Lavish tribute to life on the other side

Jan 21 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

As a new book celebrates the docklands, David Charters examines the quirky, stormy and enduring Mersey marriage between glamorous Liverpool and salty Birkenhead

YOUNG lovers hear only murmured endearments on the waterfront of this old curmudgeon of a town, where the bowed-cranes creak and moan over the ground, near which the pigeons and gulls hold a sullen truce, until someone drops a chip or a sandwich and the big wings are again unfurled for battle.

But the keen-featured author treading the barnacles and slithery weeds of the slipway, down-wind from the ancient Priory, hears the sounds of another age – the low curses and groans of black-cowled monks hauling a long rowing boat up the mud on the bank, having delivered a fleshy merchant to “the other side”.

The same expression is used by table-rappers and mediums in heavy-curtained, suburban rooms to describe the place frequented by the spirits of the newly departed. “Is there anyone out there? Is that you, Mabel, on the other side? Come in.”

Now, it would be impolite to suggest that one bank of the Mersey is for the living and the other for the dead.

But the “other side” is the description favoured by the Liverpudlian, peering across half a mile of grey water to Birkenhead, as well as of the Birkonian looking the opposite way.

A great river can unite and it can divide, and when someone says that he/she lives on the other side or “over the water” they will probably be talking about something that goes beyond mere geography.

Some of you will have heard about the father many years ago, who was sitting on a quay wall, puffing a pipe under his cloth cap. “You know, son,” he said to his little boy, after several seconds of deep contemplation, “the best thing about Birkenhead is the view of Liverpool”.

He was, of course, referring to the grand monuments shimmering over there – the Royal Liver, the Cunard and the Port of Liverpool buildings, to which have been added the symbols of the city’s recent renaissance, including the West Tower at 440ft (134 metres).

And loyal Liverpudlians are brimming with confidence at the moment, following the successful opening to the European Capital of Culture celebrations.

But in 1847, the greater confidence lay in Birkenhead, which was challenging Liverpool’s domination of the river. This was manifested in the magnificent Ionic gateway to Birkenhead Park, the first in the world built by public subscription.

The ambitious town commissioners ordered an entrance modelled on the Temple of Illysus, in Athens, knowing full well that their classical splendour could be seen across the water in Liverpool. There were no big buildings then to block the view.

In fact, the well to-do-residents of both towns (Liverpool didn’t become a city until 1880) were bubbling with optimism, fuelled by their faith in trade and commerce – though these sentiments were not shared by the masses, enduring starvation wages, shameful housing conditions and appalling rates of child mortality and sickness.

In the same year that Birkenhead Park was opened to national acclaim, 116,000 Irish people fleeing the potato famine arrived at the Clarence Steamship Dock, Liverpool.

Many died of typhus and other diseases. Some settled in Liverpool and others in Birkenhead, where the Morpeth and Egerton Docks had also opened in 1847. In the coming years, they would be joined by thousands more of their fellow countrymen, giving Merseyside its strong Catholic communities.

As Liverpool grew into the second city of the British Empire, Birkenhead also pros- pered, gaining international renown for the ships built at Cammell Laird. Extensive net- works of docks were developed for the big shipping companies on both sides of the river.

In the 1840s, Benjamin Dis- raeli, who would become Prime Minister, had billed Birkenhead “the city of the future”.

But Liverpool became the cultural capital of the Mersey with its two cathedrals, the universities, the galleries, museums, grand theatres, plush hotels, restaurants and so on.

And, as its own challenge faded, a little resentment was understandably felt across the water. In the teddy boy era, disputes would sometimes be settled by gang fights near Liverpool’s Pier Head with return fixtures at locations in Birkenhead.