Having grown up in Liverpool, I have seen the city change and evolve over the last sixty years, developing to meet the demands of modernity and change, but each new wave of improvements or extensions seems to break across an implacable bedrock which refuses to relinquish its shape to the tides. No matter how many new buildings and constructions spring up on the seven streets, the original fabric of the yawning seaport still manages to hold fast amongst the jetsam of commerce. Near one of the Northern entrances to the main city and on the grounds of the newspaper offices, is a vast sculpture, celebrating the city’s vital role in opening up the New Worlds in the eras of exploration and trade.
Erected in 2006, the
‘Face of Liverpool’ is a massive steel lozenge perforated by a circular hole holding a steel ring like the mount for a globe. The circle serves as a frame or a portal to the Mersey estuary and the docks and the surrounding dais is marked with a message in morse code. The whole body of the sculpture has rusted over time and is now a glorious russet colour. The rusty edifice reminds the viewer of the countless other artefacts which can be found around the city, evidence of its industrial and maritime past.
Probably the most prominent evidence of Liverpool’s fame as a gateway to the world is the docklands area, which includes the ancient Albert Dock and Pier Head with the Liver Buildings.
The massive dock walls built with stone hewn from the quarry at St James’s Mount and designed by revolutionary architect Jesse Hartley and opened in 1846 are now punctuated by vast steel and glass edifices, grand in scale and epic in shape, which still manage to look insubstantial and frail next to the sea washed stone and corroded iron.
Perhaps it is this ancient and venerable history which pervades the fabric of the city, or the sluggish River Mersey which makes its silent passage out towards Eire, chocolate brown and frothed by the ferries and cruise ships coursing its currents, which continually draw me back with a tidal pull, to my old home town.
For the second time in a weekend, I found myself back in the pool today, accompanied by my able deckhand always willing to pose for her grandads camera.
Despite the huge changes wrought on the riverfront, to attract tourism to the city, even at the cost of a World Heritage classification after parking a garish new football stadium on the front, there is still enough of the old city to charm and endear, even if sometimes it is difficult to see the older materiel of the port beneath the garish and temporary.
But when it is found and recognised, it is a wonderful site to behold, as massive oak timbers and huge sandstone blocks shaded green with the salty waters can be found supporting the new and fragile glass and steel escarpments.
Besides the gleaming hand of modernism, it’s always comforting to see the original buildings being put to new uses and many of the huge dockside structures, which have survived the centuries and the rigors of wartime bombing, still stand as proudly as ever, seemingly unscathed as the bustle of life ebbs and flows at their foundations.
Probably the most prominent evidence of Liverpool’s fame as a gateway to the world is the docklands area, which includes the ancient Albert Dock and Pier Head with the Liver Buildings.
Perhaps it is this ancient and venerable history which pervades the fabric of the city, or the sluggish River Mersey which makes its silent passage out towards Eire, chocolate brown and frothed by the ferries and cruise ships coursing its currents, which continually draw me back with a tidal pull, to my old home town.
