Not related to footy but I received this from Dave Wood who is a great Red Scouser, let us join the Facebook group and help return this Liverbird home.
The gates were built in 1840, 52 years before L.F.C. was formed and were the entrance to Liverpool’s Sailors Home. They are now in an industrial estate near Birmingham.
The gates are magnificent and a work of art. There is a fantastic Liver Bird on top of the gates that lets you know immediately that they are Liverpool gates.
Please support this cause, join their Facebook group
Y.N.W.A.
-Antoine
Good News!
The older Sailors’ Home Liverbird never left the City!
As part of the redevelopment of the site of St Thomas’s Church on Paradise Street by Grosvenor, the site has now been laid out as a memorial garden to all those who are buried there including Joseph Williamson.
The centre piece of the garden is a carved stone replica of the Liver Bird which once adorned the Sailors Home on Paradise Street and which was temporarily stored at the Williamson Tunnels Heritage Centre during the construction of Liverpool One.
It is very good news that in addition to the replica, the original Liverbird is to feature in the Museum of Liverpool when it opens in 2011.
The iron Liverbird now being restord in the Midlands was a later edition to the Sailors’ Home Gates, it was designed by John Cunningham and cast by Pooley & Son’s. It was added in 1852 to keep sailors from climbing over the earlier ‘mermaid’ gates after the 10pm curfew. The Stone Liverbird pre-dates its iron brother by at least two years.
If you want to see ironwork from the Liverpool Sailors’ Home today why not have a walk over to the Malmaison Hotel on Princes Dock?
The curved panels there, salvaged in 1974, spent many years in Audlem, Cheshire before returning to their Liverpool home.
And don’t worry; they are just in the entrance so you don’t have to book a room to see them.
If you are visiting North Wales, Clough Williams-Ellis used the Mermaid panels from the home in a few of his buildings in the area, not just Portmeirion.
For more images please visit http://www.chesterwalls.info/gallery/sailorshome.html
or http://www.yoliverpool.com/forum/showthread.php?39173-Liverpool-Sailors-Home-Gates-UPDATE&p=297143