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Blitzkrieg
The Blitz
Concentrated between
1941 and 1942, the G
erman Blitz upon Liverpool was undoubtedly the most
traumatic event to ever happen in the history of the city. Bombs rained
down day and night, devastating the docks, the city centre and eventually the
suburbs. The strange thing about the whole experience was the universal
acceptance by the civilian population that it was something worthwhile to be
endured and a badge of honour to share the same dangers and hardships as the
fighting men overseas.
They were a different breed in those days and there was many a household which
lost not only family members but their home as well, receiving a pittance from
the government and left to fend for themselves. Today, instead of the
danger being hordes of Nazis it would be from hordes of counsellors but in those
days they just got on with it as best they could.
Four thousand people
died in the days of the Blitz and many more were injured but the harder the
blows the harder was the resistance and the general good humour and community
spirit against the common enemy brought them through it all.
As time went by Bombed Debris' appeared all over the city, ranging from the
wholesale destruction of iconic buildings to a gap here and there in a block of
houses. They soon lost their significance and became adventure playgrounds
for a whole generation of children, playing unknowingly on ground where whole
families had been wiped out. Nearly 70 years later, Bombed Debris' can
still be found here and there but very few of the present generation know or
care how they came about which is probably both a good thing and a bad thing.
Very few areas escaped unscathed but the area surrounding Liverpool 7 was not
one of them. The following document of sections of each of the
Kensington, Wavertree and Liverpool 7 areas is a microcosm of
what occurred in many neighbourhoods throughout the city.
Edge Hill- A
prelude to Disaster
Prior to the middle of the 19th century, this whole area was a pleasant rural
idyll of farmland and countryside. It was in fact so ple
asant that at the
urging of William Gladstone himself, William Roscoe was persuaded to move his
esteemed Botanical Garden from the smoky city out into the clean air of Edge
Hill. An estimation of how fast the city was expanding was that when
Roscoe built his Botanic Gardens in Crown St in 1803 the site was perceived to
be in a rural setting ---30 years later and his plants were suffering from
pollution.
The site he chose was a wasteland surrounding a crumbling
mansion called Plumbe Hall and the whole collection was transported to its new
home in 1830 much to the relief of local residents who were relieved that the
plan had been chosen in preference to a proposed jail.
The conversion of the surrounding wasteland into a public
park { Wavertree Park } in 1856 incorporated the Botanic collection within its precincts and
also within a walled garden, allowing all manner of exotic plants to be grown
within the micro-climate and many people began to call the whole site Botanic
Park. The botanic collection was undoubtedly the focal point of the park
but maps of the time show the areas which are now football pitches to have been
colourful shrubberies enhanced by two small lakes.
The area was growing fast and the next few years saw the addition of a
prestigious library and a reservoir {1856} and more significantly the park and
its neighbouring amenities became the focal point for a wealthy bourgeoisie to
build grand houses. The whole area quickly polarised into the archetypal
Victorian Utopia of wealthy middle-class homes surrounding a pleasant park and
was on a par with similar squares dotted throughout London. There was in
fact a "Victoriania" which is instantly recognizable in monuments,
parks and buildings and still exists in every corner of the land in various
states of decay according to the value placed on them by the local
councils. They should be treasured as they are both precious and fragile
and once gone can never be replaced.
The shiny new Edge Hill station, and its massive sidings further enhanced the
prestige of the growing area and the 1870's saw the neighbourhood at its zenith
in terms of wealth, architecture and quality of life. The station itself
was the first train station in the world with the line running to
Manchester. Lime St Station had yet to be built but work was in hand
already to tunnel through the solid sandstone into the city centre. But not even H.G. Wells
could have foreseen that it would be the railway and its Goods Yards that would one day bring Edge
Hill to its knees.
But for the time being, in mid-Victorian times, crinolined ladies
and frock-coated gents basked in the reflected glory of an Empire on which the
sun never set, in which the map of the world was coloured mainly pink, God was
in his heaven and all was right with the world.
To set the seal upon the whole thing, in 1886, Wavertree Park was chosen to be
the official site of The International Shipperies Exhibition which would
celebrate scientific achievements from all the countries of the Empire and to
open the show would be the Empress herself, Queen Victoria.
Within their ivory towers, strolls in what was in effect their own park, and
euphoric self-congratulation, it was largely unnoticed by the Victorian
bourgeoisie that Liverpool was still
expanding outwards from the river and the sylvan suburbia of Edge Hill was fast
becoming surrounded by cheap and
cheerful housing
for the masses. The Gas Works built in 1854 was a give-away to just how
many houses were planned. A glance at successive maps of the time would show
clearly, massive incursions into the countryside and decade after decade would
see a civic glacier inexorably absorbing villages and countryside wholesale
until a map of 1885 would show that the tide of houses had washed up as far as
Penny Lane ----at the time considered to be almost another town. By the
time the Queen came to town, she was visiting a way of life under siege.
And that's how it remained for the next half-century ----there was
nowhere left to build and the huge conglomeration of seething humanity worked
and played, they went to the pub and they went to the parks, those who had jobs
worked long hours and those who did not struggled along.
The once
Victorian
bastion surrounding the park went into a steady decline and mansions became
apartments and by 1940 Edge Hill had levelled out into a huge working-class area
with row upon row of terraced, two-up and two-down houses on all sides of the
railway station. The railway station and Goods Depot was an ant-heap of
industry and the inland equivalent of the docks. The industry of the
Victorians lived on a century later and to all intents and purposes would
continue to do so for another hundred years but nobody could ever
have anticipated the devastation that would rain down from Wellsian machines
undreamed of by Disraeli and Gladstone.
When the blow came it was almost as if it was to some grand design formulated
years ago to eradicate anything of any worth, be it art, architecture or
industry and at that time the power of the Nazis was such
that there were some who believed it to be almost credible.
The Reckoning
The bombing of Liverpool began in May 1941 and continued without cease until
January 1942. The May Blitz has passed into history 
as a devastating blow
which changed the face of the city forever. Beginning on May 1st, wave
after wave of German bombers attacked the city and on the 3rd May at 10.30
a.m. an armada of 500 Dorniers, Heinkels and Stukas dropped a rain of bombs over
the city centre, attacking the docks, the business area and the town centre.
The S.S. Malakand was destroyed at anchor in Huskisson dock, The Custom House
building damaged, Lewis's, Blacklers and Bunneys severely knocked about and
Lord
St had hardly a building left standing.
Sixteen German planes were knocked
out of the sky in return but back they came the next day and the next day and
for seven whole days of the first week in May the attacks were
ceaseless. Liverpool could not sustain such damage for much longer but
neither could the Luftwaffe maintain such a level of aggression and the
number of planes gradually lessened in numbers after the initial
onslaught. The attacks never ceased after that but they never reached the
ferocity of the May Blitz.
The Museum was severely damaged and the picture on the left illustrates how the
Egyptian room appeared before the bomb damage. The same room after a bomb
struck illustrates clearly the damage caused. The two black, Egyptian
deities standing guard to the right and left of the stairway can now be seen in
the new World Museum. Once again they are at the foot of a staircase in
the vestibule and the cracks and fissures caused by the bomb can still be
seen. The name of the famed Egyptologist Belzoni is carved into the side
of one of the figures.
The Liverpool Museum's took years to recover from the war damage and many of the
items were placed in storage and have remained so until this day. The work
of the Conservation Centre is going a long way to restoring the irreplaceable
items and artifacts which have been hidden from the public gaze for over half
-a-century are now seeing the light of dayy.
Just as the Luftwaffe were targeting Liverpool for special attention, so it was
that Lord Haw Haw did the same durin
g his propaganda exercises.
' There are riots in Scotland road and the South of
Liverpool. people are marching around waving white flags in Scotland road,
shouting for peace'.
He knew it was lies and we knew it was lies and if anything it stiffened
resolve.
The Railway and Goods Depot and massive Gas Works were a magnet for the Luftwaffe pilots, easy to spot
from the air and a worthwhile target, so Edge Hill was pounded on a regular
basis. The peripheral damage was unavoidable and inevitable for the
houses, shops and schools clustered closely around the main targets. A
number of public shelters sprang up but most had a brick shelter at the bottom
of the yard and these undoubtedly saved many lives.
Emphasising just how random some of the damage could be, the Conservatory in
Botanic gardens received a direct hit even though it was clearly within a rural
area. This was the beginning of a downward spiral from which the park has
yet to recover. Strangely, the Palm House in Sefton Park also came in for
some heavy damage and although it was never hit directly, a bomb landed close
enough to shatter every window in the glasshouse. Here also, the damage
caused the historic Palm House to decline and it is only in the 1990's that it
has been restored to some of its former glory.
Most streets had a house destroyed or a shop shattered or a massive hole in the
road but Bective Street was particularly unlucky when high explosive fell upon a
shelter ----2 people were killed and 9 were injured.
Webster Road school was unusual in that it had its own swimming pool in the
basement. This was boarded over and the bodies of the victims from the
surrounding areas were laid out on the planks. Sections of a generation
that had attended the school and learned to swim in the pool were now laid in
rows awaiting identification ---- a gardener from Newsham Park, Len Jones, had
the unenviable task of laying out the bodies for identification and it was not
uncommon to come across a friend or neighbour who had been killed.
In November 1941, the 56th air-raid took place causing a tragedy which Churchill
described as;
" The worst single incident of the war "
Land mines were if anything more to be feared than the bombs screaming
down ----- floating down on silken and silent parachutes, their silent and
graceful fall to earth belied the havoc they caused on landing. It was one
of these silent harbingers of doom which landed directly upon the Junior
Technical School of Durning Road ( sometimes called Clint Road School ) and it
was just bad luck that the place was full. Just a few minutes earlier two
trams had disembarked their passengers here and the whole incident seems to be
one of those nightmare scenarios where everything combined to cause the maximum
casualties. During the air-raid everyone she
ltered in the school basement
which was the worst place they could have been in the circumstances ----the mine
shattered the whole building which toppled down into the basement below,
trapping those who had not died instantly and to make things worse the boilers
burst erupting into cauldrons of steam and hot-water.
The authorities
managed to rescue 136 souls from the debris but a further 180 died in the
basement beneath tons of rubble. They were left where they had died within
the horrific confines of the basement, the whole area was sealed over and they
remain there to this day within their concrete tomb. There is a plaque listing the names of those who died in the nearby St. Cyprian's Church. The remainder of those who died in the May blitz are buried in a long, mass grave in Anfield cemetery.
To
put things into perspective ---as
dreadful as all these things were in Liverpool and other British cities, it
comes as quite a shock to visit cities in Germany and realise that they suffered
far worse damage from which they are recovering just as slowly. The
medieval town of Cologne is barely recognisable from the previously beautiful
place it once was. The bridges across the Rhine were nothing but twisted
masses of metal and the heart of the old town vanished completely
leaving just here and there an ancient statue and building barely visible in the
rubble. The magnificent medieval Cologne Cathedral was struck several
times but survived due to its monolithic construction. The damage is still
being attended to today but the repairs are purely functional and are clearly
visible. As in many British cities including Liverpool, the buildings
which have replaced the bombed ones do not bear comparison to what went before.
As for Berlin, they also have a "St. Lukes" and a new city is slowly
emerging from the rubble but very little remains of what was once a magnificent
European capital. Ironically, the Reichstag has been restored by an
English architect and there are some architectural gems intact in what was East
Berlin but overall Berlin was razed to the ground. The Chancellery which
was once the heartbeat of the Reich remains just as it was after the bombing and
the suspicion lingers that nobody quite knows whether it should be maintained as
a warning and a reminder or erased and rebuilt and there are many other
buildings throughout the city which beg the same question. The one or two
Jewish places of worship still standing have not only war damage to attend to
but also the depradations of KrystallNacht ------whether any of them will be
restored is doubtful but hope lives eternal.
====================================
The tragedy of Durning
road is 
further compounded by the existence of an almost impregnable shelter just
a short distance away within the boundaries of Botanic Park. Quite how
this massive system was built without anyone taking note is difficult to
ascertain and who it was built for is even more mysterious because it doesn't
appear to have been known about by the general public in the area.
There remains a mystery about the massive bunker complex hidden beneath the grass in the
shadow of the art-deco Littlewoods Building ---there's no doubt that it was used
but it was too far away from housing and transport to be for the general
population.
The land allegedly belongs to the Home Office which may give
some clues but then and now it is extremely well camouflaged and the entrance is
accessible only via a manhole which is also grassed
over.
Once inside, the complex is a labyrinth of concrete running the full
length of the Littlewoods building and cou
ld have sheltered many hundreds of
people. The proof that it was used are the several drawings on the walls
which are likenesses of the friends and colleagues of the artist, some wearing
tin-hats and others in obviously 40's clothing. And there they are now,
slowly mouldering away on the dripping walls of this huge complex more in
keeping with something emanating from cold-war paranoia.
The artist is quite skilled and the quality of the drawings done in cold, wet
conditions suggests that in reasonable conditions the artist ( man or woman )
would have been an accomplished painter.
To date, the drawings are a mystery although there was a letter in the Echo some
time ago claiming the artist was Canadian.
But not everything was depressing
durin
g the blitz years and apart from the general
camaraderie it was little things like Jane and her dog Fritz, ironically a
German sausage-dog ( Dachsund ) , who brightened people's lives in the Daily Mirror. It's
amazing how cartoons no matter how simple can become symbolic of a life that's
far brighter in other circumstances and Jane continued to be popular throughout
the war and beyond.
Churchill christened Jane "Britain's secret
weapon" and the first British armoured vehicle landing on D.Day carried a
portrait of Jane painted on the side. There was also the tale of a British
submarine which had been damaged and in danger of sinking and the crew asked the
captain could they have a last look at his pictures of Jane which for some
strange reason he kept locked in his safe.
Th
e story had a happy ending as
the sub limped home and Jane's legend expanded accordingly. In every
cartoon Jane invariably ended up in a state of undress but until 1944 she had
never revealed all. The Normandy campaign inspired her to go naked for
once and servicemen everywhere rejoiced that she had "given her all for
England".
Jane's real name was Christabel Leighton-Porter and apart from having no
inhibitions about shedding her clothes she was quite posh and also astonished at
her own popularity. After the war she took the show on the road and
appeared all over the country in the Jane Show .
One of the venues was the
Pavilion in Lodge Lane where the 100% male audience was augmented by a host of
small boys who had crept in unseen. They were all doomed to disappointment
as unknown to them naked actors and actresses were not allowed to move about on
the stage in those days so the show consisted of a number of
"tableaux" . The curtain would go back and there would be Jane
and her pals in an artistic pose as still as statues until the curtain went down
in readiness for the next "tableaux". It was straight out of the
Victorian musical hall era and just as boring { or so I was told } but Jane had
"done her bit" both for the troops and the Daily Mirror.
A Tale of Two Churches
Our Lady and St. Nicholas
Church
Our Lady and St Nicholas is the parish church of Liverpool and often called the
Sailor's Church. There has been a church on the site since the 14th
century and when the first church was here the waters of the Mersey lapped at
the surrounding walls when the tide was in and revealed a sandy beach when the
tide receded.
In the latter years, the church has suffered two major
disasters ---the first was in 1810 when the spire collapsed and killed 22
parishioners. It was the worst luck imaginable that the spire crumbled
just when people were gathering for morning service and even worse that many of
them were children from Moorfields, Old Church school in Chapel St. The
fates conspired that day and the result was a major tragedy.
The church was restored in 1814 with a design by Thomas Harrison of Chester
producing a beautifully filigreed stone lantern replacing the fallen spire,
topped by a golden weathervane in the shape of a sailing ship representing the
shipwrecked S.S. Donnelly.
The second disaster to strike the church was a direct hit by a German bomb
during the firestorm of the May blitz which caused extensive damage requiring
major rebuilding work.
Today the church and its gardens are a haven of peace in the city centre and on
a sunny day every available space is filled by office workers during their lunch
hour.
The addition of Tom Murphy's evocative statue commemorating the blitz is a
fitting memorial to the bombing throughout the city. The statue is in the
form of a tableau with a staircase as a centrepiece, a mother on the bottom rung
appealing to her young son flying a toy Spitfire on the top, to come down to the
safety of the cellar.
St Lukes Church
St Lukes suffered appalling damage during the May blitz in a similar incident to
St. Nicholas church. Unlike the latter, it was never rebuilt but remains a
mute reminder of the war years. There is a bombed-
out church in the centre
of Berlin, the Kaiser Wilhem Gedachtniskirche which serves much the same
purpose, although it is not nearly as pretty as St. Lukes. Just like St. Nicholas, the
church and gardens are a peaceful and colourful haven in the city centre
especially in summertime when the gardens are full of colour.
I was once working in the gardens in the summertime of the late 80's when a
young German girl approached and asked why there was no centre to the building
and it was just a shell. When I explained that it was bombed during the war ------- she
asked "Who by".
I suppose such ignorance could be thought of as a bad thing but then again
it was an indication of how the war years were fading into history and of little
account to a younger generation.
St. Lukes remains a
monument to the war years and is also being utilised as a place of remembrance
to other causes. There is a memorial to the immigrants from the Irish
Famine which from a social point of view not only had a great bearing upon Irish
fortunes but also those of the city of Liverpool
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Strange Decisions
The number of iconic buildings damaged or destroyed by the blitz is legion and
includes, dock buildings, much loved turn-of-the-cen
tury department stores,
hospitals and churches. Most of the more important buildings were restored
where applicable but one notable exception was the Custom House which was badly
damaged and subsequently demolished.
Built in 1839, around the same time
as St. Georges Hall, the Custom House was a magnificent building and the
consensus of opinion was that it was entirely restorable but the decision was
made to demolish it and that's exactly what happened.
Even in its days of
imitating a Roman ruin the Custom House had a certain style and was certainly
preferable to the deep hole left in its place which remained for decades
surrounded by hoardings. The sketch on the right shows the Custom
House and in the foreground is the Albert Dock with the Pump House
chimney.
The extensive building program in 2008 retains the foreground as completely
identifiable but the background where the Custom House stands has altered so
much that it makes sketches such as this one invaluable when identifying what
stood there in days gone by.
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As an afterthought, the 
magnificent Sailor's Home
was demolished at about the same time and while there may have been a certain
flawed logic in demolishing the Custom House to get rid of the beautiful and
historical Sailor's Home was complete lunacy. There is a Custom House in
Dublin and a walk along the banks of the Liffey reveals an almost identical
building to the one that Liverpool boasted.
The Sailor's Home stood just a few hundred yards away from the Custom House and
throughout months of firestorms and bombs emerged virtually
unscathed. The Sailor's Home was just what it said
it was and many seafarers over the years had found a bed within the building
which replicated a ship inside the building with cast-iron rails on each floor
looking for all the world like a ship's rail. Built by John Cunningham in
1848, the exterior was Victorian
Gothic with a beautifully ornate entrance of Liver Birds and city crests and the
flags of all nations flew overhead.
The Sailor's Home was also a recruiting
centre when the Confederacy required sailors for the many ships which sailed
from Liverpool during the American Civil war and many
a ship such as the Alabama was crewed by sailors drawn from the Sailor's Home.
Just what the city councillors were
thinking of to allow the demolition of such an historic and unique building
defies logic but in 1973, after welcoming seamen from all over the world
throughout the Victorian years { sailors were still using the building in the
late 60's } and surviving the blitz, an absolute gem was tossed away for no
reason ascertainable then or now. To add insult to injury, the magnificent
ornamental entrance made of iron, with gilded Liver Birds interspersed
with ropes, medallions, crests and all manner of maritime detail actually ended
up in a scrapyard. Inexplicably, the frontage found it's way to Birmingham
City Council who refuse to relinquish it ----- and who can blame them.
Postscript; On a trip to Cologne in 2008, it was obvious that bombing of their city is just as emotive to the German citizens as it is to Liverpudlians. Several inhabitants of Cologne mildly berated us for the extensive damage to their city ----they had obviously never been to Liverpool.