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Saved up post 2

25/5/2016

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Cabal

At the same time the new regulations for streets and planning were laid out, themselves very laudable and necessary for a modern town, two things were happening. First, there were the ‘regulations’ which Gregson later complained about. The Town’s appointed surveyor had to approve all plans and changes, for a fee. Approved builders had to be used ( approved by the surveyor, and as it happened, co-incidentally owned by the surveyor). Completed work then had to be signed off by the surveyor ( for a fee).  The surveyor also received a handsome fee. The surveyor was John Foster senior, member of the Select Improvement Committee. And in yet another huge co-incidence, also an architect employed by the council and surveyor. Conflict of interests did not seem to make an appearance.  Foster later designed the buildings of the West side of the Square, and the toolshed in the centre.  Second, and at the same time, the council started selling long term leases to the lands in Moss Lake Fields. The tenants who invested in these included… Earle, Gregson, Crosbie ( from the Select Committee), and unrelated people like Hollinshead, Dawson and Littledale. Who co-incidentally sat on the Corporation Council or were former mayors ( or both).  In addition to his own profits, Foster had estimated ( according to Gregson) that in addition to improving the town, the new regulations would net the council some £60,000 ( around £4million today).
 
It had been clear for some time which way the wind was blowing for expansion, and much like Moore a hundred years before, twelve lessees speculatively bought the plots of worthless flood-risk fields all around the Square from the suddenly magnanimous and naïve council between 1763 and 1796, for a period usually of three lives and twenty one years ( which usually lasted around 70 years). Should the council decide to expand that way, these leases would become much more valuable of course.  Fortunately, as most of the lessees were either on the council or connected to it, they would no doubt be reasonable about it.  As you’ll see in the next chapter, the negotiation of releasing leases and re-letting the land (to many of the same people) turned out to be quite financially rewarding.
 
One of the first actions of the Select Improvement Committee was the ordering of investigations into sewerage. And as water runs downhill, gravity again took a part in determining that the top of the hill, just within the town boundaries (present day Crown Street) would have to be where any plans started. Right where the worthless undrained fields fortuitously purchased recently by the councilmen stood.
 
It took a number of years for the powers of the Select Improvement Committee to grow to the stage where they could put forward an acceptable solution for ‘town planning’ the expansion beyond Hope Street and Mount Pleasant, but once they did, it was a doozie.

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Saved up Post

21/5/2016

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As I won't be writing anything knew for a few days at least ( as I recuperate) thought I'd post one of two saved up blogs I meant to send before my talk, which will hopefully be re-scheduled at some point. Thanks for sticking with me!


Rodney Street

Incoming merchant John Gladstone ( brother of future Abercromby square tenant Robert, father of tenants Adam and Roberston) lead the next stage of fashionable building on the new Rodney Street from 1780 ( where his other son, future Prime Minister William Ewart was born), but before the road was even complete it had been again overtaken by expansion outwards, and by the necessary improvements to the town.
 
Cholera had been a terrible shadow over the now overcrowded town for fifty years, the original streets of a hundred years previous were too narrow and impractical for a thriving port, and Liverpool wanted to look how it felt, like a grand metropolis to match London, the only place more important in the country in terms of trade.  In his 1784 Medical Survey of Liverpool Moss complained of how much still needed to be done, with streets too narrow, insufficient paving, small houses, ongoing problems with the water supply, smelly sewers and dirty streets. So on 7th December 1785, the council formed the Select Improvement Committee, its remit to bring Liverpool up to scratch.  Its first actions were setting down minimum requirements for new building and the widening of roads with an eye to the future, and the creation of the planning precepts which would culminate in the carefully planned and laid out Abercromby square and surroundings.
 
Things hadn’t changed hugely since Moore’s day in terms of having one eye ( or both eyes in this case) to a profit though. The idea of council corruption for financial gain in Liverpool will obviously come as a complete shock… but this is what the antiquarian Matthew Gregson accused them of. There may be some sour grapes involved as various members of Gregson’s family were involved from the off, and he never inherited money he thought his due, but the Select Improvement Committee included numerous names that would become central to the leases for the land over the following decades; the Crosbies, Earles, Eyes and Fosters formed the core of the group.

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Apologies for the break in service

18/5/2016

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Dear all,

Sorry for anyone who was hoping to hear my talk on Sunday but circumstances meant a postponement was necessary. Unfortunately I was taken ill on Thursday and have been in hospital until yesterday afternoon, hence no talk and no blog updates.

I'm recuperating well but a bit of rest needed so posts here may be intermittent for the next couple of weeks. Do keep checking though, as this is only temporary blip, promise!

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Honey I'm home...

11/5/2016

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Did you miss me? 

... what do you mean you didn't even notice I'd been gone?  Oh well. Returned refreshed from a lovely mini break in Nice with my better half, and now back to work and research, and preparing for my talk to the Society on Sunday. 

I'd almost finished posting the draft parts from my 'pre-1800 chapter', so just a couple left, starting below...

In the last posts I gave a brief outline of the history of the town, but for this the next part we need to look specifically at the fashionable growth of Liverpool. In its earliest days the merchant class lived by 'the Exchange' and on the historic seven streets, from Water Street to what is now the business district, but as trade grew from 1600, and landowners like Moore built more streets, and the upper echelons of the merchant class would prefer their houses a little away from the business, industry, and the increasing populous lower classes. 

From the early 1700s, when the first dock appeared and the inlet was filled in, the fashionable townhouses spread south, with School Lane, Hanover Street and then Duke Street being the residences of choice. No sooner were these built than the expansion of the  ‘town’ caught up, and an area further out from the centre was needed by the well to do. Though not the subject of this history, the same fashionable expansion was happening to the North along Scotland Road, ( although this was restricted when the canals started being constructed from 1770).
 
True aristocracy lived out of town, but for the self-made men of the expanding port, and the large number of ‘business immigrants’ from Scotland, Lancashire and London, it was important to be close to the office, with easy access to the ever important ‘Exchange’. Liverpool’s roads were abysmal at this point, uneven and unpaved, and carriage transport was still difficult at best, so a 'townhouse' was a must.
 
By the mid 1750s, the roads to the East were made navigable, and Prescot Road and Smithdown Road became more important routes for traffic. Martindale’s Hill ( Mount Pleasant) and Love Lane were fashionable country walks, and Duke Street extended all the way up to Hope Street, as a direct link to the town centre.

The flat fields overlooking the town from the top of the hill were looking like a great place to build next, and already had clean water from the reservoir formed in 1740. It was obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense ( and a shred of business acumen) that the Moss Lake fields were the future.

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Link

5/5/2016

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I'll be off weebly for a few days, so feel free to check out our exhibition on the Confederates of Abercromby Square in the meantime to tide you over, if you haven't already.

Next week I shall cruelly tease you with details of my talk for the Liverpool History Society on May 15th!

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Reminiscences

4/5/2016

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There are several reminiscences in different histories of the nineteenth century, recalling the use of the fields for troop musters, for fairs, ice skating and country walks, but it may be useful here to provide a little reconstructed map. As well as memory playing tricks, conflating events, and Stonehouse not having access to numerous eighteenth and seventeenth century survey maps and topographical information available today, it is of course difficult to accurately place paths and bridges over what were previously open fields with no landmarks. We can therefore take some confidence in his footpath started at a gate and style by the Eye and Ear infirmary ( current Stowell Street) as there was a windmill opposite, on the site of the current Philharmonic Hall, but his estimations of Myrtle Street and memories of the stone bridges seem a little further from the mark, which is understandable given that they were in the middle of fields. Perry’s map of 1768 hints usefully at the likely locations where there is doubt,
 
By 1750, Crabtree Lane ( Faulkner Street) was a very useful path over the dry parts of Moss Lake Fields, leading up from Duke Street and on to Smithdown Lane and Lodge Lane. The hollow and slope of the grounds meant that just to the left of this, heading out of town, the Moss Lake Brook formed itself into a coherent stream. This ran North pretty much under and a few yards east of the course of Chatham Street, where St Catherine’s Church would later stand. Stonehouse’s path cut pretty much across the current Abercromby Square, to a wooden footbridge over the brook roughly where Oxford Street meets Chatham Street, then split left along what is now Grove Street, and right up the hill to Smithdown Lane, around the wonderfully suitably peaty soil that later formed the home of the Botanic Gardens, and from there to Wavertree Road and Edge Lane. The stone bridge he refers to is one of the two crossing the brook further on, either at the intersection of Daulby Street and Pembroke Place, at the town end of the Royal Hospital, or, as that had been partly blocked by this point, more likely where Peach Street meets Brownlow Hill, next to the new University Halls of Residence.
 
And this brings us to the birth of the Square and the need to expand the town outwards and to create the new planned residences.  And the story of the Square itself started a good forty years before the first house was built.

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Recollections

3/5/2016

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To get a picture of the area pre-urbanisation, it’s useful to look at James Stonehouse’s ‘Recollections of a Nonagenarian’, published 1863, which I’ll lazily quote from at length here if you’ll excuse me.
 
Here was also a pleasant walk over the Moss Lake Fields to Edge Hill. Where the Eye and Ear Infirmary stands there was a stile and a foot-path to the Moss Lake Brook, across it was a wooden foot bridge.  The path afterwards diverged to Smithdown-lane.  The path-road also went on to Pembroke-place, along the present course of Crown-street.  I have heard my father speak of an attempt being made to rob him on passing over the stile which stood where now you find the King William Tavern.  He drew his sword ( a weapon commonly worn by gentlemen of the time) which so frightened the thieves that they ran away, and, in their flight, went into a pit of water, into which my father also ran in the darkness which prevailed.  The thieves roared loudly for help, which my father did not stop to accord them.  He, being a good swimmer, soon got out, leaving the thieves to extricate themselves as they could.  There were several very pleasant country walks which went up to Low-hill through Brownlow-street, and by Love-lane ( now Fairclough-lane).  I recollect going along Love-lane many a time with my dear wife, when we were sweethearting.  We used to go to Low-hill and thence along Everton-road ( then called Everton-lane), on each side of which was a row of large trees, and we returned by Loggerhead's-lane (now Everton Crescent), and so home by Richmond-row, ( called after Dr. Sylvester Richmond, a physician greatly esteemed and respected.)  I recollect very well the brook that ran along the present Byrom-street, whence the tannery on the right-hand side was supplied with water.
 
…It does not require a man to be very old to remember the pleasant appearance of Moss Lake Fields, with the Moss Lake Brook, or Gutter, as it was called, flowing in their midst.  The fields extended from Myrtle-street to Paddington, and from the top of Mount Pleasant or Martindale’s-hill, to the rise at Edge-hill.  The brook ran parallel with the present Grove-street, rising somewhere about Myrtle-street.  In olden times, before coal was in general use, Moss Lake Fields were used as a “Turbary,” a word derived from the French word Tourbiere, a turf field.  ( From the way that the turf is dried we have our term topsy turvy, i.e., top side turf way).  Sir Edward More, in his celebrated rental, gives advice to his son to look after “his turbary.”  The privilege of turbary, or “getting turf,” was a valuable one, and was conferred frequently on the burgesses of towns paying scot and lot.  I believe turf, fit for burning, has been obtained from Moss Lake Fields even recently.  Just where Oxford-street is now intersected by Grove-street, the brook opened out into a large pond, which was divided into two by a bridge and road communicating between the meadows on each side.  The bridge was of stone of about four feet span, and rose above the meadow level.  The sides of the approach were protected by wooden railings, and a low parapet went across the bridge.  Over the stone bridge the road was carried when connection was opened to Edge-hill from Mount Pleasant, and Oxford-street was laid out.  When the road was planned both sides of it were open fields and pastures.  The first Botanic Gardens were laid out in this vicinity; they extended to Myrtle-street, the entrance Lodge stood nearly on the site of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum.  In winter the Moss Lake Brook usually overflowed and caused a complete inundation.  On this being frozen over fine skating was enjoyed for a considerable space.  The corporation boundary line was at this side of the brook.  In summer the volunteers sometimes held reviews upon these fields, when all the beauty and fashion of the town turned out to witness the sight.  At this time all the land at the top of Edge-hill was an open space called the Greenfields, on part of which Edge-hill church is built.  Mason-street was merely an occupation lane.  The view from the rising ground, at the top of Edge-hill, was very fine, overlooking the town and having the river and the Cheshire shore in the background.  Just where Wavertree-lane, as it was called, commences there was once a large reservoir, which extended for some distance towards the Moss Lake Fields, Brownlow-hill Lane being carried over it.
 
…This bridge has lately been a subject of remark, it having been laid bare in making some excavations for houses in Oxford-street.  But this bridge is not the one alluded to previously which was constructed of wood, and was merely a foot-bridge, whence two paths diverged to Edge-lane and Smithdown lane.

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