AN ARCHITECTURAL WALKING TOUR OF LIVERPOOL

QUEEN ELIZABETH II LAW COURTS

Liverpool Crown Courts [1], otherwise know as The Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts was designed by Farmer & Dark.  The building was completed in 1984 although the initial design work started in 1973, Sharples states:

“By which date such assertive, concrete-clad buildings were less fashionable.” 1

Its brutalist architectural style was described as out of date before its completion because it took eleven years to construct.  It was designed to resemble a castle as a reference to the previous building on the site, [2] Liverpool Castle (1232-7).2

This 10 storey building towers over Derby Square, internally it contains twenty-eight courtrooms.  The building is faced with vertically ribbed pre-cast concrete panels only ever relieved of this material at a window where ceramic tiles are used in strips.  The brutalist style is then disrupted at a high level with a lead covered mansard roof.  Sharples explains the poetic nature of the building describing its colours and the way shadows are formed by certain elements: 

“On the south, some of the uprights stand clear, creating strong contrasts of light and shadow.  Richly sculptural from most angles, though rather oppressive in bulk and colouring.”

The Royal arms cast in concrete over the main entrance was produced by Richard Kindersley.3

The first building on this site was Liverpool Castle, begun by William de Ferrers was built between 1332-7 Belcham: 

“The Ferrers seem to have respected Liverpool’s chartered rights, renewed the lease of the fee farm regularly and built a castle some time between 1232-37 at the top of present- day Lord Street.”4

The castle as described by Bailey and Millington:

“The structure, square in shape, was perched on a knoll of rock about eight feet above the present level of Derby Square.  Its stone curtain-wall was flanked by three round corner towers, and near the fourth corner a massive gate-house with portcullis and drawbridge faced northward onto Castle Street.  The largest or ‘great tower’ occupied the south-west corner, were the Victoria Monument stands today.  Within the curtain-wall were hall, chapel and other buildings.”5

In 1734 St George’s Church was built on the site of Liverpool Castle but this was closed in 1897 and demolished soon afterwards, today in this location as Bailey and Millington state is the Queen Victoria Monument [3].  When the monument was built it stood at the pivot point of Castle Street and Lord Street and half way between the Liverpool Town Hall and Custom House.  Because the monument is built on the ground where the church was, and before that the castle, it is not quite inline with todays streets. Charles Herbert Reilly once said ‘that it looked like it has been gently pushed aside to make way for tramcars and the dome half on and half off its columns adds to the illusion’. 6

The monument is still present today in Derby Square, by F.M Simpson, with Willink & Thicknesse, 1902-6. The bronze sculpture was by Charles Allen, Sharples explains Allen’s success:

“This was Allen’s magnum opus and is one of the most ambitious British monuments to the Queen.” 7  

There is a plaque on the base of the monument commemorating the site of Liverpool Castle [4].

Before the Liverpool Crown Courts building and Liverpool One were constructed Castle Street and South Castle Street spanned between the Town Hall and Custom House (demolished after WWII). Sharples and Stonard describe:

“Castle Street and its continuation, South Castle Street, had formed the spine of Liverpool, closed at the north end by the dome of the Town Hall and at the south end - from the 1820s - by the corresponding dome of the Custom House.  The southward vista was cut off by the construction of the Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, planned in 1973 and opened in 1984, across the path of South Castle Street, breaking the visual link with the historic site of the Pool.” 8

Today there is a path that runs between Liverpool One and the Queen Elizabeth II Courts building [5], part of the walking tour route, this path adopts a similar axis to that of the previous South Castle Street.9

References

1. J. Sharples, Liverpool (Pevsner Architectural Guides), p. 150.

2. RIBA City Tour, Gateway to the World, Appendix D, lines 350-351.

3. J. Sharples, Liverpool (Pevsner Architectural Guides), p. 150.

4. J. Belcham, Liverpool 800: Culture, Character and History, p. 65.

5. F.A. Bailey and R. Millington, The Story of Liverpool, p. 31.

6. Q. Hughes, Seaport: Architecture & Townscape in Liverpool, p. 78.

7. J. Sharples, Liverpool (Pevsner Architectural Guides), p. 149.

8. J. Sharples and J. Stonard, Built on Commerce: Liverpool’s central business district, p. 76.

9. RIBA City Tour, Gateway to the World, Appendix D, lines 351-352.