Category: Liverpool

I had to Google what a ‘stela’ was and after I insisted to Google that I hadn’t just mis-spelt ‘stella’ (which is a drink I’d never search for) it informed me that it was a stone slab which was erected as a monument. The museum’s description is:

“Slab stela of Ni-ankh-tet, royal acquaintance, director/controller of scribes connected with petitions (or iah?) and scribe of reversion offerings of about late 3rd Dynasty or early 4th Dynasty. Sunk and raised relief with a combination of vertical and horizontal inscriptions. The deceased is seated before a table of offerings. With his right hand he reaches out towards the table of bread loaves, while with his left he grasps the shoulder knot of his garment in his clenched fist. At the top right side is a register list of linen of various fineness. The bottom part of the stela is broken away.”

As this isn’t going to be an Egyptian history blog, for one reason I know nothing about it, I was just going to witter on about the age of this, which is from 2686 to 2494 BC making it a remarkable survival given its age. It was discovered by Joseph Sams in 1833 who owned it until 1850 when he sold it to Joseph Mayer, who donated it to the museum in 1867. The number of people who have seen this stone at the museum must outnumber how many saw it when it was in situ.

It’s not known when the excavation took place, but Joseph Sams (1784-1860) was a book-seller and antiquities dealer, so he was likely hawking around the area waiting for these items to be uncovered. Joseph Mayer (1803-1886) made his money as a jeweller and then started to build up an art collection of some considerable size, which he donated in its entirety to the World Museum (or the William Brown Library and Museum as it then was).

I find these exhibits particularly fascinating as a reminder of how advanced the Egyptian civilisation was and wondering what the original stone carver would have thought of thousands of people in Liverpool looking at their handiwork…..

It would be something of an omission not to take in the centre of Liverpool during a weekend visit, although I’m pleased to have already visited locations such as the Cavern Club so I didn’t need to return there, exciting as they are. Now that I’ve reached just over 24 I’m far too old to need to return to loud places, I can’t be doing with raucous unless I’ve got muddled up and it’s someone’s birthday or within four months of their birthday when it might be acceptable.

The others in our group seemed more excited by the louder environment as we approached it. Given half a chance I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Bev dive into a bar to show off her dance moves, despite supposedly having a bad back.

Getting busier and there’s the Cavern Club. There’s enough information elsewhere on-line about the history of this venue, but in short it’s a different location to the original club which was closed due to suit the needs of Merseyrail. The replacement club is on a similar footprint and they’ve used some of the original bricks, but it isn’t entirely historically authentic. Sgt Peppers had a tagline of “live music eight nights a week” and it’s open until 01:00 on weekdays and 04:00 at weekends, hours that Julian would be positively delighted by. Both the Cavern Club and Sgt Peppers have formidable reputations and are key parts of Liverpool’s music scene.

The Cavern Pub is run by the same operators as the Cavern Club offering free live music every night of the week. The whole area around Mathew Street (which is named after the local merchant Mathew Pluckington who was about in something like the eighteenth century) is certainly worth visiting for anyone who likes live music, vibrant street scenes and is either deaf or doesn’t mind losing their hearing. I can be very dull   🙂

By this stage I felt that it was best to move the group on from all this excitement as there was a Good Beer Guide listed pub that I wanted to visit and I anticipated it might be rather quieter.

Excuse my brief flight of fancy here, but it felt slightly sad to leave the former Cain’s Brewery to walk down the nearby Stanhope Street to see what was the Angel Vaults pub which is now boarded up. Actually, it’s been boarded up for over fifteen years, meaning that its future looks troubled to say the least. It felt a little sad that there are all these people heading to the Baltic Market and bars on the former brewery site, but this pub is somehow not viable. What was perhaps once a centre of the community was raided in 2010 when the police discovered that it was being used as a cannabis farm, with the building not used since. The carvings above the windows are at least mostly in decent condition and if this pub is ever reopened I imagine it’s have plenty of character.

Also, apologies for the washed out photo, but it was too hot and the searing and overheating sun stressed my phone.

The next stop on our little tour of Liverpool was the Baltic Market, the first street market in the city and it’s still all rather on-trend and exciting. It’s on the large site which was formerly Cains Brewery and it’s open on Thursdays to Sundays. I very much like these slightly upmarket (well, as opposed to those sites with the Holy Trinity of McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC) food courts, they make it easy to take a group of people to a venue and then there’s still a choice of cuisine. Often there’s someone in the group who still moans, but at least they’ve got their favourite cuisine to moan about so it’s a win-win.

It’s a bright and airy development which is spacious, although it was at near capacity in terms of the seating when we visited on a Saturday afternoon.

There are numerous food venues around the site, served by one central bar. The food venues include Polpetta who sells subs, Christakis who sell Greek food, Spice Thai who it will come as no surprise sell Thai food, Pattersons who sell fried chicken, Little Furnace who sell pizzas, Hafla Hafla who served Middle Eastern food, Richie’s who sell burgers, La Bistroteca who served bistro food and the Midnight Delivery who serve desserts. That’s quite a variety and should surprise and delight most people, although the prices are towards the higher end of the scale.

There was a little space on the upstairs area, which also had the advantage of a fan and these views over the market. I thought that the music was too loud, but to be fair, I’m now over 29 and I often think that the music is too loud so I’d advise my two loyal readers to take that with a pinch of salt.

I went for the Big Wave beer from Kona Brewing and it was refreshing, but uninspiring and rather generic. The pricing was also odd, my half pint was less than half of the cost of a full pint which seemed strange. I wasn’t massively engaged with the beer options here and for an on-trend venue there are surprisingly few Untappd check-ins. They need some Funky Fluid, that’s what they need. Back to the subject of Untappd (which I mention frequently and don’t forget I’m always after new beer friends so do add me at https://untappd.com/user/julwhite), I can’t recall taking the photo but I’m sure that I had Untappd in mind.

We were going to come back the following day to eat here in the evening, but Bev found another food court in the city centre and so we opted for that one. There was a laid-back atmosphere at the Baltic Market and it’s well reviewed on-line although one person said that “it’s set up to appeal to a young, less discerning demographic”. Nothing like a little age based sneering…. I respected the set-up here, the informality worked for me and the staff were keeping everything clean and organised. It’s perhaps not a hidden gem, it’s all a bit busy for that, but it seems like a place where you feel at least some of the action in the city is occuring.

After some cathedral visiting, we decided to walk to the Cains Brewery Village which is the former site of, well, Cains Brewery. The first thing that we noticed was a Yellow Submarine and since I quite like tacky things, I thought it was worth investigating. Steve agreed with me, so off we went in the hope that the other two wouldn’t object to our rapid decision.

The Liverpool Echo say that this submarine was installed here in 2018 and it was previously used as a floating hotel on the Albert Dock. Before that, it was used as a prop in the Sean Connery film ‘Hunt for Red October’, so it’s had something of a history. Incidentally, Bev wanted us to sit at this table, but I was conscious that people would want to take photos of this and I felt no need to be in them.

The interior of the submarine with the bar area at the rear.

And a little tribute to the Cavern Club at the front (or back, I get muddled up with these pointy ended things).

My Blue Moon beer acquired. I was quite happy to sit in the cold inside, but Bev wanted to sit outside in the sun to complain about the heat. I didn’t say anything.

Some of the wall art.

The others were faffing with their drinks orders, so it seems that I decided to take numerous photos of the interior with my beer in hand. I can’t remember what I was doing, probably trying to get the ideal Untappd photo or something.

My brief attempt of sitting in the cold inside before I was near forcibly dragged outside.

There’s the main former Cains brewery building in the background. I couldn’t help but wonder what the workers of fifty years ago would have thought if they could have known that their site would have been closed and a yellow submarine placed in the grounds.

The Blue Moon beer was served with a slice of orange and was at the appropriate temperature which is all to the good, but I was more surprised that it was keenly priced given the location. The atmosphere here is laid-back and the music wasn’t too loud, which is fortunate as I can’t be doing with raucous. It’s something a little quirky, and perhaps a little touristy, but I enjoyed my visit here although I suspect matters get somewhat louder later on in the day.

Apologies to my two loyal readers for the delay in this Liverpool series, these write-ups take around ten times longer than that the trip they’re describing. Anyway, I was intrigued as to why there was a Parliament Street in Liverpool. The reason is slightly less exciting than I had hoped, I was more anticipating that for a while the national Parliament was actually somehow located in Liverpool even though I knew that it evidently hadn’t been. However, it’s because an Act of Parliament was granted to the Earl of Sefton in the late eighteenth century, so it meant a somewhat uninspired choice of name for the street.

The reason incidentally that I had time to take photos of random road signs is because Bev and Susan were faffing about crossing the road, waiting for the green man and everything.