Liverpool Georgian terraces given listed status

Feb 5 2008 by Laura Sharpe, Liverpool Daily Post

TWO rare Georgian terraces have been given listed status in Liverpool’s World Heritage Site.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has given Grade II listed status to the sites on Dale Street and York Street following a review of historic buildings.

Numbers 86-95 Dale Street/ 2 Cheapside, opposite the city’s Municipal Buildings, were listed as “an unusual survival of the shop house, a building type that is nationally rare, especially outside London and shows the development of new forms of retail premises in late Georgian England.”

The terrace dates from around 1819 and has ground floor shops with living accommodation above.

It still has its original floor plans with some features still intact and along with other listed buildings in the area “epitomises the changes in the physical fabric of the city during the 18th and 19th centuries.”

The York Street buildings are a pair of 18th century townhouses, converted into tenements in the 19th century.

In the listing designation it says: “The buildings highlight the development and changing face of the internationally important port of Liverpool through the 18th century to 20th century from a wealthy residential area to an industrial and commercial area with poorer inhabitants as the port expanded and the wealthy moved out for the city centre.” It adds that the building provides special historic interest by its continual use by those connected with the port “from the wealthy merchant in the 18th century to the sea captains, seafarers and Irish immigrants who lived in the tenements during the 19th and 20th centuries.”

Cllr Berni Turner, Liverpool’s executive member for environment and historic environment champion, said: “We have identified some 60 buildings for potential listing and these are the first of those.

“It shows the efforts we are making to safeguard our Georgian heritage and buildings within the World Heritage site and that we are starting to get results in providing additional protection for these historic buildings.”



laurasharpe

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