Archive for the ‘Liverpool’ Category

I’d gone down to the waterfront to take some photograph today and discovered the MPI Resolution was docked on the Mersey at the cruise liner terminal.  If a ship could ever be described as an impressive piece of kit this one has to be in the running to get that description.  The six towers are six jacking legs that allow it to raise the whole hull of the ship out of the water!  The large crane in the middle of the picture isn’t on the waterfront but also on the ship.  There is plenty of juicy technical information in the brochure on the owner’s website.  The MPI Resolution is currently operating out of Liverpool refitting turbines at Burbo Bank offshore wind farm, at the entrance to the River Mersey.

Over the last few days a giant column has risen from Chavasse Park in Liverpool One. Tonight the ride that goes up it swung into action for the first time. We can just hear the screams from our office. It seemed like a good subject for having a go at some night photography. This is probably not the best of the shots I took as the exposures a bit long but it had more of a sense of movement than the ones with less exposure.

I walked from work to Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral to see Laura Belém’s Temple of a Thousand Bells which is in the Oratory in St James’ Cemetary as part of the Liverpool Biennial 2010. The work consists of a thousand hand-blown glass bells suspended on nylon string through a gently glowing ceiling. An 8 minute polyphonic piece of music by Fernando Rocha including many different bell sounds fills the room. Really beautiful work. I just wish I’d had more than fifteen minutes to experience it.

Now a few years ago a famous game designer pointed out that all successful RPGs include zombies.  I think it was Robin D Laws but I could be wrong.  This was extended by others to suggest that a game could be made a success by including zombies.  Back then zombies were the preserve of horror and fantasy fiction, TV and budget horror films.  They were niche.  They were cult.  It wasn’t too many years before that time that rail adverts featured Jimmy Saville and the only undead on a train were the British Rail sandwiches.  We were told it was the Age of the Train.

Now British Rail and British Rail sandwiches don’t exist anymore. The fried breakfasts have been replaced with croissants and a full fat, ethical, posh coffee from a franchise on the renovated station.  You don’t have a brief encounter in the door with a woman as you’re both wearing backpacks and you’d get jammed in place if you tried to pass with a flirtatious smile.  Pretty soon new University students will have been born after BR was broken up.

The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Resident Evil and Shaun of the Dead have happened.  Zombies (along with Vampires and Werewolves) have become more and more mainstream.

Every day on my way to work this week I’ve faced by a Virgin Trains advert on a big screen featuring zombies…

Its now the Age of the Zombie.

So my question is are they now too main stream?  Are zombies past their sell by date?  Have they sold out  like an aging punk in an insurance advert with a million pounds in his back pocket?

What cool monster will fill the niche left by zombies?  Will it be another undead or something else?

Do Ho Suh’s Between is one of the larger pieces in the Liverpool Biennial 2010. Its on a slightly smaller scale to Rotating Yates’s Wine Lodge Building but only just.

I’ve seen quite a few similar photographs to the one above on newspaper websites. I decided to take a closer look because the level of detail in the work is really excellent and deserves to be shown off.

If you want to see it for yourself its at 84–86 Duke Street.

View Between, Liverpool Biennial 2010 in a larger map

The 19th Century Church of Saint Andrew on Rodney Street is known locally as the Scotch church. It was a Presbyterian church built to serve the Scottish community of Liverpool. The church was closed in 1975 and is in an extremely poor state. In the small graveyard is a rather unusual grave in the form of a Pyramid built for William Mackenzie.  The first mystery is about his surname which is sometimes spelt  MacKenzie and McKenzie depending on who is writing about him.  I’ve gone for the name in the title of the transcription of his diaries.

A much repeated myth has sprung up surrounding Mackenzie that claims he was a gambler who was buried sitting upright in the tomb holding a winning hand of cards to cheat the devil to whom he’d promised his soul for a winning hand in a game. This appears alongside many pictures of his unusual tomb. I can’t really claim the moral high ground as I’ve played with it in an unfinished story.  However I am really intrigued as to why he really had a pyramid-shaped tomb.  I’ve done some research (ok I’ve done a bit of Googling).

Born in 1794 Mackenzie was the eldest of eleven children born in Lancashire to Alexander Mackenzie a Scottish contractor and Mary née Roberts. Apprenticed as a weaver in 1811 he switched to become a pupil of a lock carpenter on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal then later the dry dock at Troon harbour, on Craigellachie Bridge and as an agent on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal.  Later he worked under Thomas Telford and then returning to contracting on railway and canal civil engineering in Britain.  His work included the rail tunnel between Edge Hill and Lime Street Station.

From 1840 an invitation to tender for the Paris to Rouen railway by Joseph Locke led to his association with Thomas Brassey. After that he worked on railway engineering in France, Spain, the Italian state, Belgium, England, Wales and Scotland.  His investments included ironworks in Wales and France, housing in Liverpool and estates in Scotland. He had offices in Paris and Liverpool.  He was married twice and had no children.  When he died in 1851 his £341,848 estate mostly went to his youngest brother.

So far the closest I’ve placed him to a pyramid is Rome which has its famous pyramid.  This doesn’t explain his pyramid tomb which is of a very specific style.  The Diary of William Mackenzie (Thomas Telford Publishing in 2000) is a full transcription of Mackenzie’s diaries.  So my next step is to borrow it from the Liverpool Library to see if it sheds any light on the mystery.

The tower on the Municipal Buildings, Dale Street, Liverpool.

Another photograph taken on one of my lunchtime wanderings round Liverpool with my camera.  This one is of the  tower on the Municipal Buildings, Dale Street. The building was begun in 1860 by John Weightman and completed in 1866 by E.R. Robson. It’s Italian and French Renaissance influenced Northern Renaissance style are quite a contrast to the art deco structures of the Mersey Road Tunnel I posted last week. The central tower with balconies, clocks and five bells has a pyramidal spire. The spire has a wrought-iron balcony half-way down.

Above the main door into the Georges Dock Ventilation Tower and Central Station is this statue: Speed – the Modern Mercury.  The relief in Portland Stone (one of my favourite construction materials) is seven meters tall including the base.  It was designed by Herbert J. Rowse and the sculptor was Edmund C. Thompson assisted by George T. Capstick.

It is just one of the details on the art deco structures of the Mersey Road Tunnel that show the egyptian styling Sir Basil Mott, J. A. Brodie and Herbert J. Rowse included in the designs.  For example each of the ventilation shafts takes the form of a stylised obelisk.  The tunnel was constructed between 1925 and 1934 during the Egyptian craze following Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

I have an incomplete Planet of Danger short story Dirk Dangerous and the Mummy that features a climax in the tunnel.

This sign is on the boards which cover the ground floor of an empty building a short distance from where I work. Whenever I walk past it amuse me in the same way that a sign on the side entrance to Wollaton Park in Nottingham amused me in my youth. It read simply “Escaping Dear Please Close the Gate”.

The concrete mess on the front of Lime Street Station was one of the worst eyesores in the city. It was a badly executed, dreary, unimaginative waste of concrete that hadn’t aged well. Worse it was right in the heart of the city centre, covering up the face of one of the country’s great Victorian railway stations that is still a major gateway for visitors arriving in Liverpool. So when they finally started to pull it down I was really looking forward to seeing the new front.

I was however a little nervous.  The rebuilt slab square in my home town of Nottingham just makes me want to cry. It has been turned into a bland, featureless slab with an embarrassing water feature that almost seems to have the ambition of escaping from an episode of Ground Force. I’m sure it’s very good for events but as a public space the rest of the time I’d take the old, fussy square back and do up the disgusting public toilets.

The new Lime Street frontage didn’t have a bold feature like the new frontage to Sheffield Station with the magnificent with the water covered blade slicing across it.  Could this be just another dull square that would reveal the station but nothing more?

Well I’m pleased to say that its far more than just a dull piazza.  The front has curvaceous steps intercut by ramps that sweep across its front.  Some of the paving on the ramps have images cut into them and more images have been included in the new glass in the arches at the front of the station.  There are places to sit and watch the world go by and an area with trees that breaks up the slabbed space.  Even though its only been open a few days it was obvious that it has already become a place to have your lunch or to meet people in the city centre.

There is a stubby tower including a lift that allows access from the station to the street and down to the underground station.  Which could hardly have been made smaller and which provides a visual clue to where the doorway in is for the unfamiliar traveller.

The new front doesn’t just reveal the lost front of the station.  It opens up the view across Lime Street that I’ve never seen before.  The sweep of the front of St. George’s Hall is opened up to the eye.

The one major piece of work left to do in the area is someone to restore the art deco cinema.  Unless someone wants a big project and decided to do away with the St. John’s shopping complex but that might be a bit extreme and where would all the shops go?