November 2009 Archives

The Liverpool Youth orchestra, sporting some fine bobble-hats, conducted by Stanley Gill, serenades passengers boarding SS Devonia, at Princes Landing Stage, prior to the British India liner's last voyage from Liverpool on November 5, 1967. Popular operating cruises for schools, she was previously a Bibby Line troopship. Code: tmc300309lookback.jpg

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Stop - you're over-acting! Mugging mummers Terry Taplin, left, and Paul Harman give it the full thespian welly during a scene from Samuel Beckett's Endgame at the Liverpool Everyman, in January, 1966. Mind you, half the cast spent the play stuck in dustbins, so any exuberance on being let out is understandable. Code: tmc200409lookback

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AS MARK Rothko's Seagram Murals are enjoying such attention at Tate Liverpool, it seems only fitting to make this week's photograph and image of their last visit in 1988, as part of the gallery's opening exhibitions.

© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko ARS, NY and DACS, London

HERE is the second of Tom Slemen's ghost stories...

THE BANSHEE (1849)

BUILT between 1815 and 1816, the Irish Centre on Mount Pleasant in Liverpool began its life as the Wellington Rooms, where the merchant princes of the city held innumerable dance balls and parties. Against this setting of fashionable high society, a well-documented supernatural incident took place in the Spring of 1849.

Robert Ogden, a stout Mulberry-faced gentleman, and his friend John McLauchlan, both of Leveson Street in Toxteth, were turned out of the Wellington Rooms at almost two in the morning because of drunkenness and rowdyism.

TOM SLEMEN has provided the Pool of Life blog with two of his favourite Liverpool ghost stories. Tales from his best-selling Haunted Liverpool books are being brought to life in his a series of dramatic readings at St George's Hall next week.

Here is the first story. I'll post the second one tomorrow.

THE GHOSTLY DUELLISTS

IN THE 1880s, there lived a solitary man with no face at a house on Huskisson Street. No one knew his identity, but there were rumours he was John Henry Kingsley, a wealthy gentleman who had vanished from society many years before.

I WAS walking past the Town Hall about an hour ago and noticed workmen on the roof. By the time I got back to my desk this press release with great news about the building's bell being restored was in my inbox...

LIVERPOOL'S Town Hall bell will soon be ringing after falling silent for 100 years.

Engineers have already started work on repairs to the clock and bell which will be completed by the end of the week.

A brief test will take place tomorrow and the bell will then be silenced until midnight New Years Eve when the newly refurbished bell will ring out across the city.

THIS is a first in what I hope will be a regular series of guest blogs by history experts at National Museums Liverpool.

Dr Clemency Fisher of the World Museum Liverpool is looking for help from Pool of Life readers...

Lost: Has anyone seen a marble lady with her foot on a water pot?

William Roscoe (1753-1831), who could quite possibly be said to have founded culture in Liverpool, was a man with many hats - politician, solicitor, booklover, supporter of the arts, founder of the now sadly defunct Liverpool Botanic Garden, and poet. He lived in several different houses in central and south Liverpool, one being The Elms, which was on the dog-leg between Park Road and Aigburth Road (the road next to where it stood still bears this name).

GIVEN today's date I thought this photograph would be poignant.

Crowds gather at Bootle War Memorial to commemorate Armistice Day on November 11, 1930 Code: zz111130memorial

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THE Isle of Man post office has released a new set of stamps marking the 100-year anniversary since the sinking of Ellan Vannin, which was sailing between the Isle of Man and Liverpool when she vanished.

The disaster was immortalised in song by Hughie Jones of the Liverpool folk band The Spinners, who runs a folk club in the Everyman Bistro each Tuesday evening.

In 1909, the 339-ton passenger and cargo steamer Ellan Vannin fought through a hurricane in a bid to get to Liverpool and then vanished.

TOM SLEMEN'S best-selling Haunted Liverpool books will come to life in a series of dramatic readings later this month.

The spooky tales, adapted for stage by Jen Hayes, will be retold through readings and theatrical performance at St George's Hall's Small Concert Room.

The first readings of Tales from Haunted Liverpool will be performed by Royal Court stalwart Eithne Browne, MC at Liverpool Capital of Culture opening ceremony Brian Dodd and Stephen Fletcher, who recently starred as Hamlet in the same location.

Producer Bill Elms says: "Tom Slemen's books are incredibly popular in Liverpool and lovers of these books can now sit back and hear these spine chilling stories in a live interactive way and in a very unique setting."

Slemen has written nine Haunted Liverpool books of spine tingling tales of the city's past and present. Tales from Haunted Liverpool takes place on November 25. Tickets £10 - £12.50, 0151 709 4988.