Eastham Dock

Greetings from Victoria BC, Canada. I am doing research on my Father- in-law's war diary and I write you seeking information. According to his diary my Father-in-law shipped overseas from the Eastham Merseyside England in October of 1943. Would you have any information or could suggest any place where I might be able to gather information about this area in this time period. Pictures, news paper clipping or things of that kind would be most interesting.

Thank you in advance for any assistance you may be able to give me in my research. John.

Medrington's Ltd

I'm trying to find out where the Medrington's Ltd, 29 Bold Street, Liverpool catalogue might be held and whether it has been digitised. Gratefull for any advice you can give me. Thank you.

Mrs Joan Varley

Carson Street or St Tudno View

To Liverpool History Society

I'm using this email as my browser can't find your website today. Please pass my enquiry to the right person.

What is known about St Tudno View, off Everton Terrace? It appears in the  1871-1891 censuses, but not by name in 1901. I've seen a 1930s map which shows the area between Netherfield Road South and Everton Terrace turned  into a recreation ground.

I'd be interested if there are any known directory entries or photographs of either Carson Street or St Tudno View, but I get the impression that they had both become slums by the 1890s.

Many thanks
 Philip Hillyer

Everton Brow with the lock up

Hi,

I was looking at your history site and came across  a picture of Everton Brow with the lock up.

The reason I  was browsing through your site was because years ago I purchased an original water colour by an artist I think is called F.Beattie. It was such a fascinating study of early victorian antiquity that I wanted to know more about where and when it was painted.

I purchased the painting in Plymouth Devon, which is where I live, for the frame to use on another picture as the painting is faded and in poor condition. However I became fascinated with the picture as it  was so  old and being original , I had to  know more.

It is of the place you call Brow side and depicts  the little building I now know is called the lock up and Mrs Coopers Toffee shop in a row of 15th century cottages,.

I have found out about the toffee shop and it's connections to your Everton Football Club etc. This is how I traced your site.

I have enclosed a couple of digital images for your interest but I want to know more about the artist.

I love the mix of industrial Revolution England with the remenants of 15th to early 19th century life. All in one picture.

Enjoy

Alan Edwards

Alan`s Water Colour of Everton Lock up and the Toffee Shop

McDonough's General Store, Ainsworth Street, Liverpool

Hello,

I don't know whether you can help me or point me in the right direction.  I am looking for any information with regards to the general store that was located in Ainsworth Street, Liverpool during the 50's and 60's.  I believe it was run by the McDonough family. Daniel & Margaret (Mary).

Ideally I would like a photograph of the shop.

Kind Regards

Carl Wilson

Walton Wind Mill

Hello Rob,
I am trying to find a photograph or print of Walton Wind Mill and wondered whether you are able to help.

Best wishes

Ellie

Liverpool Dance Hall resource

Is there a source where I might find information of liverpool dance halls in the 40's during the war... bands that might have played there and movie theaters... I'm trying to write a romance novel and can't seem to find any info on what lovers did in the 40's during the war.

Thanks Britt

Jet of Lada

Hi Rob,

I enjoyed your reply on Calderstomes but do you know about the memorial to the dog that is located in Calderstones.

Regards Sylvia

 

 

Courtesey of Euronews

 

Calderstones Park

Hello Rob,

 

I have often wondered what the four statues outside Calderstones Park are called or what there original purpose was.  Can you help?

Best wishes

 

Debra

 

Four Seasons

Allerton Tower

 

Waterloo Hotel Clayton Square

 

 

Hi Rob

Would you happen to know where the Waterloo Hotel was situated? I have come across one reference to it being in Clayton Square and another to it being next door to the Lyceum. I'd also be interested in finding out when it was demolished.

Ron

Liverpool Personal Service Society

Hello,

I believe Liverpool Personal Service Society was one of the first advice services in the UK,  Do you know if this is correct. 

I always enjoy the postings on your blog and the answers you some how provide,
Merry Christmas

John (Tuebrook)

Eleanor Rathbone Stamp

Talley man

Hello,

Talking about adopting children has anyone heard of a functionary known as the Talley man? Apparently, he was sent in to the slums of Liverpool to count the number of children living in a house and if there were more than there should be, he took them away, presumably for them to be adopted or sent to the workhouse

Sonia Morris

Local Records

Good afternoon, At some time during (and after ?) WW2 my grandparents had a small shop in Liverpool.  I'm very short on information but believe it may have been in one of the above areas. I have traced my Grandfather's RN records but although I know he was discharged in 1942 to the Reserve and it also states that he died in Northampton General Hospital in 1956 I have come to a dead stop. Could you please point me in any direction to obtain further information?  To try and find out using electoral registers isn't an option given the common surname and lack of information. I would appreciate any help you may be able to give. Thanks. Viv Pryer

Litherland Davies and Co

Sir,

I have this wall clock inscribed Litherland Davies & Co, 13 inch convex dial, double chain fusee.

overall height 36 inch.

I understand Litherland Davies were retailers, is their any way of attributing the clock to a known Liverpool maker?

Regards

A Rigg

Strawberry Garden

I have another query about the letter.
The writer states –

“I have refused to go to the Strawberry garden,…”

The fact that the garden was close enough to walk to, or she could have taken a coach suggests that the garden was not part of the land around the house.

Might these be Liverpool’s famous strawberry fields?

Or were they a 20^th century invention by the Beatles?

Thanks

Cliff

Liverpool Poor Laws and Workhouse

Dear Rob,

I have been following your posts relating to the Brownlow Hill Workhouse and began wondering about the history of the Poor Laws and also Liverpool Workhouses.  Can you enlighten me further on this interesting subject.

Best wishes and many thanks for the local history lessons.
June Johnston.
Wirral

Liverpool Workhouse

Sharp Street Liverpool 4

Hi

I am researching my wife’s family tree and have details on some war records of a great grandfather who apparently lived in Sharp Street Liverpool 4  (Kirkdale?).  However, my research of Sharp Street has drawn a blank as I cannot seem to trace any record of this street on maps etc.

Are you able to give me any assistance and guidance on this matter.

Kind Regards

Harry Marchant

Rotunda

Hello,
what is the Rotunda.  I often hear this namebut do not know what it refers to.

John Grealey

 

Panorama in Liverpool 1797

I am transcribing a letter sent from Liverpool in 1797 by an Alicia Gaskell.

In her letter she states that one day she went “to the Panorama”.

Unfortunately she does not say much about what it was. I wondered if you knew what the Panorama was?

Possibly a camera obscura ?

Or an exhibition staged by Mr Bullock ?

Any ideas?

Yours hopefully,

Cliff Thornton

Essex, U.K.

Thomas Leyland and Walton Hall

Can you help, I am looking into the history of Walton Hall and have established that a Liverpool Slaver and Banker, Thomas Leyland once own the hall.  Do you have any information relating to this gentleman and particularly his family`s involvement with Walton Hall.

Regards

Simon Gheet

Walton Hall around the time of its demoliton

  

Thomas Leyland Slaver & Banker

Joesph Mayer`s Life

Hello Rob,

I have been following the postings on Jos Mayer and would like to find out more about his life.  Can you obligue?

Peter Falkner-Abbot.
Northumberland.

==================================================================

Hello Peter,

Mayer's benevolence and commitment to public enlightenment ensure his position as an important civic figure of the nineteenth century.

Joseph Mayer, (1803–1886) was collector of antiquities and works of art, and was born on 23 February 1803 at Thistlebury House, Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire, fourth son and the sixth of eleven children of Samuel Mayer (1767–1838), tanner, currier, and mayor of Newcastle under Lyme, and his wife, Margaret (1773–1859), daughter of John Pepper, architect.

Having attended Newcastle under Lyme grammar school, he moved to Liverpool in October 1821 at the age of eighteen. He began an informal apprenticeship as a silversmith under his brother-in-law, James Wordley (fl. 1817–1861), entering into partnership with him in 1834, and setting up on his own as a jeweller and goldsmith in 1844. He demonstrated a remarkable flair for business and the financial success he achieved enabled him to indulge a passion for archaeology and collecting which he had had since childhood. This had first manifested itself when he was eight when he acquired a small hoard of Roman coins and pottery sherds whose unearthing he had witnessed—a minuscule foreshadowing of the scale and comprehensiveness of the collections he later amassed, displayed to the public, and finally bestowed on the city of Liverpool.

Born into a radical and nonconformist family, Mayer was a natural patriot, and realized the value of cultivating learning and the arts among all classes in Britain. From his twenty-fifth year he contributed readily to loan exhibitions and made gifts to mechanics' institutes. He was an exhibitor at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and at the 1857 Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition. He was sustained in his endeavours by the support of a wide circle of friends, distinguished by their contributions to archaeology, to historical studies, and as influential moulders of opinion in the decorative arts. The development of his collection was greatly furthered by a close collaboration, in particular, with Charles Roach Smith and Augustus Wollaton Franks. Mayer's acquisition, in 1854, of the collection of Kentish antiquities excavated by the Revd Bryan Fausset was an outstanding event in the history of British archaeology, and his purchase in 1855 of the Byzantine and medieval ivories of Baron Gábor Fejérváry was an equally invaluable contribution to art collecting in Britain.

Mayer regarded his collections as a public resource which he willingly made available to those able to employ them to positive ends, and also funded several scholarly publications and sponsored archaeological excavations. His own contributions to literature were more modest, constituting a series of articles in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, of which he was one of the three founding members, on 20 March 1848. In 1855 he contributed a paper, ‘History of the art of pottery in Liverpool’ (revised edn, 1873), which remains fundamental to the study of the subject. Mayer was one of the earliest systematic collectors of ceramics, with important holdings of Liverpool porcelain and pottery, and a notable collection of Wedgwood wares. His most striking achievement in this connection was his discovery and acquisition of the vast hoard of documents of Josiah Wedgwood, the foundation deposit of the Wedgwood archive collection now at the University of Keele. Mayer generously put these papers at the disposal of Eliza Meteyard and advised, and assisted financially, in the completion of her Life of Josiah Wedgwood (1865). Mayer's collection was first made accessible to the general public in May 1852, when he opened an Egyptian Museum (later the Museum of National and Foreign Antiquities) in Colquitt Street, Liverpool. In 1867 he presented the collection, then valued at £75,000, to the Liverpool Free Library and Museum. In recognition of the munificence of his gift and other services to the town, the corporation of Liverpool commissioned the life-size statue of Mayer by Giovanni Fontana in St George's Hall, Liverpool. As with other surviving portraits, it reveals him to have been throughout his life a person of distinguished appearance, with an authoritative but sympathetic bearing. The Mayer collection continues as a significant constituent of the collections of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside.

The honour which Mayer most valued, however, was the fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London, awarded in 1850. In 1860 he was appointed captain of the Liverpool volunteer borough guard, and in 1864 captain of the 4th Bebington company of the 1st Cheshire rifle volunteers, a unit he had raised at his own expense. He had moved in 1860 to Pennant House, Bebington, Cheshire, where he continued his benefactions, endowing the borough with a well-stocked lending library, public gardens, and a lecture hall and picture gallery. Retiring from business in 1873, he applied himself, inconclusively, to writing a history of art in England, amassing more than 20,000 drawings, prints, and autograph letters, as well as continuing to collect works of art and antiquities. This collection, with an estimated value of £10,000, was dispersed by auction in Liverpool on 15–16 December 1887. He also collaborated with his nephew Frederick Boyle in the publication of two works which remain of permanent value in the study of the life and work of George Stubbs (1724–1806): Early Exhibitions of Art in Liverpool with some Notes for a Memoir of George Stubbs RA (1876), and Memoirs of Thomas Dodd, William Upcott, and George Stubbs RA (1879). In his retirement he pursued an interest in gardening, having in 1870 successfully cultivated in the open air the giant Victoria Regia water lily. He died unmarried at Pennant House on 19 January 1886, aged eighty-two, and was interred on 23 January 1886, at St Andrew's Church, Bebington.

Sourced from my battered, well worn Volume of  Oxford DNB

Regards

Rob Ainsworth

Programme Secretary & Web Administrator
Liverpool History Society

William Chadburn, Home at Clifton Villa Wallasey, Wirral

 

Clifton Villa Wallasey, Wirral

Clifton Villa is situated on the west side of 'Walmer Villa' as far back as 1853 a Mr Charles Beamish was living there. 20 years later the occupant was William Chadburn, then described as an optician but better known since as the founder of Chadburn's Ship Telegraph Co. Ltd whose products must have traveled the seven seas many times.

William Chadburn (28 Feb. 1844 - 3 Apl. 1927)

att.: the Secretary

 

Hello - I have done a lot of research into the ship's telegraphs and the founding family behind the development of this revolutionary device.  Today the telegraphs are collectors items; furthermore, they  are exhibited in more than 50 maritime museums worldwide, incl. the Albert Dock complex.

 

It was the inventor William Chadburn (28 Feb. 1844 - 3 Apl. 1927)  who was the dynamic force in the business. Due to public demand for info  I set up a website in 2003, and have written and contributed  articles over the last 12 years. 

 

I have discussed with staff at the museum the need for better recognition of this invention; now largely forgotten.  In fact 'Chadburn'  has become a generic term for telegraphs regardless of make!  If you care to log on to  www.ChadburnTelegraphs.com  you will be able to gain better understanding what the trade-mark means especially in shipping circles.   The Society's web site also incorporates other local instrument makers, such as: A Robinson of Bootle,  and  J.W. Ray & Co.  - the latter firm still exists in Knowsley.  Most of the famous liners and cargo vessels built from 1870 onwards had manoeuvering equipment supplied by  Chadburn, and its later fellow/competing  manufacturers. Their monopoly position was only broken in the 1930s.

 

We would like to honour the pioneering efforts of the Chadburn organisation with a memorial preferably to be located in or near the city centre, and wonder if you can offer advice how to proceed with such a project? 

 

With best regards

Dick Midhage                                                            York,  30 No. 2009.          (tel. 01904 637712.) 

 

 

144a Brownlow Hill Liverpool Workhouse?

Hello

I am researching my family history, and have discovered that one of my family members was born at 144a Brownlow Hill in Liverpool. This was not the family address at that time, and the father was listed as living at the family address. Was this place a maternity hospital? or perhaps some other form of institution? The birth was completely Legitimate,  The couple having married the previous year.
 
Thank you
 
Dave

St James Cemetary Tunnel

Hi Rob,

I enjoy the Liverpool History Society Questions Blog because of the diverse range of questions you get and often provide the answer I note.  You recently gave an answer to a question on the Oratory, but I would like to know what the bricked up tunnel in the cemetary was use for.

Best wishes

Martin

Public Access Tunnel

Quarrymen`s Tunnel

Hearse Tunnel

Web Link http://www.undergroundliverpool.co.uk/#/st-james-cemetery/4532725585

The Oratory at Liverpool Cathedral

Hallo,

on a recent visit to Liverpool I enjoyed a tour of Liverpool Cathedral and noticed a classical building near the entrance.  I think it is call "The Oratory".  I would like to know more about this building, but could not find it in my guide book.  Can you please help?

Gunter

Berlin
Germany

 

Huskisson Memorial

Tracey Emin Sculpture

 "Roman Standard bird"

Islington Row

Dear Sir,

I am researching my family hitory and have found my great Grand Parents originated from Liverpool.  They are listed as living in Islington Row, Liverpool around 1856.  I cannot find the street on any old maps of the city and hope you are able to help.

Yours

Cynthia Cowell
Long Beach.
Cal
USA

William Champs

Hello,

I am reearchng the life of Mr Champs do you know if he has any connections with Liverpool?

Dave

Martins Bank

Dear Sir,

Do you know where Martins Bank in Liverpool City centre is?  I have searched local maps but I am unable to locate the building and suspect it may no longer be around.

Sincerely

Peter Faulk

Wallsend

During the Second World War, a large part of Britain's gold reserve was stored in the Liverpool branch of Martins Bank. 

Everton Beacon

Hello,

do you know if the Everton Beacon was a stucture or building.

John Temple
Kingston
Surrey

Everton Beacon (c1220) consisted of a rectangular tower of three storeys.

It was blown down in a storm in 1803. The site is now occupied by St George's Church.

Botanic Gardens Wavertree

Hello Liverpool History Society,

I am trying to locate the site of Liverpool Botanic Gardens in Wavertree, can you please provide any information on the location.

Best wishes

Jessica