Beer festival, St Anthony of Egypt, Scotland Road

Nov 24 2007 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

IN THE atmospheric twilight of the cold, late autumn, there are parts of this city where the mind can have tricks played upon it as though footsteps have been taken through a time portal into the streets of old Liverpool.

For example, the alleyways of both Tempest and Hackens Hey – harbouring the entrances to two of the centre’s oldest pubs, Rigby’s and Ye Hole In The Wall – retain an essence where you half expect a Victorian gentleman in dark overcoat and cane sword-stick to step out of the shadows, doff his hat and wish you a good evening.

The area around Scottie Road has that same vibe. The tenements may have gone but the skeletal arms of the past stretch long into the present no more so perhaps than around the imposing parish church of St Anthony of Egypt.

It may lie on the busiest section of road in north Liverpool. But immediately after sneaking down the passage that separates the church from another of the the city’s stalwart pubs, The Throstle’s Nest, the noise of the heavy traffic is quenched along with the neon and a new dimension that harbours the old holds sway.

Yours truly, plus occasional Pub Column hombres Grantie and The Stud, were there to investigate a noble project in which people could contemplate their and others mortality while simultaneously quaffing fine ale and generally having a good time. Sound like an irreverent contradiction?

Well, no, not at all, as it happens.

The Church – taking a leaf from Liverpool and Districts Camra branch and its annual do at Paddy’s Wigwam – was holding a beer festival in its extensive crypt to raise money for a carving to commemorate the thousands of immigrant Irish who fled to Liverpool in the 1840s only to die here, the victims of poverty, starvation and rampant typhus.

Our history lesson into this grim past was delivered in a back-to-basics way by walking through the archways and alcoves, supping beer from our commemorative half pint jugs to make our own deductions of how terrible life must have been from the memorials left on the tombstones.

“Have you noticed that all the dead are younger than us?” exclaimed The Stud, who had found a particularly poignant snip of shorthand history about a young woman whose husband had died at 28 followed by her two babies before finally being expunged herself.

In fact, 1847 – or Black 47 as it became known – was the year which became notorious for accounting for most of the Liverpool Irish dead, many of whom were buried in unmarked paupers’ graves around the church. Their bones have been re-interred in two large sealed rooms adjacent to where Terry McGunigle’s carving – of a grieving mother and father holding a dead child – will stand.

This happened to be a very unnerving section of the large- scale burial chamber. Indeed, The Stud pertinently remarked that this “was a very spooky place to spend all eternity”, to which the simultaneous reply came: “It’s a spooky place to spend five minutes, mate, never mind flippin’ eternity.”

But this happened to be at the end of a relatively quiet Friday afternoon session when the imagination can run rampant in these catacombs. The Thursday, Friday and Saturday sessions were extremely busy we were later reliably informed by John O’Dowd of The Lion in Tithebarn Street who pushed the cause.

All of which was music to the ears of the organiser, parish priest Graeme Dunne, whose idea it was in the first place. He got together all 39 ales which were set up on trestles by, among others, the local branch of Narcotics Anonymous who regularly meet down here and who, needless to say, selflessly did so without touching a drop.

Among the finest to be had was a specially-commissioned St Anthony’ Monastic Ale made by John Aspinall’s Cambrinus Brewery in Prescot.

That was very good.

But our favourite was a strong and cheeky Bishop’s Tipple.

“Ah yes, the Wadsworth’s – a fine brewery!” said Father Graeme.

I thought you said you didn’t know your ale, said the Pub Column accusingly.

“Well,” he said, with a sup and a knowing twinkle in his eye, “I lied.”

How many Our Fathers and Hail Marys is that worth?