Liverpool Castle

[DaisyChains]

From The Magical History Tour

Brilliant pics
Thanks for sharing!

[lindylou]

Excellent

[ChrisGeorge]

Great pics, Kev! I've never seen a model of Liverpool Castle before, so that's really cool!

Chris

[Kev]

Have u viewed the 4 part video clips yet?

[gregs dad]

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.

[Kev]

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

[gregs dad]

About time too. Hope they get rid of the railings around the monument

[Klaatu]

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!

[Waterways]

Here is the Pool and castle superimposed on a modern map.



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.

[fortinian]

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:

[Waterways]

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.

[Ged]

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.

[Waterways]

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.

[petromax]

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)

[Waterways]

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.

Why was Wallasey Pool named "Birkenhead Docks? Odd.