National Museums Liverpool Blog - social history

Last month the 'Mapping Memory: L1 and Liverpool's central waterfront' project began with its first workshop, kindly attended by the Liverpool Women's History Group. The aim of the project is to explore memories of the L1 area during the 1950s, 60s and 70s and the Women's History Group certainly provided an abundance of lively and interesting memories and stories for our researchers to collect.

The workshop started by asking the ladies to trace a particular route they would take through the L1 and central waterfront area, revealing a clustering around places such as Lord Street, Paradise Street and London Road. As the session progressed an array of collective memories showed how women used urban space during the twentieth century and the areas of the city which have created the most powerful and resilient memories over the years.

With numerous workshops scheduled over the coming months we are eager to get in contact with as many people as possible who may have lived, worked or socialised in the L1 area. So if you fit the bill, please get in contact with me (Laura Balderstone) on 0151 794 2416 or email L.Balderstone@Liverpool.ac.uk and share your memories! For more information on the project itself check out the Mapping Memory web page.

The project is a collaboration between NML, Liverpool University and Re-Dock. We're grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding it as part of their Beyond Text Programme. 

The well-loved icon of Liverpool department stores Lewis’s, sadly closed its doors for the last time at the end of May. Prior to that for around the last 30 years the store was mainly recognised for its shopping culture, but until the early 1980s it was much more than a place where you might buy a dress or new handbag.

Before the 80s the store also offered three restaurants and what was at one time the world’s largest hair salon on the fifth floor, until it was closed to the public in the 80s and used as a storage floor ever since.

Many remember the fifth floor, which included some fantastic examples of 1950s interior design, aimed at injecting vibrancy into the post-war years that saw Liverpool’s population along with the rest of the UK, emerging from destruction and deprivation.

The fifth floor flaunted bright colours and light, featuring a Grade II listed unique hand-painted ceramic tiled mural in the cafeteria which once seated 600 people. Created by Carter’s of Poole, the 65 metre-long mural was inspired by a mural at the 1951 Festival of Britain, which celebrated the best of British design. The Lewis’s mural features condiments, utensils, vegetables and cutlery.

The Lewis's murals featured images of cutlery. (c) Stephen King

On Wednesday 18 August at 1pm, visitors to the National Conservation Centre will be treated to a free talk by Lynn Pearson from the Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society in conjunction with the Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story exhibition. Lynn will speak about the forgotten murals of the 1950s and 60s, including those at Lewis’s which are now to be incorporated into the redevelopment of the building. This is a drop-in event and there’s no need to book.
 
The first solo exhibition by Liverpool photographer Stephen King reflects his visits to Lewis’s ‘lost’ fifth floor, closed to the public for the last three decades. Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story is on display at the National Conservation Centre until 30 August 2010.

Thursday 6 May is the day people have been talking about all across Liverpool: it's the day our public lecture series features the history of World Museum Liverpool.

Liverpool's Museum - The First 150 Years is the first of three great talks lined up for this afternoon's session. Presented by our Executive Director of Collections, John Millard, the event starts at 2pm in the Treasure House Theatre, World Museum, and is part of our celebrations in the museum's 150th anniversary year.

John's talk will be followed by, at 2.25pm, Collecting Tibet: Objects, People and Places in early 20th-century British India - presented by Head of Ethnology Emma Martin; and at 2.50pm A Place Called Home: Liverpool Court Housing by archaeology curator Liz Stewart.

An impressive line-up for your Thursday afternoon!

Every year, kids go crazy for one toy that then sells out everywhere and is nigh-on impossible for parents to get hold of. Remember that film Jingle All The Way, when Arnold Schwarzenegger spends the entire film trying to get hold of a Turbo Man for his son? That’s almost what it was like trying to get hold of a Tamagotchi for my brother’s eighth birthday…

However, the old ones were always the best, and as much as feeding a Tamagotchi, cleaning up after it, and making sure it had 100% happiness was fun (?!) the batteries did tend to run out after some time, much to our mum’s delight!

Other, simpler, 20th century toys hold many special memories. Who can forget the Spinning Top, or the craze that was the Rubik’s Cube? The Museum of Liverpool team are currently appealing for your own memories of 20th century toys, and you can share them here on the museum’s facebook page.

One of the great toy crazes of the 20th century: The Rubik's Cube

The toys, ranging from an early 20th century miniature test cricket set to some Stickle Bricks, will all be featured in a Toy Timeline in the new Museum of Liverpool when it opens in 2011.

Your comments could be featured alongside the toys, providing personal stories of people’s own childhoods. Or perhaps you’re still getting great entertainment from the toys today? I have it on good authority there are still quite a lot of people trying to solve the Rubik’s Cube they received as a birthday present in the 80s!

Today is the anniversary of a momentous event for football fans in Liverpool and beyond. It was on this day in 1892 that Everton Football Club split in two, with half of the members leaving their home at Anfield and moving to a new site a few hundred yards away at Goodison Road, and the remaining members staying to form Liverpool Football Club.

The Everton Collection website features the actual minute book from 25 January 1892 that describes the members' final offer to Mr Houlding, the owner of the ground they were currently leasing, and the resolution to move to Goodison Road if the offer was not accepted. The rest is history. There's more on the Anfield Split as it came to be known, including the politics and personalities that contributed, in a special feature on the site.

I know I've mentioned The Everton Collection on this blog before but it really is a fantastic resource for fans of Everton, football in general or social history - it's the world's greatest collection of football memorabilia. There's an exhibition of some of the highlights from the collection - Everlution - at Liverpool's central library until Sunday 18 April. The Easter break is just around the corner and there'll be tours and children's trails over the period. And if you can't make it to the exhibition there's either the fascinating Everton Collection website, or objects from the collection will be featured in the new Museum of Liverpool. COYB!

Copyright Stephen King

Even without its famous cheeky statue, the store has dominated Renshaw Street as long as anyone can remember, as this photograph from the Stewart Bale collection shows. Several generations of local people have shopped and worked there.

The news of the closure adds extra poignancy to the stories told in the next exhibition to open at the National Conservation Centre, Lewis's fifth floor: a department story. The exhibition features recent pictures by local photographer Stephen King of the faded glamour of a whole floor of Lewis's which has not been open to the public since the 1980s.

The photographs show the original features and decor of the hair salon, cafeteria and restaurants which were the epitome of style in the 1950s. There is also a series of portraits of current and ex-employees, with their reminiscences of life at Lewis's during that era.

Also included in the exhibition is an artist documentary filmed and produced by Jacqueline Passmore. The film examines the impact of Lewis's heyday through interviews with staff from the fifth floor.

The exhibition opens to the public on Friday and runs until 30 August 2010, ultimately outliving the department store that inspired it.

The second story taken from the archives this week about World Museum, is from 1888. I'm not sure how our curators would feel about sending cabinets of precious specimens out to schools today, but at that time the museum's 'schools loans service' provided a great way for children to learn about different types of artefacts while in the classroom.

A portable museum!

On 3 February 1888 John H Wood, Secretary of the Liverpool and District Teachers’ Association, wrote a letter to the museum in praise of its schools loan service:

"…as a proof of the usefulness of the boxes, that scholars were set thinking and enquiring, so they have proved a real aid to teaching. We should be glad to get them oftener, since they have been so helpful an interesting.

...the selection and arrangement of duplicate specimens of instructive and attractive character from the museum collections, and placing them in small portable cabinets of less than two feet cubical measurement, of plain simple construction, and very portable.

These cabinets are circulated one by one for a definite period of one month among such of the public elementary schools of all denominations, within the parliamentary boundaries of the city, as have, on invitation, expressed a desire to see them.

Sixteen cabinets are in circulation, and sixty-four schools have each had a cabinet for one month, with very satisfactory results."

The pioneer schools loan service was launched at the museum in the spring of 1884, and was the first in any museum.

This week is a bumper week for our memories of the World Museum as we continue to pull out historic gems from the museum's archives from the last 150 years. We have two interesting tales for this week in history. Firstly a report of 'rowdyism and almost unimaginable crowds' from 2 February 1935, when the Liverpool Post quoted museum director Dr. Douglas Allan complaining that the museum was overcrowded and disorderly on Sundays:

Dr. Douglas Allan: preferred promenading to hide-and-seek.

"...according to Dr. Allan, the number of people who crowd into the museum on Sundays is becoming unmanageable.  Many of the visitors are very young children, who occupy their time mainly in games of hide-and-seek… It is proposed, therefore, that children must be accompanied by guardians.  The limitation of the total attendance at any one time to a figure  consistent with both convenience and safety is also apparently desirable.  Is this thronging of the museum an indication that there are not sufficient facilities in other directions for indoor and outdoor relaxation on Sundays?"

and there was more...

" Disorder at the museum. Sunday Crowds of nearly 7,000: 'Hide and seek' round cases. Following complaints of rowdyism and almost unimaginable crowds at the Liverpool Museums on Sundays, Liverpool Libraries, Museums, Arts and Music Committee yesterday decided to make recommendations to the Council. There was only one door by which exit to the street could be obtained, and the fact that it took twenty to twenty-five minutes to clear the building raised a serious position if any accident occurred.

Answering questions, Dr. Allan said that of these 7,000 persons more than 3,000 were children whose ages ranged from three to twelve years.  Many of them played hide-and-seek round the cases.  A large number of young men and women used the museum for promenading, and the number of people who were visiting the museum for the purpose of inspecting the exhibits was less than 4,000.

The committee decided to recommend to the Council that children should not be admitted to the museums on Sunday afternoons unless accompanied by adults, and that when the attendance reached 5,000, further admissions should be regulated according to the numbers leaving."

Fun and games preventing promenading at the museum? That would never do! It would have been great to see what Dr. Allan would have thought of all the children who will no doubt come along to enjoy our new science exhibition, Plantastic!, opening next week!

Copyright Lee Doherty

Emma Walmsley from the Maritime Museum's Education team has just introduced a new character to her repertoire of historical figures. Here she describes how she researched and prepared the performance in order to make it as true to life as possible:

I play a fictional Wren, May Hatton, based in the secret underground HQ at Derby House which was responsible for co-ordinating the convoys bringing our supplies into the port and for training escort commanders in tactics for contending with the U-Boat threat.

I began researching the subject and the character in the spring, including asking on the blog for contact details of anyone who actually was in the Wrens at this time. After this request went out, I received a response from a lovely lady who was a Wren in the Isle of Man who came into the museum and gave me some wonderful stories and advice. Then came the script writing and finally the piece was finished off and rehearsed with a freelance director.

The next performances now are scheduled for 3, 17 and 24 January - with British Sign Language interpretation at the 2.30pm performance on 17 January - so feel free to pop along and have a look! You can see full details on the Maritime Museum's events and activities page."

Copyright Stephen Shakeshaft

The photographs in the exhibition Liverpool People by Stephen Shakeshaft have struck a real chord with visitors and brought back a lot of memories, as the comments made during reminiscence sessions in the exhibition have proved. Some of these comments have been included with the photos on the exhibition website now, and there are more below.

If you would like to take part in a reminiscence session there are a few more planned, with the next one taking place tomorrow afternoon. Full details are in the exhibition events programme on the website.

And don't forget that there are just a couple more days left to enter the caption competition and win a signed copy of Stephen Shakeshaft's book 'No Illusions' - so get your thinking caps on if you haven't entered yet!

"One thing which stands out is the expression of resilience mixed with hope on the faces of the people in our great city."

"We seem to have grown up in poverty but children always seemed to be laughing. The photographs made me realise this."

"The photo of the clothes rack reminds me of sitting at the kitchen table with wet clothes dripping into your dinner."

"The photograph of the lady with the washing rack reminds me of my gran's house. She always had the kettle on and cake in a tin."

"My son can't believe some of these photos. Why have an indoor washing line?"

"I love the photograph of the lady with the gas mantle. Looks like she's just come in from the wash house, is so pleased with her washing all done and is ready for that cup of tea. I can almost hear her sigh."

"The photograph of the carters reminded me of my dad and brother who used to be carters. They would dress up the horses with brasses and ribbons and go to shows. We used to take the horses back to the stables in Whittle Street."

"I'm reminded of the rag and bone man with his goldfish. Where did he put all those goldfish on his cart?"

"The photograph of the carter reminded me of having our milk delivered by Mabel in her pony and trap in West Derby in the fifties. Sometimes she'd give me a lift to the Saturday cinema in the village. I couldn't tell whether the smell was Mabel or the horse."

"The shop with the children reminds me of shops always having a bell that rang whenever the door opened."