National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, January 24, 2008

Excavation site by the M62 junction near Tarbock, Huyton and Whiston. Image courtesy of Laing O'Rourke Infrastructure

I'm looking forward to seeing the latest adventures of Indiana Jones on the big screen later this year. If you want to see what real archaeologists do though, then you don't have to wait until the summer to find out. Our Field Archaeology Unit are holding open days on 1 and 2 February in Tarbock to showcase the findings of their latest excavation at the site of a new link road between the M62 and M57. The team excavated the site in a project sponsored by the Highways Agency and Laing O'Rourke Infrastructure.

Full details of the open days with pictures of some of the finds are on our website. Ron Cowell, director of this archaeological project, will be there to answer any questions. Here's a bit more information from him about the initial findings:

"We have found sites along the line of the road belonging to several periods and visitors will be able to see the background at the open day. We have not long finished the excavations so the finds work is still at an early stage but here are a few preliminary findings of what will be available at the open days.

We found early prehistoric period hunter gatherer camps, some dated to 5000 BC and some possibly a bit later, possibly to 3-4000 BC. There will be some flint tools from the site on display including a Mesolithic flint from 5000 BC and a flake which possibly dates from c4-3000 BC.

We also found the industrial part of the Roman farmstead we excavated in 1993, when the original roundabout was built. That produced stamped tile of the twentieth legion, who were stationed at Chester, so the site was being used to make roofing tile and bricks which were then sent to Chester. The example here is dated to 167-8 AD. We have several of these already in the museum's collection from the previous excavation but we did find a lot of other tiles and bricks this year as well as some Roman pottery, so some of that will be available for viewing.

We found the metalworking area for the farm where they were making iron objects and examples of the iron slag will be available for viewing. We didn't find any metal objects other than two Celtic coins and seven Roman coins. They are being conserved so won't be available at the open days but there will be photos of them and the background to their finding.

We also found a medieval settlement dating from around 1200-1400 AD. There will be examples of the pottery from that site and photos of some medieval metalwork that was found there but is also currently with conservation."

Stephen Guy with a British Mark VIII torpedo. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

I think this is one of the greatest stories of sacrifice in the Second World War – a commander who literally worked himself to death in his devotion to duty.

Captain FJ (Johnny) Walker was the Royal Navy’s top U-boat submarine killer during the war. He was the most famous escort commander to be based in Liverpool when the port played a vital role in the Battle of the Atlantic. Britain’s lifelines were the convoys that brought vital supplies from north America and the ships were prime targets for German U-boats.

Walker, a brilliant specialist in anti-submarine warfare, was an unorthodox and inspirational officer who won great respect and affection from his men. There is a display at Merseyside Maritime Museum devoted to his incredible career.

In early 1943, following his many successes in command of the sloop HMS Stork and the 36th Escort Group, Walker was put in command of HMS Starling and five other sloops of the Second Support Group. His brief was to attack and sink U-boats at every opportunity along the northern convoy routes.

At Walker’s insistence, the jaunty popular tune ‘A-hunting we will go!’ was played over a loud-hailer on Starling’s bridge whenever she left harbour. Between 1 June 1943 and 1 July 1944 the ships of Walker’s Second Support Group sank 15 U-boats in an astonishing run of successes.

He was a great exponent of team work, making very successful use of Asdic, HF/DF (high frequency direction finding). One of Walker’s famous “creeping attacks” lasted more than 30 hours before the U-boat prey was sunk.

Walker – whose awards included the DSO (three bars) – died of a stroke, undoubtedly caused by the demands of war, in July 1944. He was buried at sea in Liverpool Bay. After the war Admiral Max Horton, commander-in-chief Western Approaches, considered that victory in the Atlantic was due more to Walker than to any other individual.

The display includes an exhibition model of HMS Starling, the Royal Navy’s most successful anti-U-boat ship of the war. Under Walker’s command, she was directly involved in sinking 11 U-boats. HMS Starling sank four more after his death. Her ship’s wheel is among the exhibits.

A dramatic photograph shows Walker using an inter-ship radio on Starling’s bridge to urge HMS Woodpecker to attack a U-boat. There is archive film of Walker’s funeral with full naval honours in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral.

A 22-ft long British Mark VIII torpedo (shown here) gives a sense of precision and power. These were the Royal Navy’s standard torpedoes of the Second World War.

There's more on this website about Cpt Walker, written by a man who knew him. A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Representatives of West Derby Community Association at the Antiques Roadshow. They are (l to r) Stephanie Grogan, James Ashton and Stephen Guy, with specialist Jon Baddeley at the far right.

When I, Stephen Guy, discovered a cache of films stored away unseen for more than 40 years, I wondered what to do.

I am a trustee at Lowlands, the Grade II-listed home of the West Derby Community Association, Liverpool – a superb Italianate former merchant’s mansion dating from 1846. It was the home of the basement Pillar Club where many of the major bands of the 1960s played in their early days. The Quarrymen (early Beatles) famously failed an audition there and are thought to have played in the Pillar Club once or twice as the Silver Beetles. Later they became resident band at the Casbah Club, literally over the road, at the home of drummer Pete Best.

When we started planning the restoration of this historic building, an inventory was made of the contents. This vast, rambling place has many secrets including sealed doors and mysterious unused rooms.

We discovered the films along with the original camera, projector and editing equipment. In excellent condition, they were among piles of books, reports, equipment and furniture. We were advised not to attempt to show the film on the projector but to transfer the film professionally on to DVD. We did not want priceless film being shredded or singed in a faulty projector. There the matter rested because of other priorities. Volunteers cleared the building and prepared for the builders to start the £1.1 million Lowlands project largely funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Then we heard that the Antiques Roadshow was coming to Liverpool. In my capacity as National Museums Liverpool press officer I supervised filming programme links with presenter Michael Aspel at the Walker Art Gallery and Merseyside Maritime Museum. I mentioned the films and equipment to the producers and was invited to come along to St George’s Hall. I went with other West Derby Community Association representatives, Stephanie Grogan and James Ashton.

Engineering specialist Jon Baddeley admired the superb 1950s British projector and Russian camera, in the sequence that was broadcast on Sunday. He added that if any of the film had images of the Beatles it could be worth around £100,000. Our eyes popped.

Some days later the BBC rang and offered to transfer one of the reels of 16 mm silent colour film to DVD at no cost to the Association, a registered charity.

We now have the DVD and it contains 15 minutes of stunning images – local people and Danish guests at Lowlands, Speke Hall and Croxteth Hall, fun and frolics at New Brighton open air baths plus tantalising glimpses of other vanished sights such as New Brighton Tower and the Fish and Chip Boat. The final sequence features colourfully costumed dancers and musicians performing stick and belly dancing on a visit to Lowlands.

But no Beatles.

However, there are four reels yet to be transferred on to DVD, so who knows? Watch this space.

Learning officer Carol White and museum demonstrator Dave Brown have met up with the second group of students taking part in the School Champions project, which is giving local schools the opportunity to get involved in the development of the new Museum of Liverpool. By the look of this photo and Carol's update below, they are going to be quite hard taskmasters during the course of this partnership, expecting great things from the Champions!

More photos from this visit, during which the students found out the truth about the Liver Bird and had a site visit to see the Museum of Liverpool construction, plus the trip earlier this week by St Margaret Mary's School are on the School Champions Flickr slideshow.

Over to Carol:

"Sixth form students from Weatherhead High School Media Arts College, Wirral visited the Magical History Tour exhibition for a whistle stop tour of Liverpool's history with Dave Brown. 

The students will be producing a short documentary film about the new Museum of Liverpool during 2008 and will act as our 'School Champions'.  They will follow and report on the progress of the new museum's development.   ................ or else!"

Liverpool’s Ocean Steamship Services map, pre 1922

I can never resist a nice map. I could easily spend hours poring over them, finding all the places I've been to (which doesn't actually take very long) and all the places I want to explore (a much longer list).

One of the factors that has made Liverpool the place it is today is that over the years a lot of Liverpool people have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by the port and have travelled all over the world. At the same time, the city has also welcomed many visitors from these exciting far off lands through the port.

A new temporary display from the collections of the Maritime Archive and Library, Liverpool - port of cultures, features photographs and documents showing how all this travel has brought a huge variety of cultural influences to the city from all over the world. It includes the map shown above and you can also zoom into the map on the website for a closer look, which could be handy if you're planning a world cruise - or just dreaming of one like I am.

This is the first blog post from one of the roving reporters in our School Champions project. Over the months ahead our learning team at Merseyside Maritime Museum are going to be working with the Champions to get their input into the plans for the new Museum of Liverpool, as part of the community consultation process. 

They have promised to let us know what they get up to, so here's a letter from one of the Champions from St Margaret Mary's School, who came on the first visit:

"Thank you for a lovely day out at the museum and the piermasters house. I really enjoyed it. When I found out that we were going to see what the new Museum of Liverpool was going to look like I felt really excited to be part of the School Champions. I looked at the building and thought about what it was finally going to look like.

I really enjoyed helping with the History Detectives timeline and finding out what different things were, such as the 'Great Pyramid of Geeser'. I now know what order of events these things came in!

I was also really intrested in the activity where we had to find out what the different objects were, and I found out what things were that I didn't already know.

One of the best things of the day was sticking a china cup back together with tape (from hundreds of years ago). I really felt like an archaeologist!

I enjoyed going to the seafront to talk about the river Mersey. My favourite part of the day was going to the 'Piermasters House' because we were treated like wartime children. My mum's friend's Grandad was the Piermaster.

Thank you for my lovely day at the Museum.

From Charlotte Osborne, St Margaret Marys"

St Margaret Marys School Champions on their first visit. You can see the Museum of Liverpool being built in the background.

HM Grampus model. Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

I, Stephen Guy, had ancestors living and working among the shipyards that dotted the Liverpool waterfront in the 18th century.

Liverpool was a shipbuilding centre for more than 200 years, developing alongside its growth from a small port to a major centre of commerce. By 1700 several shipyards were established around the Pool, a creek long since covered over, which gave the town its name.

With the opening of the first dock in 1715 and the Salthouse Dock in 1739, shipbuilding moved to the Mersey Strand on the site of the Albert Dock. Today the Strand and Strand Street remind us that this was once a long beach, a strand of mud and sand. My ancestor Henry Guy was born in nearby Moor Street in 1728 and was a shipwright in the yards.

In 1739 John Okill began work on the 44-gun HMS Hastings, the first ship built in Liverpool for the Royal Navy. The construction of wooden warships and merchant ships occupied the many Liverpool shipbuilders until the late 18th century.

The early docks of the 19th century brought competition from shipyards in Canada. They were near forests providing wood for the ships and had cheap labour so the Liverpool shipyards were undercut. By 1840 it was estimated that almost half the ships owned in Liverpool were built in Canada.

Eventually the demand for more new docks on the Liverpool side of the Mersey drove the shipbuilding industry to the opposite Wirral shore. The last large vessel launched on the Liverpool shore was HMS Britomart, a gunboat built by WH Potter & Sons in Queens Dock in 1899.

Models of Liverpool-built ships are on display at Merseyside Maritime Museum. The 50-gun HMS Grampus was launched at John Fisher’s shipyard in 1782. This superbly-detailed model shows the three-master with three huge lanterns at the stern.

The Jhelum (1849) was one of the last Mersey-built wooden ships and was employed in the guano trade shipping bird droppings for fertilizer. Her beached hulk still lies in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. Merseyside Maritime Museum staff have visited her. Alongside a small model of Jhelum are a number of artefacts from the hulk including nails and copper sheathing. This online feature covers the damage being done to the Jhelum by the lowly shipworm.

The Wanderer, a four-masted barque of 1891, was an unlucky ship with her captain being killed in a severe storm on her maiden voyage.  In 1907 she was sunk in the River Elbe after being rammed by the German liner Gertrud Woermann.

More on shipbuilding on the Mersey and related documents in our collections can be found in our Maritime Archives section. A new Maritime Tale appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

You may have noticed some reports in the media recently about the possible discovery of a Viking boat at Meols in the Wirral. There has been considerable interest in the story and our Field Archaeology Unit have had a lot of enquiries about it, so they have put together some helpful information for the website with a summary of the facts that are actually known about the discovery.

So if you have been wondering 'Has a Viking boat really been discovered in Meols?' then you need look no further for the answers you seek. It's also interesting to find out what happens when a possible discovery is made, how archaeologists go about investigating it and why sometimes the best way to protect a site is not to investigate it at all but to preserve it for the future.

If you want to see some actual Viking treasure then don't forget that the Huxley hoard of Viking silver is currently on display in the Magical History Tour exhibition at Meresyside Maritime Museum, before touring to other venues in the area.

The staging for Friday's launch being built outside St George's Hall

You can't have failed to notice that Liverpool is European Capital of Culture this year. The official People's Opening takes place this Friday, 11th January, at St George's Hall plateau on Lime Street. Took a snap this morning to show you the progress made with staging. The blue containers seem to form a stage area at either end of the plateau with another stage in the centre. Also looks like there's going to be staging around Steble Fountain, just outside the Walker.

As well as Ringo Starr on the roof and a community choir there's also what the Liverpool 08 website is describing as, "an epic aerial ballet of dancing cranes, containers and scissor lifts, as Liverpool celebrates the transfromation of the 'Big Dig' into the 'Big Gig'". All kicks off at 8:08pm (20:08?)

To mark the occassion, and because we are literally a minute away from the main event, both the Walker Art Gallery and World Museum Liverpool will be staying open until 10pm, with last entry at 9.30pm which is also when the venue cafes and shops close. If you're planning to take the kids to Big Art at the Walker we suggest you go early rather than later as it will be closing at 7.30pm.

The museum will be hosting a number of environmental organisations, which will complement the launch of an international school environmental project exploring climate change and disaster risk reduction.

And to cap it all there will be fireworks! Huzzah!

Last year (!) the Antiques Roadshow visited St George's Hall and unearthed the usual hoard of gems. While there Michael Aspel popped over the road to see some more treasures at the Walker Art Gallery. If you're a fan of the AR, the Walker or both tune into BBC 1 this Sunday (13th) at 6.40pm to see the show. 

Liverpool is celebrating being European Capital of Culture this year and I, Stephen Guy, have been reflecting on the many beautiful artworks produced here. These include remarkable products, some with maritime connections, made by Liverpool’s innovative Herculaneum Pottery between 1796 and 1841.

Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo.

The Toxteth-based pottery was established by local merchant Samuel Worthington and quickly established a reputation for the quality of its wares. The name Herculaneum was probably chosen to rival the Italian classical name of Etruria so successfully used by Josiah Wedgwood in Staffordshire. The Herculaneum Pottery rapidly expanded and a large proportion of its products were exported, especially to the fledgling United States.

In 1837 the factory was purchased by Ambrose Lace who leased the works to Thomas Case and James Mort and later to a partnership between Mort and John Simpson.

In the end the Herculaneum Pottery was the victim of competition from the Staffordshire potteries and Liverpool’s huge commercial success. There was more money to be made from importing and exporting than from manufacturing. The pottery was swept away to create the Herculaneum Dock.

There are many stunning items produced by the Herculaneum Pottery on display at the Merseyside Maritime Museum. A huge earthenware punch bowl is colourfully decorated with Masonic symbols such as a set squares and an eye. Conjuring up images of smartly-dressed gentlemen imbibing in convivial surroundings, it is inscribed: “The gift of Brother Squire Hargreaves as a token of his respect for the Society of Freemasons belonging to the Mariner’s Lodge No 362. And presented at the Festival of St John the Evangelist December 27th 1813. Then held at the Freemasons Tavern Sir Thomas’s Buildings, Liverpool." A matching jug has similar decorations and is inscribed simply “Squire Hargreaves”. There is a picture of a man wearing a Masonic apron and regalia - perhaps Mr Hargreaves himself.

A large mug commemorates Lord Nelson and his victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It includes a fascinating list of all the British fighting ships that took part and the number of guns each carried. A map shows the battle formation when the British fleet destroyed the combined fleets of France and Spain.

A soup plate made between 1800 and 1820 shows a fashionably-dressed young woman waiting in anticipation as a sailing ship returns to port. It is touchingly inscribed:

When seamen to their homes return,
And meet their wives or sweethearts dear,
Each loving lass with rapture burns,
To find her long lost lover near

A new Maritime Tale appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.