On the opposite side of North John Street from the Royal Insurance Building is one of the ventilation shafts for the Mersey Road Tunnel. It’s not as grand an affair as the Georges Dock Ventilation Tower and Central Station with its statues and other decoration but it does merit Grade II listing. It’s quite a hard structure to get a photograph of because its wide but also very tall – at 60m its the 17th equal tallest structure in Liverpool. Hidden away high above the street, along the top of the bulk of the building, below the shaft itself is a thin, art deco decoration with a horse’s head at each end.  Yet another example of the treasures hidden in Liverpool’s architecture if you look up from the street sometimes.

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.

I’ve not had a chance to take my camera out at lunch time at work recently so here is a picture I took a while ago.  It’s of a decorative Liver Bird on one side of the art deco Georges Dock Ventilation Tower (sometimes called the Mersey Tunnel Building) in Liverpool near the Three Graces.  The detail on the bird itself appears to have been eroded by the elements but other elements are still crisp.