THAT Liverpool was the second most pictured location by leading architectural photographers Bedford Lemere should come as no surprise to those well acquainted with its history.

As the second city of the British Empire, its affluent classes were bound to commission the nation’s most foremost experts to document symbols of their success.

Yet seeing evidence of such splendour laid out in photograph after photograph – just a handful of the hundreds depicting Merseyside in English Heritage’s collection – is breathtaking.

Some of the subjects remain today – the Adelphi Hotel for example, its main salon or Court pictured with tables and chairs scattered as if the room has been suddenly deserted.

Others are long lost – the battleship HMS Audacious (shown in dry dock at Cammell Laird shipyard in 1913) sunk by a German mine the following year; a Walter Aubrey Thomas-designed Italian gothic shopping arcade on Liverpool’s Lord Street, now closed to the public..

Contrasting with the great wealth are scenes of the industries that generated it. The soap pans room at Sunlight Soap, owned by the Lady Lever Art Gallery’s founder William Hesketh Lever, is pictured empty with piles of white shavings like swept snow, while its packing room buzzes with activity.

Attention paid to photographs with links to the gallery has paid off. Just outside the temporary exhibition room hangs Edward Burne Jones’s stunning painting The Tree of Forgiveness, which is shown in one photograph on the wall of a great mansion.