Frontier for the faiths of the world

Oct 8 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

As one of the world’s greatest ports, Liverpool is home to people of many faiths. A new book celebrates our houses of God. David Charters reports

BENEATH one sky, many spires and towers reached for God. And under each of these spires or towers knelt people drawn from different countries and denominations – all hoping that their devotion would be noted and then rewarded, when the time was ripe.

So, in its jagged contours and stretching crosses, the skyline over the growing port symbolised human faith. It also told of the different architectural styles brought to Liverpool, as we became the throbbing heart of the vast British Empire.

Even today, the city’s religious buildings (including synagogues, mosques, temples and humble meeting-houses) provide a history lesson in race, culture, ambition, and social and doctrinal divisions.

Often, churches of extraordinary splendour served teeming communities, where children walked bare-footed between dank hovels. It was not surprising that the promise of the next world was so appealing.

But, in the quiet suburbs, well-soled shoes crunched the gravel to sturdy sandstone edifices, which would have been trembled on Sunday mornings by the beefy organ, leading congregations in the singing of, “Praise my soul the king of Heaven . . .”

It’s a vast subject and one ideally suited to the man now steeling his angular frame against the fierce wind, howling in from the Mersey and across the Pier Head, as he admires Our Lady and St Nicholas, the Parish Church of Liverpool, popularly known as the sailors’ church.

People have worshipped on this spot for at least 800 years – probably before 1207 when Liverpool was granted the Letters Patent by King John. This led to its development as a medieval port. By 1257, the small, stone Chapel of St Mary del Key stood close to the site of the present tower overlooking a quay on the River Mersey.

But our “St Nick’s” was largely rebuilt after bomb damage during World War II. Behind it are the cloud-bursting edifices of modern commerce, which, though symbolic of the city’s recent regeneration, have stirred some controversy.

As he reaches for his coat after the photographs, Peter de Figueiredo casts his bespectacled eyes over the newcomers, concluding, with surprising sympathy, that, viewed from certain angles, they are “quite impressive”.

But his real interest is Liverpool’s extraordinarily rich range of ecclesiastical buildings – from the two great cathedrals to the numerous churches, representing Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Greek Orthodox, Presbyterians, Baptists and other Christian sects, as well as Jews and Muslims.

In 2005, Liverpool had 128 places of worship, either surviving or in regular use, but hundreds of others have been demolished down the years.

The histories of many of these churches are given in a magnificently illustrated new book, Religion and Place, with a text by Peter and Sarah Brown. She was head of policy for places of worship at English Heritage, and is now director of the York Glaziers’ Trust

Peter, 61, has a private consultancy in Birkenhead, having previously been the regional historic buildings’ inspector with English Heritage.

The tourism potential in our churches is obvious, as the city prepares to capitalise on the legacy of its year as the European Capital of Culture.

The cathedrals are already on the itinerary of visitors, but there is increasing interest in other churches, such as St Anthony’s on Scotland Road, which became the parish for thousands of Irish families, who settled here after the potato famine.

Of course, St Nick’s itself, as the last place of worship before the New World, is another.

“The ethnic diversity and cosmopolitan nature of Liverpool in the 19th century is reflected in its churches,” says Peter, son of the cotton broker, Bill de Figueiredo.

In the area around Princes Road, Toxteth, stands the synagogue of the Old Hebrew Congregation, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Gustav Adolf Kykra (Scandinavian seafarers’ church) and the Welsh Presbyterian Church (sadly now out of use). Not far from this cluster is the Al-Rahma Mosque, in Hatherley Street, which opened in the 1950s.