Posts Tagged ‘Liverpool’

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.

Renshaw Street in Liverpool has been the home of Rapid Hardware all the time I’ve lived here. It took up so many of the shops along one side of the street that it was commonly known as Rapid Hardware Street. When they moved into the old George Henry Lee’s / John Lewis building it left the street looking very bare. Now for the Liverpool Biennial 2010 large sections of the old shops have been turned into temporary galleries and a Visitor Centre. Six of the shop windows are filled with the billboard-sized photographic works by Freee Every Shop Window is a Soap Box.

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

Chinese lion Liverpool

A photograph of one of the Chinese lions around Liverpool’s Chinatown.  This one stands under the Chinese gate I posted a picture of a few weeks ago.

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.

Two photographs this week both of the Rat painted in 2004 by Banksy as part of the Liverpool Biennial on the derelict White House pub on the corner of Duke Street and Berry Street.

It’s hard to tell now what the rat is holding as one of the original boards is missing.  Some (especially journalists who have never seen it in person who just repeat the first newspaper article they find in Google without checking facts) say it’s a machine gun. I suppose that fits their world view nicely. I can see how they think that but it’s not.  Looking at a picture of it before it aged the object the rat is holding is clearly a marker pen. Sadly the red tip has been worn away and the middle board has been replaced.

16 Cook Street, Liverpool isn’t the most astonishing building ever but the Grade II* Listed Building is one of only two by the architect Peter Ellis.  I originally went out to photograph his other building, Oriel Chambers, but it was covered in scaffolding when I walked to it so I’ve picked out his Cook Street building instead.

Why would I want a photograph of a stone and glass fronted building that I see everyday and not even realised what it was myself?

Oriel Chambers, built in 1864, was the world’s first metal framed, glass curtain walled building.  Every building with a metal structure supporting it’s weight and curtain walls is a descendant of this radical piece of architecture.  16 Cook Street is a development on the style of the Oriel Chambers and is a precursor to the modernist style of architecture.

The Cook Street building was built in 1866.  There is speculation that the  John Root, who was sent abroad to avoid the American Civil War and was in Liverpool at the time, was influenced by the building when developing early skyscrapers in Chicago.

Liverpool Ornamental Chinese Gate

The ornamental gate to Chinatown, Liverpool on Nelson Street. Unfortunately the dramatic sky doesn’t really show up as well as I’d hoped in the photograph but it does frame the top of the gate nicely. The arch is the largest of its kind outside of China.

Sefton Park Palm House, Liverpool

Britain’s Park Story on BBC4 last week included the Palm House in Sefton Park.  I took this photograph in April from the South East of the Palm House.  It was packed with children on school holidays so I’ve still not been inside but I’m going to try to get over there one day when I’m off work to get some photographs from inside.

Liverpool Resurgent is the statue, Sir Jacob Epstein, over the entrance to the former Lewis’s Department Store (not part of the John Lewis group). Known locally as Dickie Lewis the statue of a naked man completed in 1956.