Showing posts with label Joe Anderosn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Anderosn. Show all posts

Friday 23 May 2014

The Wellington Rooms-Liverpool’s Disgrace.

What is the point in letting this historic building rot?
Here is a picture taken in 1989 by Jeremy Hawthorn. It was used on calendar a couple of years past that was published
 by The Nerve.


How can this building be left to rot after a billion pounds of European objective one funding has been sloshing around over recent decades?
The city in talks of regeneration while this building, and many other, lay in a state of degeneration.
It’s easy to miss its façade as you drive along Mount Pleasant.
 The Wellington Rooms in Mount Pleasant were once described as a house of mirth and revelry.
They were erected after funds were raised by public subscription in 1815
http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/
Pic as it appeared in NERVE magazine current issue 24 available from News from Nowhere Bold Street Liverpool

An Adaptation of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates of Athens, which was illustrated, in the influential publication, by Stuart and Revelt, entitled Antiquities of Athens.
It had a porch on one side for the setting down of sedan chairs. The Portico was originally open but was found to be draughty and a disfigurement to the original design was made in my opinion, with the blocking up.
A ballroom of some 80ft by 40ft it had a card room and a supper room.
It was thought to have been frequented by the upper classes, as subscription balls, assemblies and occasional fancy dress balls.

How that description conjures up the most remarkable images of Georgian Liverpool.
A Maritime City of tall masts, sundrenched sailors, rope-makers and barrow boys.
The Welly is from at the nucleus of Liverpools upward growth, from humble beginnings, of its gentrification, taking it to the city of its height in the early 20th century.
It is a
descendant of bygone age of wigs and crinoline gowns and candlesticks and taverns.
I grew up with it being known as The Irish Centre in the 70s and 80s, and ignorant of these historic facts relating the building back to the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleons defeat by the then axis powers under the leadership of the Duke of Wellington.

In 2008 I highlighted its plight in a walkabout for the then Daily Post pleading for the then Liberal Democrat council to save it.
There were then ghastly plans put forward to develop it, by sticking a Rubik cube sort of extension on the back.
The plans looked more like a sketch on the back of a jerry-builders ciggy packet than a professionals work; thankfully they were rejected amid controversy.

2008 may have turned the nations perception of my town but being European Capital of Culture was also a curse because it turned into a culture of capital feeding frenzy, where property developers are helped to do the ordinary and the more difficult has to wait to fall down
Nothing has been done to stop the rot, and it is still the same building, only the deterioration seems to have been helped, by the lead on the roof going missing. What state inside to the plasterwork and its Adams style frieze?

On the English Heritage at risk register for as long as I can remember.
It is Grade II* listed.
The area director of EH should be ashamed of the record that Liverpool has for not looking after its Georgiana.
Though asking English Heritage to protect, with this planning department that in my opinion is a law unto itself, is like asking my mouse to look after my cat.
With a ineffectual conservation office we don’t stand a chance.
Now this great city has areas such as Duke Street with its swathes of beautiful simple three storey Georgian terraces that now look alien in their own environment after modern pastiche, or inferior designed student flats have been erected.
So what chance by this council under a Labour council of turning the tide of humiliation to our Georgian stock.
There may be developers crawling over it now. But look at the mess the council made with St Andrews Church on Rodney Street, after it was reported, was offloaded by the city council for a quid to a convicted fraudster.
Yes I know we have to move on but our history is our future.
Look at the restoration of Seymour Terrace; they certainly did a good job there.

Over the road on Hope Street, they throw a £20 million grant at the demolition of the Everyman culling it, with history bleeding out of its walls. They build a replica in its place, whether that will prove successful time will tell. But once you lose your history its lost forever. This is the town that knocked the Cavern Club down.
Next to this historic gem, and with objective one funding an extension was built on Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral built by the architect Gibbard,
The Oscar Niemeyer Basilica rip off, daubed by the effervescent card carrying communist, Arthur Dooley, Paddys Wigwam, while this wonderful little Georgian gem lies there, rotting, a forlorn looking Mausoleum to itself.

Wednesday 9 April 2014

Liverpool Town Hall As A Giant Advertising Placard For Mobile Phones-How Tacky Is That?

It is with deep regret that my city council is being run by people who neither wish to or do indeed respect Liverpool's World Heritage Site.
It is hard to imagine at a time when Liverpool is on the Unesco "In Danger" List that this placement of an advertising hoarding on our Town Hall could be done.
Some time ago the Mayor Anderson helped me remove an advertisement for a giant advert for A Burger In A Bun next to the Listed Lyceum at the bottom of Bold Street.
I have today written to him asking how this unfortunate occasion has been sanctioned.

I wrote this for LPT at the time

Read the letter about illegal hoardings. click above 


Mr Anderson,
It is very disappointing to note that Liverpool's town hall has been turned into a giant advertising placard for mobile phones.
I know you think that Liverpool's World Heritage Site status is no more than a plaque on the wall in the Town Hall and that the city is now about making money out of heritage sites, but this is a step too far.
You will recall agreeing with me that a advert for Burger King was inappropriate for the adjacent building to the Lyceum. You claimed to have it removed.
So how can you find this acceptable.

I am not aware of any planning applications for this event of placing a huge tacky advertisement in a WHS, which is also in a conservation area and on a listed building.

Would you please advise me of any planning applications that have been considered by the planning committee.

Would you also advise me who sanctioned this idea.

Also would you advise me how much is being paid by the advertisers.

I look forward to hearing from you.


Wayne Colquhoun.

Wednesday 8 January 2014

Liverpool To Commemorate the First World War-With A Party!

Thirty Seven million people died during the First World War and what do the dummies at Liverpool Council do to commemorate it….they have a street party.

It was bad enough that they commemorated the Titanic tragedy by having a party but now they are to do the same about the war.

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/titanic-girl-liverpool-dances-on-graves.html#links

Most of the people of Liverpool will use this as an excuse to party.
This should not be allowed. If you bring the giant French puppets in the people will come and justified it would be but not for this subject it is too big a subject than to have giant puppets prancing around the streets.
What are they going to do have them walking up Dale Street with no legs while bombs go off around them.
No this is in bad taste.
The real puppet is Joe Anderson.

In charge of publicity no doubt will be the Echo Editor, Alastair “Burger and Ships” Machray the disrespectful fool on the hill. If he has any staff left to lord over.

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/should-alastair-machray-be-sacked-from.html
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/alastair-machray-apologises-but-its-too.html

Those who lie in some forgotten field will be turning in their graves,
Only in Liverpool,could the muppet who runs the City Council Herr Fuhrer, get away with this
 http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/mayor-joe-anderson-fails-to-deliver.html