Coming out of the front entrance of Lime Street Station in Liverpool your eyes cannot but help be drawn to the grand building opposite you. The whole of Liverpool opens up before the discerning visitor, the music fan on a pilgrimage to Matthew Street, the eagle eyed tourist, those who decide to make the city their home and those coming home to the city of culture; none can surely be anything but impressed by the sight of St. George’s Hall as it dominates the skyline and the thoughts of a 160 years of memories, celebrations, powerful speeches and those who lost their lives in the bowels of the building.
Beneath the stone, the gleaming dreams that haunt the plateau, the considerations of the works of Charles Dickens, the emblem of hope and rational thought provided by the orator Thomas Mann in 1911, the various many times that either Liverpool or Everton Football Club bought back a trophy to show to their fans or even when the whole Capital of Culture kicked off on its wide stone steps in 2008, beneath the history of what the visitor or home grown lover of Liverpool sees is an area that few in the last 160 years have had the privilege to witness, few probably even know about, the catacombs, the breathing underbelly of St. George’s Hall.
Like an iceberg rising out of the Atlantic seas, there is so much more to St. George’s Hall than what the visitor sees as they leave the steps of Lime Street Station, more to the Hall than rhetoric, grand parties and the image of the Great Bill Shankly delivering one of the finest speeches ever in the history of Liverpool football club and the city, the feel of the damned, the lost, the dispossessed, the screams of the condemned and the ever consuming history of a city that prided itself on being the Second City of Empire in less enlightened times and now relishes in being the city which culture rightly calls home.
Lovehistory and the management of St. George’s Hall have opened up this largely forgotten part of Liverpool’s history and visitors to the area and its home grown citizens now have the chance to see beneath the decorative walls and the history that is seen and to delve below, to the cells, to the places where the condemned sat and contemplated the remainder of their lives. The cold, which rushes through the catacombs like a thousand ghosts chasing after your remembrance, is heightened by the actors telling the stories that have been misplaced over time. From the tales of the children who were employed to keep the air conditioning and warmth going, the two black widows waiting to impart the knowledge of life in the cells, the thought of Florence Maybrick, the wife of James Maybrick who died after being poisoned by arsenic. These and a million other stories seep out of the walls, through the floor and wish to be heard.
It is those stories, the secrets of a building that has stood over Liverpool almost longer than any other, that housed those evading the bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe, the police and army personnel who waited for the signal to break up the Transport Riots of 1911 and 1917 and where valuable water and meat was stored in the cold almost unforgiving tunnels during the war. Secrets and memories always find a way to come out, and a building is just as important when it comes to the recollections of history.
Lovehistory and St. George’s Hall are quite a potent mix, this is a fascinating experience for anybody with a love of history, of Liverpool and of the chill you feel when visiting a place that very few human beings have had the honour to do in 160 years. Well worth the tour.
Ian D. Hall
The Catacombs of Liverpool’s Darkest History is on at St. George’s Hall Monday 17th to Sunday 23rd February 2014
Times: 6pm, 6.20, 6.40, 7pm, 7.20, 7.40, 8pm, 8.20, 8.40, 9pm, 9.20, and 9.40.
(Approximately one hour in duration) Tickets are priced at £15 including booking fee. Purchase in person at TicketQuarter, Queens Square, Liverpool. Online at www.ticketquarter.co.uk or on 0844 800 0410