Two more galleries and a cathedral.

Last weekend we had a trip to the Wirral. This is because number two son had spotted a good deal on a model of car he has been looking for, at a garage in Birkenhead. So we offered to drive them over to collect it, and we would stay a night and visit Port Sunlight. We’ve talked about doing that often enough, so this was a good opportunity.

It’s lovely spring weather at present, and the drive over to Birkenhead was fine. The car was perfect, so after buying us lunch, son and daughter set off back and we took ourselves to Port Sunlight.

Port Sunlight was built by William Lever of Lever Bros., the soap magnate. (It sounds funny put like that, but apparently he deliberately chose to manufacture soap because each unit is relatively cheap and people would always have to buy it.) He used palm oil, not animal fat, and produced soap of much better quality and, importantly, much more pleasant smell, than most commonly available soap, and made a fortune.

He built a model village for his workers, named after his best selling household soap. It’s now run by a trust and the houses are privately owned, but mostly grade 2 listed and it’s a conservation area. It’s heavily influenced by the Arts and Craft movement, and it’s lovely. The houses are very varied in style, there’s lots of open spaces, and though obviously the houses don’t have garages, the roads are wide and fairly empty. It’s quiet and peaceful.

Lever believed in healthy recreation, so there were myriads of clubs and activities, some of which, apparently, are still going, although the open air swimming pool has gone and the girls’ club building is a museum. There’s a Grade 1 listed war memorial with sculptures by Goscombe John, who was Lever’s favourite sculptor.

Lever believed in education and culture for his workers, and built the Lady Lever Art Gallery to house his collection of paintings, sculpture and furniture. He bought some paintings for their potential as advertising! Those feature children being bathed and such like, and of course Millais' "Bubbles". 

We were slightly unlucky in that some of the rooms are closed for restoration – they open again in about a fortnight, so our timing was off. I went for the paintings mainly, but actually a lot of the furniture was superb. I was very pushed as to what to choose for my one thing to take home. There was a lovely sculpture called “Snowdrift” by Edward Onslow Ford, and three small busts by Goscombe John, of his mother-in-law, his wife and his daughter, which were wonderful, but really you needed all three for the full impact. If it had to be just one, I choose the mother-in-law. Lever seemed to have a bit of a thing about commodes – there are lots, and all superb. It’d be awfully difficult to choose just one.

The following day, Sunday, we went into Liverpool. It’s about fifteen years since we were there, and then it was dire. Acres of wrecked houses, litter, empty lots, and a feeling of despair. It made me think of Memphis or Detroit, although of course it wasn’t as bad as those places.  We didn’t pay the bill in the hotel as drunken Northern Irishmen were charging around the corridors all night, banging on doors and yelling. We didn’t dare to tackle them, and nor did the hotel staff, and I couldn’t really blame them.

Well, the good news is that Liverpool is much improved. The Georgian terraces have been well restored, and there are a lot of smart new buildings belonging to one or another of the universities. There’s still empty lots but they have been tidied up so that they don’t look like bombsites (which to be fair to Liverpool, they might be. It was very heavily bombed.) There are some new housing developments, but the population of Liverpool has fallen. 

The main gripe I still have, is that people don’t seem to take a pride in their city. So there is still lots of litter, and central areas, which are regularly and frequently cleaned in Nottingham, haven’t been swept for ages. Also there were some small but telling problems; we drove past one car park because it had a large closed sign, but later discovered it was open; the car park we did choose had the emergency exits partially blocked by junk; the toll machines on the Mersey Tunnel didn’t work properly, and the attendant didn’t seem inclined to sort it out.

We went in order to visit the Walker Gallery and the Anglican cathedral, and they are both terrific, and any city which possesses either one of them, never mind both, has really got something of which to be proud.

The Walker Gallery possesses a better collection than I have seen in some capital cities. It’s very comprehensive too, from really contemporary pieces to some early Italian religious art of superb quality. The special exhibition was the Pre-Raphaelites, so I chose a Burne-Jones, “The Beguiling of Merlin” as my thing to take home. It’s just magical, with lovely lines of Nimue's body, and the trees beside her, and the reclining Merlin.  Have a look:

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ladylever/collections/paintings/gallery2/merlin.aspx

But then I realised that it was on loan from the Lady Lever gallery. So it kind of didn’t count, but perhaps it would have to be my thing for the Lady Lever gallery ………….. and so on and on, as if I really was going to be given anything to take home!  

I also very much liked an Augustus John picture of two Jamaican girls, and a Rossetti, “Dante’s Dream”, but settled on  Stubbs, “Molly Longlegs.”  It was a really difficult decision, though.

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/collections/paintings/18c/stubbs.aspx

Then we went into the Anglican cathedral. Its architect is Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, whose other works include Bankside Power Station, now the Tate Modern, and the traditional red phone box. It’s the most stunning building. Scott won a competition for the design in 1903, when he was only twenty two years old. One has to admire the committee for a bold choice! But it was the right one.

The cathedral was not finally completed until 1978, after Scott’s death. It’s enormously high and huge, and contains some wonderful art works. There’s an Elisabeth Frink sculpture of the risen Christ over the west door. All the windows are superb, and the choir stalls are modern and so, so beautiful.

We hesitated about climbing the central tower, as the building is so high, but then discovered that there are lifts, one taking you up so far, and then another to the bell loft, leaving only a bit more than a hundred steps to climb. So up we went, and it was brilliant. As usual there are two ceilings, so you look up at the sandstone vault from the floor of the cathedral, but above that there are concrete beams. Maybe there’s a steel frame, I don’t know. And the bells are fantastic – there’s a peal of thirteen bells, plus a  huge one called Great George, hung in a pendant position.  Going up inside the tower really brings home to one the scale  of the building.  I remembered we thought it was wonderful fifteen years ago, and this time I thought it was even better than I remembered. 

So a good thing about the trip is that I feel better disposed towards Liverpool than after our last time there; but if I had to work there, I’d probably choose to live in Port Sunlight!