New role for red-brick masterpiece

Jan 26 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

“For years the university has wondered what to do with this building,” says Prof Everest.

“It took the crystallising touch of Capital of Culture and the strong encouragement of our chancellor Lord Owen to make it happen.

“He made me realise if you wanted to do something hard enough, you could do it and as a result we now have this tremendous resource.

“The Victoria Building has become a highly distinctive symbolic modernisation of a wonderful building for the city.

“It’s a combination of a gallery and a history of the university’s contribution to the city and world which, as we had eight Nobel prize winners on the staff, is considerable.”

The first exhibition will be artwork by Stuart Sutcliffe, “the fifth Beatle”, after long negotiations with the Sutcliffe estate.

Following this will be only the second exhibition of photographs by Edward Chambre Hardman, following the Daily Post’s campaign to save his archive in Liverpool.

While the leading Liverpool-born architect Alfred Waterhouse created a memorable if overpowering exterior, the interior is altogether more welcoming.

Faced with brown, cream, blue and green tiles of different hues, they create a warm ambience with a kaleidoscope of views through pillars, arches and up stairways and corridors.

Glazed to repel the grimy industrial atmosphere, not least battering by the continual sulphurous blasts from trains in Edge Hill cutting, they’re as bright as when new.

In the main entrance hall, a great hooded fireplace includes a clock that will soon look down on the cafeteria area when the building reopens in July.

The original one-ton radiators are back in full working order, including a double two-ton example, which was so heavy it had to be restored in situ.

That such features are steaming along is testament to the buildings superior design and construction.

The museum will be installed in the second floor’s impressively wooden vaulted Tate Hall, named after Liverpool sugar magnate Sir Henry Tate, a major benefactor to the building and university.

The 14 wrought iron chandeliers have been refurbished and are working again and the walls painted a subtle grey-green.

“Believe me it will look dramatic when it’s properly lit and the exhibits installed,” says Matthew in response to an inquiry if this is the undercoat colour.

The team were lucky in acquiring original Alfred Waterhouse glass exhibition cases deemed surplus by Manchester Museum.

“We thrilled to get these. This museum will be mainly filled with scientific, medical and natural history exhibits, with a few novelties such as death-masks,” says Matthew.

“One of the fun things we’re recreating is an early 20th century dental surgery, with velvet chairs, cut-glass spittoons and a weird old X-ray machine.

“There will also be an X-ray display, based on the fact that it was pioneered here by Charles Thurston Holland.

“From the veterinary school collection we’ll have the skeleton of the 1899 Grand National winner Manifesto. He’s a favourite of mine as he fell at the first fence and still won.

“The Zoology Department is sending over all sorts of wacky things preserved in glass bottles, like the Tasmanian Devil, or sphenodon. Some of them are truly disgusting to look at.”

THE gothic eccentricity of the building extends to Matthew’s office, up several staircases to the third floor nestling under the dormer roof by the clocktower.

Perfect for avoiding unnecessary callers, it was possibly occupied by the world famous portrait artist Augustus John when he was based at the university.

“This renovation puts us in the premiership league for university galleries and museums, which is where we should be,” says Prof Everest.

“We must be unique in Britain to have a single building of this calibre to restore that we can pack with such valuable artefacts.”

The ground floor will house the university’s Widening Participation department which aims to get a broader range of people into higher education. Schoolchildren in Widening Participation projects will also be perfectly placed to use the museum and gallery collections.

The 200-seater semi-circular Leggate Lecture Theatre, once the scene of medical dissections, will take on a new lease of life.

This will be perfect for the university’s series of public lectures, with forthcoming names like Dr Jonathan Miller, Richard Dawkins and Prof Lord Winston; the English Department’s burgeoning literary festival which this year features Melvyn Bragg, Seamus Heaney and Philip Pullman.

It will also provide the main venue for the Merseyside Popular Music Exhibition, staged by the School of Music, and host the Sterling Prize for Architecture event, for the first time in Liverpool.

peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk

Liverpool-born architect Alfred Waterhouse >>>