Although called a stage, this landing-place is really a magnificent promenade, with ranges of official buildings and waiting and refreshment rooms. Until recently the passengers by the deep-sea liners were taken to and from the steamers in tenders. This arrangement often gave rise to serious inconvenience, and entailed also much loss of time. The latest addition to the stage was therefore contrived specially with the object of overcoming these drawbacks. Passengers may now pass direct from the stage to the largest vessels; and more than this has been done for them. They are now brought close to the stage itself by railway, so that they may book themselves and their luggage from London or from any of our large towns to any part of the world, and have no more trouble on arriving on the banks of the Mersey than is usually involved in a change of conveyance. To facilitate passenger traffic to and from the docks, an electric overhead railway running along the whole stretch of the six or seven miles comprising the city front, and into the districts beyond, has been in operation since February, 1893, when it was formally opened by Lord Salisbury. The line has since undergone extension, and it was carried as far as Dingle in December, 1896. It is now about eight miles long. The Dingle extension presents some notable engineering features. In one place it crosses the Dock Estate by girders 220 feet in length—an unusually large span; in another it is run through a tunnel arch said to be the largest of its kind in the world; while at Dingle the line belies its name, the terminal station being here considerably below the road level. The only dock entrance that runs inland sufficiently far to be crossed by the overhead railway is the Stanley, and here a swing-bridge has been erected, on the double-deck principle, so as to provide for the railway traffic overhead and the usual carriage and foot traffic underneath. This railway may be considered a part of the great work of dock development at Liverpool. A report laying out the scheme was presented by Mr. Lyster, the engineer to the Dock Board, in 1885, but for public and other reasons it was thought advisable to leave the work to private enterprise, and it was therefore undertaken by an incorporated company, Sir William Forwood being the chairman, and Mr. S. B. Cottrell the engineer and general manager. A railway under the Mersey from Birkenhead was opened in 1885 by the Prince and Princess of Wales, to meet the growing increase in the cross-river traffic, and this line, which passes for 2,100 yards under the river, has since been connected with main lines on each side.
Liverpool, with its great line of protected dockage and quayage, and the movement of vessels of every description and of every size along its water front, is seen in its finest panoramic effect from the Birkenhead side of the river; but the city reveals itself also in increasing multiplicity of architectural detail and business activity to the visitor whose first impressions of it are obtained as he stands on the vessel that carries him over the Mersey bar to the landing-stage. At the same time, the passenger by rail does not enter Liverpool by any back door. At the Lime Street terminus of the London and North Western Railway he looks out immediately on the municipal centre of the city; should he arrive at the Exchange Station of the Lancashire and Yorkshire and Midland lines, he is at once in the commercial heart of Liverpool, surrounded by noble and spacious buildings. Other lines land him in scenes of shipping activity, others in more residential quarters; but nowhere is he left in squalid surroundings.
The front of the Lime Street Station itself adds to the picturesqueness of the street it looks upon. Almost opposite, in isolated grandeur, is St. George’s Hall, and on one side of that building is the magnificent range of edifices of the classic order where are housed the Brown Free Library (including the Museum of Natural History, presented by the thirteenth Earl of Derby), the Mayer Museum of Antiquity, the Picton Reading Room, and the Walker Art Gallery—all alike monuments of the beneficence of merchants who in this way have enriched and adorned the city from which they drew their wealth. Even St. George’s Hall, the cost of which was £330,000, was in the nature of a gift, it being paid for by the Corporation out of the dock dues, which they controlled up to 1858, when the dues were transferred to the Dock Board. The fact, too, that the Corporation owned large estates makes the burden of taxation rest lightly on the citizens of Liverpool; and since the present century began, improvements have not ceased to be the order of the day in the city. The Town Hall is in Castle Street. It is in the Corinthian style, and is conspicuous for its dome and its raised portico; but a much more majestic building lies behind it in the Royal Exchange—a structure in the Flemish Renaissance style, with a noble façade, and wings that enclose a spacious quadrangle. Here on “the Flags,” when the weather is favourable, the merchants and brokers of Liverpool mingle together in animated colloquy and strike their bargains.
Education flourishes in Liverpool no less than commerce, and in all its branches has not been without liberal support. University College, although only inaugurated in 1882, has an endowment of over £125,000. It has a numerous staff of professors, technical and medical departments, and is affiliated to the Victoria University. There are several secondary schools of note, Schools of Art, and Nautical Training Institutions. The charitable societies of the city number over 100, the oldest in the medical sense being the Infirmary, which dates from 1748. Of open spaces there is nothing, of course, equal to the grand sweep of the estuary in front of the city. But there are ornamental grounds in the city itself, and in the outskirts recreation grounds and pleasure resorts, the largest and most picturesque being Sefton Park, which was purchased at a cost of over a quarter of a million. For water the city has gone into Mid-Wales and purchased the Vyrnwy Valley, and from the lake and the reservoirs there is able to draw an unfailing supply of some fifty million gallons daily. The bishopric dates from 1879, but Liverpool is without ancient churches. St. Peter’s, which serves as the pro-cathedral, is the oldest in structure but not in foundation (that distinction belongs to St. Nicholas’, near the Prince’s Dock), but this does not carry us further back than the beginning of the eighteenth century.
A long list could be made of eminent men connected with Liverpool, were this the place for it. But there are two names that ought not to be omitted—one is Francis Bacon, “the wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind,” who was member for Liverpool towards the close of the sixteenth century; the other is Mr. Gladstone, who is a citizen of Liverpool by birthright as well as by complimentary burgess ticket. It is interesting to add also that the Stanley (Derby) and the Molineux (Sefton) families are still closely identified with the town. They are no longer housed in the heart of Liverpool, but their Lancashire seats are close to its boundaries, and they rival one another in the active interest they take in the municipal, commercial, and educational progress of this great community.
It is the bottle-neck part of the estuary of the Mersey that runs between Liverpool and Birkenhead, but a good three-quarters of a mile of water separates the two places. They are divided also by county distinctions: otherwise they may be regarded as one, their interests being identical. Many business men of Liverpool make Birkenhead and its outskirts their home. Like the great city on the other side, Birkenhead has its landing-stages adapted to the rise and fall of the tide. Its range of docks has already been touched upon, and need only be referred to again to indicate that they do not run parallel with the river, like those on the other side, but pass inland. Behind them are the commodious water spaces known as the east and west “floats.” Nearly all the great liners find their way to the Liverpool side, but on the Birkenhead side great liners are built. Its shipbuilding yards are among the most extensive in the kingdom, and include the great establishment of the Laird Brothers, from which the Confederate cruiser, The Alabama, was turned out in 1862.
Proportionately, Birkenhead has made even greater progress during the century so soon to close than Liverpool. In 1800 its population numbered only about 100 persons. That figure may now be multiplied 1,000 times over and still be within the mark. Its tonnage is about one-tenth that of Liverpool. In 1861 the town was formed into a Parliamentary borough, with a single member, the gentleman who became its first representative being the late Mr. John Laird, of whom there is a statue in front of the Town Hall. Birkenhead has been a municipal borough since 1887. It did not, however, wait for corporate privileges to show public spirit and enterprise. It was one of the first towns of the kingdom, if not the very first, to introduce tramways, which it did on the suggestion of George Francis Train, who had previously established a similar mode of conveyance in New York. It has long had a public park, 180 acres in extent, laid out by Sir Joseph Paxton, and costing £140,000. Although a hundred years or so ago it consisted of less than a score of habitable houses, it can trace back its name for centuries, and the ruins may be seen of the Benedictine Priory of Byrkhead, founded here in the eleventh century, and whose monks in their simple way did the work that is now carried on by enormous steam ferries on the river, and by railway trains through a submarine tunnel.
Photo: Valentine & Sons, Dundee.