Liverpool Heritage newsletter:
AT THE TOP END OF TOWN
Ø The area where Abercromby Square and Falkner Square are situated were once there was an area of marshy ground called the Moss Lake, which drained into the inland end of the Pool of Liverpool behind World Museum Liverpool. The most important present occupants of this site are the University of Liverpool and the Metropolitan (Roman Catholic) Cathedral.
Ø The University of Liverpool has a programme of celebrations for 2008, which are shown on its website. The centrepiece will be the opening in July 2008 of the Victoria Gallery and Museum which will see the opening to the public of the iconic Victoria Building. The building, in Brownlow Hill, was designed by Alfred Waterhouse. Decorations were by Brindley & Farmer, a London firm of decorative craftsmen. This was the original red brick university and demonstrated Waterhouse's “high gothic” that saw him dubbed 'Slaughterhouse Waterhouse'. The landmark clocktower (with chimes) was paid for by public subscription to mark the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, though the building was completed only in 1892. William Farmer (1823–79) and William Brindley (1832-1919), produced much of the carving for Sir George Gilbert Scott, Giles Gilbert Scott's grandfather, including his Albert Memorial, London (1875).
Ø At the Metropolitan Cathedral a lift and passage are being put in to enable people to get from the main (1960s) building to the Lutyens Lady Chapel without going out of doors. The Lady Chapel was the only part of the grand design of Lutyens which would have seen a vast cathedral built, a project abandoned for reasons of cost and replaced by the more modest but still monumental concrete building that we now enjoy.
Ø Also in the area of the Moss Lake and today near the south east corner of Abercromby Square and its junction with Chatham Street is a hexagonal pillar box of the 1866 design by John Penfold, cast by Cochrane, Grove & Company of Dudley. A nationally uniform pillar box was first introduced in 1859, later a more attractive design was sought and the Penfold was introduced in 1866. It is hexagonal with acanthus decoration and is surmounted by an acorn. It came in three sizes and would at first have been painted green. From 1874 onwards all post boxes, old & new, were painted red. More recently, from 1989 onwards, replicas of this design have sometimes been placed in appropriate or historically sensitive sites but this is an original.
Ø At the other end of Hope Street, a small drama has been played out as regards the organ of the Anglican Cathedral. Some months ago the organ in London’s Albert Hall was re-opened after a period of refurbishment - and enlargement, making it larger than the organ in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, up to then the largest in Britain. This Newsletter forecast that the Liverpool Cathedral authorities were unlikely to be comfortable with this development. On 4 December this year the New Dean (Justin Welby) at his service of installation said that additional pipes had been added to the Liverpool organ and that it was now once again the biggest in the land. What a pity that the biggest of Liverpool Cathedral’s bells is second to the biggest bell in London’s St Paul’s Cathedral. Could anything be done about this? Probably not!
Originally Posted by Ged
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