Instagrammable Spots in Manchester

This is the third of three articles by Lee Ruddin about slavery in Liverpool and a walking tour of the city where evidence of Black History can now be seen.

See part 1 at https://travelthruhistory.com/liverpool-black-history-walking-tour-part-1/
See part 2 at https://travelthruhistory.com/liverpool-black-history-walking-tour-part-2-of-3/

FROM ABELL’S MEMORIAL STONE TO THE INTERNATIONAL SLAVERY MUSEUM

After reading the inscription on Abell’s gravestone (from the vantage point of the photographer, as shown in Part 2), turn around 180 degrees and exit St. Nicholas Church Gardens through the way you entered, namely Tower Gardens, before turning left onto Water Street and taking the first right onto Drury Lane. The inter-war Grade II-listed India Buildings occupies the entire block, so will be on your left until the junction with Brunswick Street, a one-way road sloping downwards towards the River Mersey that bisects Drury Lane. This you must cross (continuing south-eastwards) to reach the Piazza Fountain, situated in a courtyard on your right-hand-side, 160 metres away. Known locally as the “Bucket Fountain”, Richard Huws’ Grade II-listed kinetic water sculpture (1967) endeavours to replicate – through the filling and spilling of 20 pivoting hoppers on seven vertical poles – the sound of waves crashing against the shore (Image below).

There’s no evidence that the Welsh designer intended it to serve as a memorial to slavery, although the stairwells do bear a striking resemblance to those of the House of Slaves on Gorée Island, a slave-trading post on the west coast of Africa (image below). Furthermore, an “African” shield-shaped plaque on one of the spiral-shaped, cantilevered viewing platforms refers to the site’s proximity to the late eighteenth-, rebuilt early nineteenth-century arcaded edifice known as Goree Warehouses and Piazza (Image 16). These, together with what’s arguably an implicit nod to the trade (Image 17), support the case against a developer seeking its relocation, especially since Laurence Westgaph – recipient of a Black History Month Achiever’s Award for highlighting the lesser-known local roots that sustained the more familiar global routes of the Transatlantic Slave Trade – asserts on one of his walking tours that it’s Liverpool’s ‘abstract and only attempt to memorialise slavery in the public realm’.
Address: Beetham Plaza, Drury Lane, Liverpool, L2 0XJ.

Return to where Drury Lane meets Brunswick Street and turn left, crossing The Strand and Goree dual carriageway at the traffic lights, before taking another left in front of George’s Dock Ventilation Tower (an imposing Grade II-listed Art Deco building), whereupon you continue in the same direction until you reach its south-east corner bordering Mann Island. It’s here – about ten feet up on the wall – that you will observe the street sign Goree, roughly 160 metres distant. This is the approximate location of the eponymous warehouses, wherein manufactured goods for export as well as imported, agricultural products harvested by enslaved individuals were stored for George’s Dock (Images at top and below).
Address: George’s Dock Ventilation and Central Control Station of the Mersey Road Tunnel, George’s Dock Way, L3 1DD.

Head back in the direction from which you approached, turning left by the traffic lights to rejoin Brunswick Street, following the pavement between the Port of Liverpool and Cunard Buildings in the direction of the Pier Head, part of the former UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site (Liverpool was stripped of its status in July 2021 after a UN committee found developments had caused ‘irreversible loss’ to the value of its historic waterfront), and via Canada Boulevard towards the Mersey Ferry Terminal, 320 metres away. Upon entering the foyer, look up to your right – approximately twenty feet – to see an artwork (image below). Sculptor Stephen Broadbent’s 2009 installation includes three pierced steel plates, representing the continents comprising the Triangular Trade, and a glazed panel etched with slave-trading routes embodying the Atlantic, which connected all three. The words and musical notation of Amazing Grace (1772) flow throughout since there’s a connection between the lyrics, which were penned by John Newton (1725-1807), and the melody, which emerged from ‘the descendants of the slaves [he] transported from Africa to America’.
Address: Pier Head, Georges Parade, Liverpool, L3 1DP.

Exit the Mersey Ferry Terminal building through the door which you entered and turn right onto Georges Parade, continuing in this (south-east) direction until you reach the Museum of Liverpool, whereupon you turn left onto Mann Island so as to pass underneath its huge floor-to-ceiling window before taking a right – bypassing the main entrance – and veering to the left, towards the Great Western Railway warehouse, and specifically an information board in front of the first of two Grade II-listed Graving Docks (two images below). The paved surface is flat, albeit especially slippery when rained upon, and the distance traversed is 320 metres.

Canning dry docks were initially constructed in 1765 for the repair and maintenance of ships; they were subsequently lengthened and deepened in the first part of the nineteenth century, suggesting that the American slaver Nightingale was likely illegally outfitted here during a near-two month stay in the port in 1860. They were home to a cacophony of noise given Mersey shipyards were the ‘place of construction’ (as listed in the Slave Trade Database) for over a quarter of vessels (precisely 2,120) engaged in vile voyages between 1701-1810. These are the oldest, above-ground part of Liverpool’s dock system and indubitably its most direct link with the Transatlantic Slave Trade, with these structures helping to undergird a trade believed to have generated 40 percent of the town’s wealth by 1807.

While this location isn’t directly representative of suffering or death, not least when compared with the slave forts of West Africa or plantation houses in the American South, this northern corner of the trading triangle is inextricably linked with the other two, meaning its association with kidnapping and enslavement renders it a “dark” heritage site, something Philip Stone – founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at the University of Central Lancashire – intimates when listing the International Slavery Museum (ISM) in his 111 Dark Places in England That You Shouldn’t Miss. (This section of the waterfront is due to be redeveloped, with plans featuring a series of bridges opening the dry docks up to help bridge gaps in knowledge through an educational experience shedding light on its “darker” history in a responsible and ethical way, thereby demonstrating that “dark tourism” has evolved beyond mere sensationalism and ‘fascination with assassination’, to quote the subtitle of a seminal article written on the subject in 1996.)

Reverting to the direction headed before stopping at the information board, continue (south) along Mann Island (in between Canning Graving Dock No. 2 and the Pilotage Building) towards Kings Parade by veering right, followed by a left (south-east) towards the Royal Albert Dock. After crossing the swing bridge over Canning Half-Tide Dock, veer left onto Hartley Quay before taking a sharp left onto Hartley Quay Bridge in order to remain on Hartley Quay. The entrance to Merseyside Maritime Museum (MMM), which houses the ISM on the third floor, is approximately 60 metres further along (east) on the right, totalling 320 metres in all. While access for wheelchair users isn’t impeded, caution is advised since sections are cobblestoned, meaning the last leg of the trail could be the most uncomfortable in more ways than one.
Address: International Slavery Museum (located inside Merseyside Maritime Museum), Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool, L3 4AQ. Open Tues-Sun and bank holidays, 10am-6pm. It is one of seven museums comprising National Museums Liverpool, with the other six being: Museum of Liverpool; World Museum; Maritime Museum; Walker Art Gallery; Sudley House; and Lady Lever Art Gallery.

The ISM will be marking its 15th anniversary in 2022, after opening on 23 August 2007 – Slavery Remembrance Day in the bicentenary year of the Slave Trade Abolition Act. It contains three accessible and engaging themed galleries: Life in West Africa, Enslavement, and the Middle Passage and Legacy. The first and third will open minds, respectively, in terms of the variety and vitality of West African society prior to the landing of Europeans and achievements of Black figures notwithstanding racial discrimination: the product – not premise – of slavery, as author of Capitalism and Slavery Eric Williams elucidates. The second gallery will leave museumgoers open-mouthed, however, since ledgers containing columns of Africans listed as an abstract monetary value alongside tangible tools of torture combine to provide a gut-punch, chillingly illustrating how racial capitalism demanded the systematic and brutal dehumanisation of those forcibly transported. Aside from the ‘Liverpool Street’ signs display (still cornered off due to ongoing research), all other interactive installations are back online (after being offline even when ISM was open outside of pandemic-enforced lockdowns), which younger visitors will discover particularly illuminating, while older ones will regard rehumanisation of the enslaved through a reappraisal of their agency but one of many reasons to visit this priceless yet free museum.

Photo Credits: All images except Gorée Island are by Lee Ruddin.

I’d like to thank the following academics for not only taking the time to acknowledge my emails, but for replying with such lengthy insight and, in some instances, for forwarding on articles: Paul Pickering, Elizabeth Wallace, Itay Lotem, Philip Stone, Velvet Nelson, Charles Forsdick, Stephen Small, Jessica Moody, Helen Baker, Richard Sharpley, and Marcus Wood. I’d also like to thank my first-rate sister and idol, Kirsty, for two of the photographs featured in this three-part article: the stoicism and selflessness displayed in the face of adversity continues to inspire her adoring, younger brother. This article is dedicated to my friend and local historian, David Hearn.

 

This is the 2^nd of three articles by Lee Ruddin about slavery in Liverpool and a walking tour of the city where evidence of Black History can now be seen.

See part 1 at https://travelthruhistory.com/liverpool-black-history-walking-tour-part-1/

FROM LIVERPOOL TOWN HALL TO ABELL’S MEMORIAL STONE

Standing/seated to the right of the portico entrance of the Town Hall that overlooks Castle Street, specifically beneath the unabashed iconography on the east façade situated on High Street, turn right (heading north-west) towards Exchange Flags: it’s here where merchants such as John Gladstone (father to the aforementioned William who was, according to the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, the biggest claimant of government compensation for the loss of “property” after abolition in 1834) transacted business in the open air, author of Capitalism and Slavery Williams reiterates, selling ‘sugar and other produce […] grown on his own plantations and imported in his own ships’. When continuing along the rear (north side) of the building pause momentarily and try to imagine the bustling commercial activity on the site of today’s grandiose quadrangle. After peeling your eyes away from the Grade II-listed Nelson Monument, follow the building around to the left (its west side) before turning right back onto Water Street, stopping at its top outside Martins Bank (Numbers 4 and 6), a mere 160 metres away.

Address: Martins Bank Building, 4 and 6 Water Street, Liverpool, L2 3SP.

This is considered by some to be the probable location (listings conflict in Gore’s Directory, frustrating those desirous of pinpointing the exact spot) of Exchange Coffee House where, in 1766, 11 ‘imported’ Africans were advertised to be sold by a broker, literally illustrating that racial slavey wasn’t confined to the colonies but also evident in the metropole (Images 6 and 7), suffusing life in Liverpool like a fog: pervasive to the point of being omnipresent; the same could be said for “tools of the trade”, with hardware of bondage (ranging from restraining implements such as handcuffs and leg shackles to a speculum oris, the latter used for releasing jaws to force-feed captives) purchased from a ship chandler by the tenacious  agitator Thomas Clarkson in 1787 while lodging at the King’s Arms tavern, formerly opposite the site of Martins Bank, where all matters mercantile were discussed. (Affixing a reinterpretation plaque at this site could draw the attention of passers-by away from sinners towards Clarkson who, assisted by one of the “Liverpool Saints” Edward Rushton, stands alongside William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano in the abolitionist pantheon.)

That a former building on the site of today’s Grade II-listed Martins Bank was called African House (No. 6) isn’t surprising given West Africa House is the name of a premises at the bottom of Water Street. Yet the Art Deco-style sculptures carved into a doorway (next to the main entrance) during the building’s redesign between 1927-1932 – more than a century after the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, it’s worth noting – are surprising since they indubitably celebrate the role slavery played in Liverpool’s meteoric rise from a third-rate fishing village to “Second City of Empire” thanks, Laurence points out, to being a constituent of Lancashire: the ‘first industrial region in the world’. [Laurence Westgaph is Historian in Residence for National Museums Liverpool.] They depict Liverpool as Neptune, who has his hands on the heads of African children, both of whom carry a bag of gold and either an anchor or weighing scales (or possibly a ship’s quadrant?) (Images 8 and 9). Whether or not renowned local sculptor George Herbert Tyson Smith was cognisant of the site’s history, the record is unclear, though its murky past provides some clarity regarding why such decorative panels adorn the exterior: the Bank of Liverpool acquired Arthur Heywood, Sons & Company (1773) in 1883 (one of the ten noteworthy banking houses founded in mid-to-late eighteenth-century Liverpool by slave merchants who pioneered credit supply for long-term ventures) before merging with London-based Martins in 1918 (to become Bank of Liverpool and Martins Limited before shortening its name a decade later). Martins, in turn, was absorbed by Barclays in 1969. They closed and relocated in 2007, the bicentenary of the 1807 Slave Trade Abolition Act, yet no plaque exists referring to its origins (or predecessors who facilitated and profited) in racial slavery despite memorialisation of oppression such as the above-described helping to undergird contemporary racism; even the handsome stone plaque affixed to the former Heywoods Bank in Brunswick Street (commissioned by Arthur Jnr. in 1800) omits any mention of the fact that founding brothers Arthur and Benjamin Heywood participated in the ugly trade, investing (according to the Slave Trade Database) in no less than 125 slave voyages between 1745-89.

 

Viewing the identical reliefs in the doorway from the vantage point of the photographer (Image 8), spin 180 degrees and head (south-west) down Water Street, passing Rumford Street and Convent Garden respectively, before taking the third right onto Tower Gardens. While narrow, and thus potentially hazardous due to a continual line of parked cars, this cul-de-sac affords the best access to the Grade II-listed Church of Our Lady and St. Nicholas (Image 10) for wheelchair users, being only 160 metres distant. A place of worship since at least 1257 (just fifty years after King John granted Liverpool its Royal Charter in 1207!), this venerable site is the most historic part of the city centre (regardless of the current incarnation – save the rebuilt nineteenth-century Tower – dating back only as far as 1952) where prominent slaving merchants worshipped and were interred, chief among them being slave-ship captain and two-time Mayor of Liverpool Bryan Blundell (d.1756), one of the many bigots with which the town was so well endowed. (His ship, The Mulberry, is believed to have been the first to sail out of Old Dock, the world’s first commercial wet dock opened in 1715, with the Blundell family going on to be involved in 109 slave-ship voyages.)

Address: Liverpool Parish Church of Our Lady and St. Nicholas, Old Churchyard, Chapel Street, Liverpool, L2 8TZ.

Approximately forty years before the co-founder of Bluecoat School was laid to rest, however, a person called Abell was buried in what’s nowadays a garden. According to the burial register unearthed by Laurence as part of his PhD research at the University of Liverpool, Abell, ‘A [B]lack[a]moor [a contemptuous term used to describe a dark-skinned individual] belonging to Mr. [Samuel, or Lemuel?] Rock’ (a slave trader for whom he almost certainly worked as a domestic slave-servant), is the first identifiable Black burial in Liverpool – Georgian Liverpool, no less – and is another “dark” tourism site like Sambo’s grave (an enslaved cabin boy buried, in 1736, at Sunderland Point near Lancaster, UK), as featured in Stone’s 111 Dark Places. Preoccupation with the infernal Middle-Passage leg of the triangular trade has led shore-based elements of enslavement to go largely unremarked upon, with slavery discourse framing the port as the start and end point for carrying what historian Jessica Moody refers to as ‘inanimate goods only’ in her monograph, which is entitled The Persistence of Memory: Remembering Slavery in Liverpool – ‘Slaving Capital of the World’ (2020). Yet Laurence’s sedulous study of parish records in order to name the hitherto unnamed, culminating in the creation of a memorial to Abell (Image 11), illuminates that the narrative propagating Black presence as a post-war phenomenon – beginning with the SS Windrush – is a whitewashing of history. (The first Black Liverpudlian, according to baptismal records says Laurence, was born in the 1750s.)

 

 

About the author:
A frequent ‘Letter of the Month’ winner in UK travel newspapers/magazines, Lee P. Ruddin’s entry in Senior Travel Expert’s 2018 (Heritage) Writing Competition was shortlisted as Highly Commended by judges; his entry in I Must Be Off’s 2020 contest was longlisted. His articles feature in Robert Fear’s Travel Stories and Highlights: 2019 Edition, on the websites of Hotel Metropole Hanoi and Bath’s Royal Crescent Hotel, as well as at TravelMag. In addition to tips appearing on theguardian.com, he has reviewed travel guides for LoveReading and NetGalley and, to date, has travelled in and via 45 countries on four continents. Born in Birkenhead on the Wirral in North-West England, he currently resides in Birmingham, where he works in the security industry.

All photos by Lee P. Ruddin