Liverpool's Georgian heritage living on the eve of destruction

Jan 29 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

We owe it to the past to protect and cherish this building

THE Wellington Assembly Rooms is best known in its most recent incarnation as Liverpool’s Irish Centre, until closure a decade ago.

Sitting at the top of Mount Pleasant, this exquisite piece of Georgian architecture now lies shamefully derelict.

Once this was where Regency Liverpool’s great and good preened and promenaded on wet days and met for "assemblies" of balls, concerts and card games.

"If European and regional money was available to put in the great new outside staircase for the Metropolitan Cathedral next door, why is there nothing for this?" says Wayne Colquhoun. "Welling- ton Rooms was built in 1815 by public subscription by Liverpool’s citizens to celebrate the Iron Duke’s victory at Waterloo over the French.

"Without Wellington and Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar to protect our sea lanes, we wouldn’t have had the Liverpool of today.

"From that long peace followed Liverpool’s huge growth in trade to become the mercantile world leader that in turn gave us the Royal Liver and India Buildings.

"Just as the citizens of the past showed their gratitude to Wellington for what he did for them, so we owe it to them to protect and cherish this building.

"That also means stopping insensitive developers sticking an appalling Rubik- cube tower on top.

"Planners should have lessons in aesthetics, so they know what a beautiful building looks like, as it’s obvious they have no idea.

"The walk down Mount Pleasant is a living example of the human-scale of the Georgian city and its lasting appeal.

"Look at No 64A, with its two pretty bay windows. This seems like something out of the Old Curiosity Shop or Hobson’s Choice," says Wayne.

"Next door, No 64, itself is a far larger example of a Georgian townhouse, yet it chimes in perfectly with its neighbour because they are all based on the same aesthetic principles.

"This is also where John Lennon married Cynthia Powell when it was a register office, but there’s no plaque to tell tourists that.

"In fact, Mount Pleasant’s upper section is like a picture story that inspired The Beatles’ songs. There’s Terry’s Barbers, Pumpernickel’s Sandwich Shop and the student housing office.

"People go to the Continent to see this sort of thing and we seem determined in eradicate it in this city."

Many of Mount Pleasant’s fine frontages are scruffy with broken wrought iron railings and missing balconies, whereas in Nantes, France, these are repaired or replaced as a matter of course, he says.

"But we must applaud CPM Residential as it’s done a good restoration job and even discreetly included a roller shutter in its frontage."

At the bottom of Mount Pleasant, the simple Georgian terraces including the Antrim and Aachen Hotels abruptly stop for the brutalist concrete horror of Mount Pleasant multi-storey car park.

"Pleasant Street School, once one of Britain’s oldest primary schools, is being refurbished, which is a relief, but why has the developer stuck a new block of flats on the terrace end?" says Wayne.

"It’s like the awful kind of boxy architecture I grew up with in Kirkby 40 years ago, now touted as luxury flats.

"It’s hard to think an architect got paid to design this.

"It’s as if we haven’t learned anything in 200 years, but in reality have gone backwards instead."

Georgian splendour >>>