Save Plumpton Terrace-From Liverpool City Council.

Along Everton Road.

There is a tall grand terrace. 

A long brick structure, a row with its principles of Georgian design almost intact. 

With remnents of its doorway fanlight faded glory. It stands there tall in defiance.

I will not be moved it says to me, in the autumn sunshine.

 I will not fall down, no matter what you do. 

Built 1824. there are a few alterations and a bit of work could be put right.

Generally I hate mock Georgian. The proportions don't work because the ceiling heights are usually reduced. This is the real thing. 

Looking smaller than its three storeys in pictures, than its true scale. 

It stands there as if it has been left behind and in another timezone.

Liverpool in the 1980's.

You could almost put its faded elegance to a UB40 soundtrack and without too much effort, imagine what it was like in the late seventies in post war decline Liverpool, managed decline. Thatcher decline. 

When the mantra was to manage that decline because Liverpool was dying in front of our eyes.

I saw it in spray can graffiti before grafitti became fashionable.

“Will the last person to leave Liverpool switch off the lights'.

It was a distress call. A pleading. 

Vandalism in protest.

I know because I have done it too.

Declaring that Lady Doreen and Sir Trevor Jones in my opinion were “Partners in Slime”.

The terrace plus the adjoining row which are in good order were mentioned in 'Buildings of Liverpool'...saying they were needing attention.

That book was published by Liverpool City Council in 1978.

Just how can this be allowed to happen to such an imposing row of beautiful proportioned dwellings?

It is owned by Liverpool City Council, thats how.

A labour council who behave like Tories. 

Where Mayor Joe Anderson and his Head of Regeneration were arrested, alledgedly as partners in slime. 

They and the council were probably waiting for it to get in a worst state so they can do us all a favour.

 And knock it out to one of the “Cosy” developers that they fed with our land, that we the citizens of Liverpool own.

Plumpton Terrace was alive when I was young.

Everton Road leads into St Domingo Road and thats where I was born in Wye Street almost next to Everton Library that is still standing.

Just about.

It may receive some attention soon.

Or is that another empty Liverpool heritage promise?

Across the road is the beautiful and historic Grade I listed St Georges Church. 

Which was my church of St Georges infant school, where we were led to pray before I discovered the untruths contained within religion. 

I walk through its gatepost entrance, that I once climbed and clung to, and threw confetti over my neighbour in celebration as he walked through it, beneath me with his bride, on his marriage day.

It is easy for you to imagine yourself in the countryside.

At the top of Beacon lane.

St Georges platau has always been an important place.

Feel the craftsman cut 18^th century script in the historic stones, that all tell a story, in the graveyard and you can feel the history through your fingertips

I got quite emotional there today. Maybe I was remembering sitting inside looking up at the majesty of its architecture when as a six year old, not knowing that this was a Rickman design but knowing that it was special. 

Or maybe it was recalling my mothers funeral service that was held there recently. I dont know, but I do know that the sense of place that I still feel to this area is within my soul.

There is a bit of, a new, mad looking Acadamy heading back to Plumpton Terrace. The place where as a child I once went to the Red Triangle club. That was a long time before the Kung Fu fighting Bruce Lee craze took hold. 

This is where another neighbour of mines brother, Steve, older than me, trained. He went to compete at the Olympics. The Red Triangle has trained some good people. 

And kept many young Liverpudlians off the street. Maybe gave them some pride.

This area has had its ups and downs and most of it is on the up.

We need to Save Plumpton Terrace-From Liverpool City Council.

While there are fortunes going into new build shoe boxes, we need to respect the past, where we come from.

This building, or buildings need to be saved.

So what could it be, well as I remember those dark Boys from the Blackstuff days.

I can also remember how I felt proud to have a certiificate, a City and Guilds certificate. That showed that I had trained as a proper apprentice. 

That I had served my time, not inside, where poverty wants to grab you and take you down to.

But as a carpenter. “You will never be out of work” I was told.

Now Liverpool needs more trademen. Good lads and now ladies, who will feel the same pride as I did.

Like the mythical plasterer written into Alan Bleasdales script who signed his name on the corner of his wall because he was so proud of his work. 

Yes I remember him too.

Everton needs to rekindle its pride and look after its youth and give it hope and a new future.

Plumpton Terrace could just be the place to do that.

Save Plumpton Terrace-From Liverpool City Council who have let it decline and will let it fall down.

If we let them. They Are Guilty  

Liverpool The City That Knocked The Cavern Down And Then Called Itself Beatles Town.

SAVE EVERTON LIBRARY TOO

Living In Liverpool Its too hard to bear sometimes

I Find A Stradivarius. Or Is It A Stradivarious?

 Ever curious I recently came across a violin with a lable. 

Peering inside the case through the distinctive holes, the dealer said “Stradivarius, believe that if you want”.

It made me wonder.....What turns a musical instrument, into an myth?

I purchased it knowing that there were probabaly thousands of imposters and the labelled Stradavarius had become a by word in the antique trade, saying to all

 “Believe what you want, buyer beware”.

I took it home and hung it on a piece of string off the picture rail and there it stayed. 

A twenty quid talking point.

Then ever more recently I was told that a friend of a friend actually owned a Stradivarius violin.

A genuine one.

With a provenance as long as your bow arm. 

Ummm. Thats interesting I thought. 

I had the time and was given the opportunity to sift through the life of a great musician. Who had owned it. 

It seemed a great honour to me. 

The momentos of the vast travelling, that has to be done in pursuit of an International Concert career. It was all there for me to look at. 

I felt honoured to peer through the window of time. 

I have not seen the actual Stradivarius, but I have seen detailed photographs, heard and read all about it. 

Its concise history is known. It's in all the books. Very expensive books.

Speaking to members of the family I have peered into the life of the violinist who it was gifted to, by her rich father. Fascinating.

But always cynical I remember watching one of the later Lovejoy episodes, when the programme had lost its zeal, and become a Keystone Cop's parady.

This episode involved one of the actors from The Boys From The Blackstuff who was playing the part of a violin master repairer. He was being asked to fake a Stradivarius by the loveable rogue in order to pretend it was not real.

Though it was a comedy it brought out some real dilemmas and asked questions about authenticity that are lessons in life.

 “Why would you wanna ruin a thing of beauty” Yozzers mate says being asked to turn A Stradavarius into an 'ordinary' violin.

Far fetched you may think?

Well not by the history of violins that I have read about.

They appear to, not just be musical instruments but blue chip commodities. 

That are traded by kings and queens and held by rich institutions.

My Clarinet is made of Grenadilla not as is often thought, ebony.

I often see them being sold.

 Some that were owned by famous people. 

Of course the pads are usually well and truly dried.

I look at them but they are old and worn. It will let me down. I know it.

I leave them behind they are not too valuable. 

I have an antique metal clarinet....can't get a tune out of it. It squeaks in the box.

But what if it was, the clarinet, that Artie Shaw showed direct to the camera in a BBC4 documentary. Where he spoke about his life and how he became the sound of America. Around the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbour. 

Where he says that he recorded a little known George Gershwin tune called 'Begin the Beguine' and “It took off like a singed cat”.

Then it becomes a piece of history. It's culture.

What is that magic that makes, a label inside a violin, with the name of Stradivarius worth millions?

It was previously thought that decades went by drying the wood used to make instruments.

But dendrochronologists have scientificaly dated the woods used in the making of his instruments to have only been felled a few years before the instrument was sold.

Quite often, when dated, the latest ring would be 1702 and the label on a violin would be 1706.

There are too many of these, short dates between felling and sale to be a co-incidence. Attribution to a maker by the exact tree used is now able.

Stradivarius built over a thousand instruments and about five to six hundred of these instruments are left. Of these 350 are violins.

He didn't buy wood in wedges like most, he bought entire trees or large portions of the same tree.

So we can be confident with the technology to hand that we can identify the very timber used.

There are fortunes to be won and lost on mis-attribution of one of his instruments.

His output was huge and the system of taking the timber from tree to sale must have been a akin to military planning.

He needed to use the timber that had cost him dear, and this he did to perfection.

So what was so magical about his chosen wood that made them sing in such a way that his legacy, we still talk about today with the utmost reverence?

Why do we call anyone a genius?

What is it about the name Stradivarius that has been passed down the centuries that has turned his name into investment gold?

And still play nicely too.

The attributes to make a violin are unique. You have to become an alchemist and dance between the practical skills needed to engineer any number of pieces of chosen wood and having picked them, take those different woods, and with those skills join them seemlessly into a work of art.

And be confident that the beautiful work of art will be of use to a skilled player with an ear that is tuned to hear the minute semi-tones of any string chosen or plucked. And make a violin or a cello sing sweetly and to to be applauded by any number of audiences, also with ears that quiver to a bending sound.

Musically educated ears to be matched with auditorium acoustics. That are traditionally constructed of wood. It's not easy. Wood is warm.

Science and magic is in the soul of the luthier. Who turns his spruce and maple to golden sound. Trees that in life are silent yet in death they sing.

What is it that allows the confidence of the player to match his hands and bow and become one, in tune?

The thickness of the wood and how the holes are drilled in the plank to set the varing depths of the curviture to be the gouged out.

The understanding of the exact level to be removed from that wood, done by a gauge but mostly by feel are not a given right. They have to be earned.

Spruce is an evergreen, it is not a dense hardwood.

Spruce does not have a cellular structure of a dense timber. The grain is straight hollow. With tiny tubes bound together like minature drinking straws, this carries the sound.

So when you curve but retain the flatness it conducts the sound. Yet is strong. The plate conducts vertically. It has a high density for a given wieght.

Balsa wood is the optimum material for violins but it is not strong enough. It could be strengthened with plastic, but why would you do this?

Wood is the correct material for the job no matter how much science is applied to it.

The balance of a violin being set with another wood, a harder wood. 

Maple is the usual hardwood support and has a diffuse grain. Birds eye maple could be used occasionaly for the back, but more than often, it was plain maple.

This spreads the sound horizontaly.

The woods, sometimes chosen by foresters ear, that could be augmented into those magic tones was not a given right. 

Knowledge has to be earned and passed down through families and generations. Just like those trees, it grows slowly but surely.

Altitude 1200 meter high some say makes it free of knots and the terra ferme and the flora around the tree is also crucial. Its like choosing where to plant grapes.

These are slow growing and not forced like the pines we grow for carcassing.

You have to understand just how it bends and how the climate helps it grow, to watch it grow. Then all of a sudden a tree is cut and ready to be handed to the lutherers aim.

What is the right time to fell a tree?

Maple grows best in southern Europe.

There are different visual aspects too to be taken into account.

If you dry it too quick it will split so it needs to be watered for a year, outside, and this watering cleanses the inside of the grain.

The ripples form and come out in pattern and depth in these verticaly cut timbers. Experience would be all in the choosing of grain.

The flame or the ripple if deep and goes well into the wood becomes a back plate. 

Necks can also be chosen and the tree in death gets a second life.

The life of the tree goes on indefinitly in its sacrifice to become a instrument.

And the wood we are working with today were saplings when stradivarius was making his.

But will the instruments of today be as good in 300 years as a Stradivarius is today.

The loving care that is needed through all stages is what makes a good violin.

The curve or arched shape of a violin carries the load and combining this with its pleasing shape that helps to stop warping. Sharp course corners would acentuate or, help a split. Wood is a material that is subject to changes in temperature and forces that if unchecked or not counter balanced would ruin an instrument.

So the shape and form of Stradivarius design was quite revolutionary around the time of 1700.

Stradavarius changed the way Cremona heard the instrument. A town of trained ears. 

This will have been by trial and error. In this town that understood.

We can see his original moulds that are preserved in Cremona today.

Still curious, I asked my good friend, retired professional violinist of The Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and all round mechanic, Ken Johnson about his violin.

So what of my Stradi-various. 

Well I left it hanging there when I moved house......hardly paying it any attention. 

What are the chances? 

Its funny how your mind plays tricks.

And now I think, maybe should I have looked into it a bit more. 

Could it have been real?

And now I will never know.

The Wellington Rooms-Liverpool’s Disgrace.

What is the point in letting this historic building rot?
Here is a picture taken in 1989 by Jeremy Hawthorn. It was used on calendar a couple of years past that was published by The Nerve.

How can this building be left to rot after a billion pounds of European objective one funding has been sloshing around over recent decades?

The city in talks of regeneration while this building, and many other, lay in a state of degeneration.

It’s easy to miss its façade as you drive along Mount Pleasant.

 The Wellington Rooms in Mount Pleasant were once described as a ‘house of mirth and revelry’.

They were erected after funds were raised by public subscription in 1815
http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/
Pic as it appeared in NERVE magazine current issue 24 available from News from Nowhere Bold Street Liverpool

An Adaptation of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates of Athens, which was illustrated, in the influential publication, by Stuart and Revelt, entitled Antiquities of Athens.
It had a porch on one side for the setting down of sedan chairs. The Portico was originally open but was found to be draughty and a disfigurement to the original design was made in my opinion, with the blocking up.
A ballroom of some 80ft by 40ft it had a card room and a supper room.
It was thought to have been frequented by the upper classes, as subscription balls, assemblies and occasional fancy dress balls.

How that description conjures up the most remarkable images of Georgian Liverpool.

A Maritime City of tall masts, sundrenched sailors, rope-makers and barrow boys.

The Welly is from at the nucleus of Liverpool’s upward growth, from humble beginnings, of its gentrification, taking it to the city of its height in the early 20th century.
It is a descendant of bygone age of wigs and crinoline gowns and candlesticks and taverns.

I grew up with it being known as The Irish Centre in the 70s and 80s, and ignorant of these historic facts relating the building back to the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleons defeat by the then axis powers under the leadership of the Duke of Wellington.

In 2008 I highlighted its plight in a walkabout for the then Daily Post pleading for the then Liberal Democrat council to save it.

There were then ghastly plans put forward to develop it, by sticking a Rubik cube sort of extension on the back.

The plans looked more like a sketch on the back of a jerry-builders ciggy packet than a professionals work; thankfully they were rejected amid controversy.

2008 may have turned the nations perception of my town but being European Capital of Culture was also a curse because it turned into a culture of capital feeding frenzy, where property developers are helped to do the ordinary and the more difficult has to wait to fall down

Nothing has been done to stop the rot, and it is still the same building, only the deterioration seems to have been helped, by the lead on the roof going missing. What state inside to the plasterwork and its Adams style frieze?

On the English Heritage at risk register for as long as I can remember.

It is Grade II* listed.

The area director of EH should be ashamed of the record that Liverpool has for not looking after its Georgiana.

Though asking English Heritage to protect, with this planning department that in my opinion is a law unto itself, is like asking my mouse to look after my cat.

With a ineffectual conservation office we don’t stand a chance.

Now this great city has areas such as Duke Street with its swathes of beautiful simple three storey Georgian terraces that now look alien in their own environment after modern pastiche, or inferior designed student flats have been erected.

So what chance by this council under a Labour council of turning the tide of humiliation to our Georgian stock.

There may be developers crawling over it now. But look at the mess the council made with St Andrews Church on Rodney Street, after it was reported, was offloaded by the city council for a quid to a convicted fraudster.

Yes I know we have to move on but our history is our future.

Look at the restoration of Seymour Terrace; they certainly did a good job there.

Over the road on Hope Street, they throw a £20 million grant at the demolition of the Everyman culling it, with history bleeding out of its walls. They build a replica in its place, whether that will prove successful time will tell. But once you lose your history its lost forever. This is the town that knocked the Cavern Club down.
Next to this historic gem, and with objective one funding an extension was built on Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral built by the architect Gibbard,

The Oscar Niemeyer Basilica rip off, daubed by the effervescent card carrying communist, Arthur Dooley, Paddys Wigwam, while this wonderful little Georgian gem lies there, rotting, a forlorn looking Mausoleum to itself.

Antique Dealers Are Breaking Up Their Brown Furniture To Keep Warm.

Up and down the country, they are burning their stock to keep warm.

Faced with one of the worst winters on record they have no option.

With gas prices at an all time high and electricity now a luxury, they have to make ends meet.

In an age when most Victorian tables are now cheaper to burn than buying coal and with massive warehouses to heat. 

There is only one option reduce storage costs by burning wardrobes. 

They are only worth a tenner at auction anyhow.

What the bloody 'ell has happened to Mahogany, Rosewood and Walnut this is ridiculous.

Antique furniture is now that cheap that you cant fuel your fire for less.

Can you believe it, the furniture retail index has dropped again for the umpteenth year on the run. Its crazy. One dealer I know had his pension tied up in quality stuff and he told me its worth a fifth of what it was.

It cant get any cheaper And Joe Public educated by Bargain Hunt are more interested in cheap and cheerful than quality.

Where is all the money going to? 

 MDF and chipboard rubbish? 

What is wrong with the public? What is wrong with the public's sense of reality when they would rather add to Sweden's balance of trade, while antique dealers are smashing up their chest of drawers, just to stay warm through this storm spread winter.

What’s more the same people complain that the high street is dying on its feet.

Cant you give them a break, they are hard working people who deserve to have food and clothes for their families. Some of them are second and third generation antique dealers, some even more. There may not be a fourth. What’s more the same people complain that the high street is dying on its feet.

And the great British public wont even give them a meagre crust.

Buy antiques now before they are all burnt.....or painted with Farrow and Ball.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Henry%20Sandons%20letter%20to%20the%20Times

Its all the same shops these days, they say. They love it when they go to France and find all those Brocante shops full of things that the French wont buy.

They bring pieces home, and tell everyone as if its a trophy, “Its French”. Then they go and add to China's economy and accessories it in John Lewis with stuff made by people paid two pound a month. While the local antique shops are disappearing and will soon become as rear as a glass cased Dodo.

Antique dealers are green they stop things being destroyed, they recycle.

Nowadays if you recycle a bit of wet cardboard or a squashed milk carton there is definitely someone who will give out a grant for it.

If the person running the recycling firm is a black, one legged lesbian well there are hundreds of thousands available. So where is the help for antique recyclers?

Where is the aid to stop them going to the wall, going out of business and allowing their shops to be taken over by charity shops, that get tax relief.

The same charity shops are generally full of the lower middle class trying to get the stuff before the antique dealers get it. 

There was recently one tweed suited  twerp on the Antique Road show, proud as punch that he had bought a vase worth two grand in a charity shop for £37.50. Grinning like a Cheshire Cat. “No £36.50” he corrected the valuer.

He should have been made to pay the charity that he robbed, back, or the staff in the shop who valued it, without getting a second opinion, should be made to pay.

Whatever the case, the charity was done out of a couple of grand while Billy Brewster wallowed in glory as if he was clever.

If it had of been forty five quid he wouldn’t have chanced it.

Just think how much Oxfam lose a year by not getting the prices right.

So mahogany and walnut is out of style and decades of furniture dealing experience does not count for a jot these days.

Most warehouse-men have burnt their Millers Guide years ago, to keep warm, because they are not worth the paper they are written on any more. They are so out of date, that it is hilarious, especially when someone comes into the shop trying to sell something quoting their prices.

Though its no joke when a member of the public comes in the shop taking about the table they bought 15 years ago for three hundred quid and says “There’s one in the Millers Guide for £550” and you have to tell them its worth a hundred if they are lucky.

So does anyone care if your heritage is broken up and burnt because its cheaper being used for cooking on a barbecue than charcoal.

The exception of course has been Art Deco furniture. 

This is strange as most of it that was made in England is, lets say, not the best quality.

Yes there are Epstein and Hille, but most of the stuff that passes for Art Deco may in fact be post war.

The look is there though. The blonde veneers seem to brighten up a room where mahogany will dull it.

But I still love a good grain, and I hope an appreciation for quality timber will be revived and it will come back.

But for now, Art Deco furniture and post war design is where the money has gone. It looks so modern in an apartment.

And when all the brown furniture has been burnt so dealers can stay warm,some bright spark will realise that a good patina is back in style, and everyone will run around buying Georgian again and it will all start all start to go up in price....only this time there may be less of it around.

Who will be the brave one who will hold their nerve and stack a warehouse high with good stock, the stuff they used to want years ago? Will they be the clever ones?

Because the stuff is for nothing it cant go any cheaper, though someone did said to me last year......and it has.