liverpool a full Metro - CLICK
Rapid-transit rail: Everton, Liverpool & Arena - CLICK
Save Royal Iris - Sign Petition
I also agree that a ground level Liver Bird would be an impressive and memorable way to celebrate Liverpool's uniqueness. Great idea. Good luck with that proposal, Mr. Jones.
Chris George
Christopher T. George
Editor, Ripperologist
Editor, Loch Raven Review
http://christophertgeorge.blogspot.com/
Chris on Flickr and on MySpace
Hi Gerry, I actually suggested this same project way back for the International Flower Festival in 1984. The suggestion was made to Councilors Westbury and Hamilton and later to Pam Wilsher of the Mersey Partnership and Katie Muotsakis of Merseyside Tourism, sadly, to no avail. I fully support your efforts and wish you every success in this project. Good luck.
Hi Sloyne and Gerry
I actually think the time is right to have the life size Liver Bird at ground level, with the conjunction of both the 800th anniversary of the city's first charter and the Capital of Culture year. Exactly the right time! Again, good luck in your effort, Gerry. If you wish for support letters from Sloyne and myself and others, I for one would be willing to write such a letter and I should think Sloyne would as well given his prior interest in this very project.
Chris
Christopher T. George
Editor, Ripperologist
Editor, Loch Raven Review
http://christophertgeorge.blogspot.com/
Chris on Flickr and on MySpace
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