World legacy lost

Oct 15 2007 by Larry Neild, Liverpool Daily Post

OVER the past few weeks, thousands of people have been intrigued and spellbound as a team of archaeologists uncovered an amazing slice of Liverpool’s maritime legacy.

The team was commissioned to carry out the dig at Mann Island, soon to become home to three granite-faced cheese-shaped blocks.

The developers paid for the dig, though they had to as it was a requirement of the planning consent they won to redevelop the site.

I wrote an article on the dig and it was followed-up by BBC television and beamed around the world on their 24-hour news channel.

I popped along occasionally to watch the work in progress as it revealed old cobbled streets and the remains of long-demolished buildings. One of the most fascinating relics to be uncovered was the original fan-driven smoke extractor system built for the Mersey rail tunnel in the late 1890s. Its aim was to extract smoke from steam trains, but was a failure. So they introduced the world’s first electric train service instead. The archaeologists told me that, when they had finished their exploration, the site would be levelled off with ground-up building debris and then the new wedges would go on top. The only consolation was that, maybe in a century’s time, if the wedges are demolished, the then time-detectives of 2107 would marvel at the hidden gems and turn it into a visitor attraction.

So what happens. Last week, dirty big mechanical diggers were drafted in to completely rip apart the whole site, the old foundations, cobble stones, that quirky old brick-built smoke extractor system. They have left, to be buried, a stretch of old dock wall. But the rest is history.

It brings into sharp focus again the way Liverpool’s World Heritage Site is being cared for, or rather not cared for.

There is talk of setting up a posse of cultural sheriffs on the orders of the World Heritage Committee. As well as the city council, the sheriffs will include so-called cultural guardians such as English Heritage and CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. The Liverpool office of CABE is part-funded by the city council and Liverpool Vision, and the recently retired chairman of English Heritage is a trustee of National Museums Liverpool.

I would have felt more comforted had the new “cultural police” been made up entirely of people who had no links at all with developers, developments, funders and planners.

Interestingly, there is no place on the proposed body for those the establishment consider outlaws. People like unsung heroine Florence Gersten and sabre-rattling cultural campaigner Wayne Colquhoun are regarded as nuisances. Yet they and a small band of like-minded people are the last bastions of those attempting to preserve our wonderful heritage.

It is a finger in the dyke operation for them, and far too often their passionate pleas to spare old buildings fall on deaf ears.

It is not about preserving the cultural quarter in aspic, but having a system that prevents developments.

Our World Heritage Site does not belong to developers, politicians or quango kings – it belongs to the world.