Liverpool City Guide

Explore Liverpool’s rich history, from the city’s 18th-century roots to its world-famous cultural export, the Beatles

Words Alexander Larman

The greatest rivalry in northern England is between its two greatest cities, Manchester and Liverpool. While Mancunians point to the city’s importance in the Industrial Revolution, its unofficial status as Britain’s second urban centre and the countless British icons who have emerged from it – from leader in the women’s suffrage movement Emmeline Pankhurst to Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell – Liverpool has a simple riposte: “Yes, but we have the Beatles.”

This undeniable piece of one-upmanship would count for little if the city from which John, Paul, Ringo and George had emerged was simply a monolithic block. Instead, it’s a place rich in historical and cultural interest that’s endlessly fascinating to visit, and imbued with a people whose civic pride is only equalled by their warmth and wit. Unlike the more reserved Mancunians, the Liverpudlians – whose nickname of Scousers comes from lobscouse, a stew once popular among sailors – are friendly, unashamedly emotional and often hilariously funny to boot. 

The first time that Liverpool was regarded as a significant English settlement was in the early 18th century, when its wet dock saw it, along with its southern counterpart on the west coast of Britain, Bristol, become key to the then-prosperous slave trade, until it was abolished at the beginning of the 19th century. 

Nonetheless, the wealth that it brought into the city was considerable; Liverpool boasts more Georgian houses than Bath, especially around the city’s most prestigious thoroughfare, Hope Street, where towering former homes have often been converted into expensive shops, restaurants and bars. The grandiose Liverpool Town Hall, built in 1749 and designed by the architect John Wood the Elder, was also a beneficiary of this newfound affluence; today, the building is Grade I listed and widely regarded as one of the finest surviving examples of Georgian architecture. 

On the waterfront 

The city’s prosperity continued in the 1800s, with the waterfront area redeveloped, particularly in the form of Albert Dock, the first such structure to be built entirely from stone, brick and cast iron. 

The dock is now one of the most visited tourist attractions in Britain, with highlights including a branch of the Tate gallery and the Merseyside Maritime Museum with the harrowing but unmissable International Slavery Museum on its third floor. 

Then, of course, there’s the Beatles Story, a good-natured visitor attraction featuring an impressive replica of the Cavern Club, George Harrison’s first guitar (worth £500,000) and the film prop of Eleanor Rigby’s gravestone (the real grave is in Woolton Cemetery, where Lennon and McCartney used to spend time in their youth). 

The Victorian desire to erect grand civic buildings can be seen throughout the centre of Liverpool, most notably in the vast neoclassical St George’s Hall, which the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described as “one of the finest neo-Grecian buildings in the world”. 

These days it is used as a concert hall as well as housing the city’s law courts, so that one could spend one’s day attending a trial and then the evening at a recital. 

Old New York

Another area in which Liverpool takes delight in scoring points over Manchester is in its justifiable belief that its architecture and town planning inspired the builders of New York. Not only has it successfully stood in for Manhattan in numerous films, most recently the Hugh Grant and Meryl Streep vehicle Florence Foster Jenkins, but its neighbour Birkenhead, which features the oldest civic outdoor space in the world in Birkenhead Park, directly influenced the planners of Central Park. 

When the famous American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted visited Liverpool in 1850, he was particularly impressed by the park; he described how after “five minutes of admiration, and a few more spent studying the manner in which art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty… I was ready to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with this People’s Garden.” Perhaps it is no coincidence that eight years later Olmsted, along with his partner Calvert Vaux, won a competition to design a new space for the evolving Manhattan, which became Central Park. 

Yet some of Liverpool’s most famous buildings did not exist until the beginning of the 20th century. The liver bird, a mythological creature related to a cormorant, has been a symbol of the city ever since the Royal Liver Building was constructed in the early 20th century. This splendid edifice, along with the adjoining Cunard and Port of Liverpool buildings, makes up Liverpool’s so-called Three Graces, adjacent to the Albert Dock. 

Religious buildings are also a highlight of the city. “If you want a cathedral, we’ve got one to spare,” is how the lyrics to “In My Liverpool Home” put it. The soaring “wigwam” that is the 1960s Metropolitan Cathedral adjoins one end of Hope Street, while the hugely impressive Gothic Revival Anglican cathedral, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, can be found at the other. Which one you will prefer is a question of taste. The monumental Scott building was described by John Betjeman as “one of the great buildings of the world” (although what he’d have made of the Tracey Emin neon sculpture inside is anyone’s guess) while the Metropolitan, by the modernist architect Frederick Gibberd after the original plans by Sir Edwin Lutyens, is rich in intriguing and unusual design, featuring art by the likes of John Piper and Elisabeth Frink. 

With a Little Help from My Friends

Yet the Fab Four remain the city’s most iconic export of the
20th century. After visiting the Beatles Story in Albert Dock, do pop into the Cavern Club in Mathew Street and enjoy some nostalgic tunes from the Cavern Club Beatles, the club’s resident tribute band. The Beatles played almost 300 times at the original Cavern Club, which has since been rebuilt on the same site. Just around the corner is the Hard Days Night Hotel, with Beatles-inspired artwork and suites. Nor will true fans want to miss International Beatleweek, a festival celebrating the Fab Four, with bands and fans from all over the world, which runs from 24 to 30 August this year.

Then there’s the Magical Mystery Tour, which offers a
two-hour whistlestop exploration of the city, including many of the places associated with the Beatles, such as Penny Lane and Strawberry Field. The National Trust also runs a special joint tour, for which pre-booking is essential, of the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The latter has taken care to maintain ties with his hometown, praising Liverpool as “the capital of culture, the epicentre of the universe” in 2008. For somewhere so rich in historical and artistic significance, such a description feels right.

CITY CULTURE

Liverpool has more listed museums than any other city outside London, which can be discovered in handy clusters, not only around Albert Dock where there is a proliferation of cultural gems, but in the city centre. 

The World Museum, the oldest in town, opened in 1853 in the Ropeworks district formed from the natural history collection of the 13th Earl of Derby. The collection moved to its current home on William Brown Street in 1860 and has expanded to become one of the great museums in the British regions with a planetarium, aquarium and bug house. 

Also on William Brown Street, the Walker Art Gallery (below) was built in 1877 and rejoices in its unofficial description as “the National Gallery of the North”, thanks to its impressive collection that stretches from the 14th century, while the Bluecoat (www.thebluecoat.org.uk) offers a richly varied programme of visual art, literature, music and dance in a stunning 300-year-old building. 

Outside the city centre, the Lady Lever Art Gallery concentrates as much on sculpture and furniture as it does on its world-class pre-Raphaelite collection, while the Port Sunlight Museum (www.portsunlightvillage.com) explores the story of “Soap King” William Hesketh Lever and his vision for the village where his Victorian and Edwardian factory workers lived. 

For more on Liverpool’s museums, see www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk

DISCOVER MORE

A folk tale exists about Liverpool’s famous liver birds suggesting that if ever an honest man and a virgin woman should meet in front of the Royal Liver Building and fall in love, the model birds atop the building would come to life and fly away – and Liverpool cease to exist… For more of Liverpool’s favourite urban legends, see www.discoverbritainmag.com