A day out with Grand!

As in most areas of the UK we woke up this morning to rain - not as bad as some have had it, but for the time being the weather has changed!

I’ll be doing catch-ups of our Liverpool stay for some time yet - we’ve seen and done so much!
On Monday 15th July George had a day out with the girls (grand-daughters Joanne and Alice) visiting the Old Liverpool Dock and the Catholic Cathedral.
The text below is by George ...

This is the Old Dock, originally known as Thomas Steer’s Dock, built in 1715 of brick laid onto the sandstone bedrock.  It accommodated up to 100 ships and became the single most influential reason for Liverpool’s existence.  Re-discovered during the 2001 excavations after being buried since 1826. 

Warehousing and worker’s accommodation sprang up all around the docks and when the Old Dock became redundant, the local residents, keen to ‘offload' what had become a ‘difficult’ problem (the inexorable build up of effluent!) began to dump it into the dock.  The problem became so bad that the authorities decided to fill the dock in.

In 2001, when excavations re-discovered the Old Dock, it was full of a black gelatinous fluid (poo for short) which had perfectly preserved the dock structure!

The tunnel entrance you can see above is believed to have been connected to the Old Castle and is exactly 6ft 3inches high, which was tall enough to fit a soldier carrying a pike.  When the castle was under siege, the soldiers would wait higher up in the tunnel until the tide went out and then rush out to outflank their enemy.

Time Team arrived when the Old dock had been partially excavated by a team of top archaeologists  and, asked them if they would re-bury some of the artefacts so that the Time Team ‘experts’ could re-discover them on TV!!  Not only that, but Mick Aston actually began striking the brick wall at the newly discovered tunnel entrance to see what was behind it, not realising that the bricks were supporting the archway and the Old Dock wall!!!  They were asked to leave.

 New concrete piling now supporting John Lewis and the Liverpool Hilton

The pictures below were taken by Joanne of the images that really caught her eye...

She particularly mentioned the symbol on the alter (click to enlarge) as she is a member of St Marys Star of the Sea, Largs - a church which also has strong connections with the sea and has a similar motif there.

Thanks Joanne - very thoughtful pictures.