7__ Angel Field
An inspiring symbolic garden
Lucky are the students who walk through this outstanding modern garden on the way to classes at Hope University’s Creative Campus. The garden is in four parts, representing man’s spiritual journey. It starts with Origins, a woodland garden with a bubbling pool, symbolizing the primeval beginnings of life. On a circular stone bench are Latin words from St. Thomas Aquinas meaning, “Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses.” Next is the garden of the Body, an apple orchard in a wild flower meadow, celebrating how nature and its fruits nurture mankind. The words carved on stone blocks are from the poem “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a curate of the nearby church of St. Francis Xavier: “Glory be to God for dappled things/For skies of couple colour as a brindled cow.” In contrast, the garden of the Mind creates order from untamed nature, with clipped yew hedges and pleached lime trees inspired by Renaissance gardens. Flower beds shaped like Fibonacci spirals and bordered with box hedges are planted with colourful seasonal displays of perennials. In the centre is a circular performance space; across a rill, punctuated by jets of water, is a lawn where people can watch, picnic or just contemplate. Around the pool is a quotation from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players.” From Mind one passes to Soul: high above stands an angel on a column, with lines from Daniel inlaid into the paving below, “He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.” At night the garden is transformed by discreet lighting into a place of mystery and the angel glows pink from within. The garden, opened in 2010, was designed by Andy Thomson and Becky Sobell of Liverpool-based BCA Landscape. The angel was made by the sculptor Lucy Glendinning. 2
Address Shaw Street, Liverpool L6 1HP, +44 1512193000 | Getting there 20-minute walk from Lime Street station, or Bus 21 from Queen Square bus station to Everton, Brunswick Road. Enter via lodge on Shaw Street. | Hours Always open | Tip Musicians Pete Best and Holly Johnson, comedian Ted Ray, and actor Leonard Rossiter were all educated at the nearby Collegiate School, later converted to award-winning apartments by Urban Splash.
7__ Angel Field
An inspiring symbolic garden
Lucky are the students who walk through this outstanding modern garden on the way to classes at Hope University’s Creative Campus. The garden is in four parts, representing man’s spiritual journey. It starts with Origins, a woodland garden with a bubbling pool, symbolizing the primeval beginnings of life. On a circular stone bench are Latin words from St. Thomas Aquinas meaning, “Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses.” Next is the garden of the Body, an apple orchard in a wild flower meadow, celebrating how nature and its fruits nurture mankind. The words carved on stone blocks are from the poem “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a curate of the nearby church of St. Francis Xavier: “Glory be to God for dappled things/For skies of couple colour as a brindled cow.” In contrast, the garden of the Mind creates order from untamed nature, with clipped yew hedges and pleached lime trees inspired by Renaissance gardens. Flower beds shaped like Fibonacci spirals and bordered with box hedges are planted with colourful seasonal displays of perennials. In the centre is a circular performance space; across a rill, punctuated by jets of water, is a lawn where people can watch, picnic or just contemplate. Around the pool is a quotation from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players.” From Mind one passes to Soul: high above stands an angel on a column, with lines from Daniel inlaid into the paving below, “He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.” At night the garden is transformed by discreet lighting into a place of mystery and the angel glows pink from within. The garden, opened in 2010, was designed by Andy Thomson and Becky Sobell of Liverpool-based BCA Landscape. The angel was made by the sculptor Lucy Glendinning. 2
Address Shaw Street, Liverpool L6 1HP, +44 1512193000 | Getting there 20-minute walk from Lime Street station, or Bus 21 from Queen Square bus station to Everton, Brunswick Road. Enter via lodge on Shaw Street. | Hours Always open | Tip Musicians Pete Best and Holly Johnson, comedian Ted Ray, and actor Leonard Rossiter were all educated at the nearby Collegiate School, later converted to award-winning apartments by Urban Splash.
9__ Another Place The iron men on Crosby Beach
Three kilometres of coastline have been transformed into an unforgettable work of art by Antony Gormley, comprising 100 castiron, life-size figures of men, some on the beach, others almost a kilometre out to sea. Every time you visit, they look different; they are affected by the tide, the changing light, the wind, and the weather. Over time, they have changed colour and texture: some are reddened by rust, others are stained with emerald green seaweed, or encrusted with barnacles. Many are partially buried in drifts of sand; at high tide those furthest from the shore become gradually submerged so that they stand up to their necks in water. Each of them faces away from land: whether standing in calm waters or surrounded by crashing breakers, they are stock still, gazing far out to sea. Each figure is taken from a cast of Gormley’s body, but they are not self-portraits or statues in the conventional sense, and they are not elevated on pedestals. They are nameless and empty, waiting for the thoughts and feelings of their viewers; sometimes they look lonely and vulnerable, sometimes steadfast; they are migrants thinking of their homeland, or emigrants dreaming of a new world; they are the spirits of those lost at sea, or the exploited cockle-pickers of Morecambe Bay; they are staring at the offshore wind farm or contemplating our place in the cosmos. Intended as a temporary installation, they were shown in Germany, Norway, and Belgium before coming to Crosby, where they have found a permanent home. People treat them with affection, dressing them in hats, T-shirts, sunglasses – or condoms! Local students of fashion design even put them in period costume. Gormley is delighted by the variety of responses but even he might have been surprised at the biologists of Liverpool University who surveyed them for a research project about the spread of invasive species of barnacles. 4
Address Crosby Beach L23 | Getting there 6-minute walk from Hall Road Station; 6-minute walk from Blundellsands & Crosby Station; 15-minute walk from Waterloo Station. Car parks at Hall Road, L23 8SY, Crosby Leisure Centre, L23 6SX and Crosby Marine Lake L22 1RR. | Tip Between the Marine Lake and Waterloo Station, the seafront houses on Beach Lawn, Adelaide Terrace, Marine Crescent, and Marine Terrace are worth looking at for their pretty stucco frontages and cast-iron verandas.
9__ Another Place The iron men on Crosby Beach
Three kilometres of coastline have been transformed into an unforgettable work of art by Antony Gormley, comprising 100 castiron, life-size figures of men, some on the beach, others almost a kilometre out to sea. Every time you visit, they look different; they are affected by the tide, the changing light, the wind, and the weather. Over time, they have changed colour and texture: some are reddened by rust, others are stained with emerald green seaweed, or encrusted with barnacles. Many are partially buried in drifts of sand; at high tide those furthest from the shore become gradually submerged so that they stand up to their necks in water. Each of them faces away from land: whether standing in calm waters or surrounded by crashing breakers, they are stock still, gazing far out to sea. Each figure is taken from a cast of Gormley’s body, but they are not self-portraits or statues in the conventional sense, and they are not elevated on pedestals. They are nameless and empty, waiting for the thoughts and feelings of their viewers; sometimes they look lonely and vulnerable, sometimes steadfast; they are migrants thinking of their homeland, or emigrants dreaming of a new world; they are the spirits of those lost at sea, or the exploited cockle-pickers of Morecambe Bay; they are staring at the offshore wind farm or contemplating our place in the cosmos. Intended as a temporary installation, they were shown in Germany, Norway, and Belgium before coming to Crosby, where they have found a permanent home. People treat them with affection, dressing them in hats, T-shirts, sunglasses – or condoms! Local students of fashion design even put them in period costume. Gormley is delighted by the variety of responses but even he might have been surprised at the biologists of Liverpool University who surveyed them for a research project about the spread of invasive species of barnacles. 4
Address Crosby Beach L23 | Getting there 6-minute walk from Hall Road Station; 6-minute walk from Blundellsands & Crosby Station; 15-minute walk from Waterloo Station. Car parks at Hall Road, L23 8SY, Crosby Leisure Centre, L23 6SX and Crosby Marine Lake L22 1RR. | Tip Between the Marine Lake and Waterloo Station, the seafront houses on Beach Lawn, Adelaide Terrace, Marine Crescent, and Marine Terrace are worth looking at for their pretty stucco frontages and cast-iron verandas.
24__Dafna’s Cheesecake Factory Like grandmother used to bake
This modest shop at a busy road junction not far from Penny Lane is one of a kind that has almost disappeared from our high streets, the homemade cake shop: no fancy French patisserie here, no overcomplicated showpieces, just good old-fashioned cakes made to traditional recipes. Dafna’s Cheesecake Factory was started by Anne Lev after a visit to Chicago, where she tasted “the most wonderful cheesecake in the world.” Anne brought the recipe back to Liverpool and served it at her son’s bar mitzvah, where it was such a hit that all her friends kept asking for more. She started making it at home for local restaurants and delicatessens and then opened the shop on Smithdown Road in 1976 in an old dairy, continuing to supply discerning cafés and restaurants, and extending her range from cheesecake (now sold in nine tempting flavours) to other delights – carrot cake, coffee and walnut cake, chocolate fudge cake, Guinness cake, lemon drizzle cake, ginger and cinnamon cake, polenta cake, brownies, shortbreads, gluten-free and vegan cakes, and a selection of desserts such as chocolate roulade and pear frangipane. All her cakes are made to her recipes, using domestic equipment and high quality ingredients. She employs a few home-bakers, but most of the cakes are made on the premises in the kitchen behind the shop, filling it with the glorious smell of fresh baking. Anne still takes pride in serving behind the counter, and enjoys talking to her customers: many of her original fans were students, who now bring in their children. She even gets a name-check in one of Frank Cottrell Boyce’s children’s books. Prices are amazingly reasonable: Anne has never sought to make huge amounts of money and you can buy a single slice or a whole cake. And who was Dafna? Not a person, but the name of a boat owned by Anne and her husband Yacov, a sea captain. 6
Address 240 Smithdown Road Liverpool L15 5AH, +44 1517337808, www.dafna.co.uk | Getting there Buses 75, 76, 80, 80A from Liverpool One bus station to Lathbury Lane. | Hours Mon–Sat 9am–5.30pm | Tip Round the corner on Greenbank Road is Richard Behrend, a specialty music shop selling brass, woodwind and string instruments, sheet music, and musical gifts.
24__Dafna’s Cheesecake Factory Like grandmother used to bake
This modest shop at a busy road junction not far from Penny Lane is one of a kind that has almost disappeared from our high streets, the homemade cake shop: no fancy French patisserie here, no overcomplicated showpieces, just good old-fashioned cakes made to traditional recipes. Dafna’s Cheesecake Factory was started by Anne Lev after a visit to Chicago, where she tasted “the most wonderful cheesecake in the world.” Anne brought the recipe back to Liverpool and served it at her son’s bar mitzvah, where it was such a hit that all her friends kept asking for more. She started making it at home for local restaurants and delicatessens and then opened the shop on Smithdown Road in 1976 in an old dairy, continuing to supply discerning cafés and restaurants, and extending her range from cheesecake (now sold in nine tempting flavours) to other delights – carrot cake, coffee and walnut cake, chocolate fudge cake, Guinness cake, lemon drizzle cake, ginger and cinnamon cake, polenta cake, brownies, shortbreads, gluten-free and vegan cakes, and a selection of desserts such as chocolate roulade and pear frangipane. All her cakes are made to her recipes, using domestic equipment and high quality ingredients. She employs a few home-bakers, but most of the cakes are made on the premises in the kitchen behind the shop, filling it with the glorious smell of fresh baking. Anne still takes pride in serving behind the counter, and enjoys talking to her customers: many of her original fans were students, who now bring in their children. She even gets a name-check in one of Frank Cottrell Boyce’s children’s books. Prices are amazingly reasonable: Anne has never sought to make huge amounts of money and you can buy a single slice or a whole cake. And who was Dafna? Not a person, but the name of a boat owned by Anne and her husband Yacov, a sea captain. 6
Address 240 Smithdown Road Liverpool L15 5AH, +44 1517337808, www.dafna.co.uk | Getting there Buses 75, 76, 80, 80A from Liverpool One bus station to Lathbury Lane. | Hours Mon–Sat 9am–5.30pm | Tip Round the corner on Greenbank Road is Richard Behrend, a specialty music shop selling brass, woodwind and string instruments, sheet music, and musical gifts.
49__Outhouse
More than just a glass box
Set amongst trees planted between mundane tower blocks near Woolton is a small glass box with no obvious purpose. The door is usually locked, but you can see right into it. There are bits and pieces inside left over from various activities – posters, display panels, art materials, chairs – as well as mysterious stone blocks. This is Outhouse, an intriguing public art commission by husband and wife Claire Oboussier and Vong Phaoanit. Phaoanit achieved brief fame in 1993 when he filled a gallery at the Tate in London with mounds of rice covering neon lights, combining modern technology with memories of his upbringing in Laos. The origins of Outhouse are very different. In the 1980s the government set up Housing Action Trusts to improve poor quality council housing estates. The Liverpool HAT was the largest with 5,332 properties in 67 tower blocks. It was given 12 years and £260 million of government money. After consulting with tenants it decided to demolish 54 of the blocks and build new houses on the land, while refurbishing the other towers. Unusually, the Liverpool HAT decided to use the power of art to engage residents and to improve the housing environment. The design of Outhouse is a reduced version of the new terraced houses built nearby: like them, it has a sloping roof and a door at one side. But the solid elements of the houses have been transformed into transparent walls, while the internal openings became the solid stone blocks inside Outhouse. Since it was completed in 2005, Outhouse has been animated at night with projected images, it has been used to display poppies on Remembrance Sunday, and it has housed musical events and art workshops. Even when it stands empty, the glass walls reflect the surrounding vegetation and refract the light into delicate patterns, so that it changes its appearance at different times of day and throughout the seasons. 8
Address Menlove Avenue, Woolton, Liverpool L25 | Getting there Bus 76 from Liverpool One bus station to Menlove Avenue Limecroft/Evesham Close | Tip Woolton Picture House in Woolton Village, the only single screen cinema left in Liverpool, retains many of its Art Deco features and still has intervals with usherettes selling ice cream.
49__Outhouse
More than just a glass box
Set amongst trees planted between mundane tower blocks near Woolton is a small glass box with no obvious purpose. The door is usually locked, but you can see right into it. There are bits and pieces inside left over from various activities – posters, display panels, art materials, chairs – as well as mysterious stone blocks. This is Outhouse, an intriguing public art commission by husband and wife Claire Oboussier and Vong Phaoanit. Phaoanit achieved brief fame in 1993 when he filled a gallery at the Tate in London with mounds of rice covering neon lights, combining modern technology with memories of his upbringing in Laos. The origins of Outhouse are very different. In the 1980s the government set up Housing Action Trusts to improve poor quality council housing estates. The Liverpool HAT was the largest with 5,332 properties in 67 tower blocks. It was given 12 years and £260 million of government money. After consulting with tenants it decided to demolish 54 of the blocks and build new houses on the land, while refurbishing the other towers. Unusually, the Liverpool HAT decided to use the power of art to engage residents and to improve the housing environment. The design of Outhouse is a reduced version of the new terraced houses built nearby: like them, it has a sloping roof and a door at one side. But the solid elements of the houses have been transformed into transparent walls, while the internal openings became the solid stone blocks inside Outhouse. Since it was completed in 2005, Outhouse has been animated at night with projected images, it has been used to display poppies on Remembrance Sunday, and it has housed musical events and art workshops. Even when it stands empty, the glass walls reflect the surrounding vegetation and refract the light into delicate patterns, so that it changes its appearance at different times of day and throughout the seasons. 8
Address Menlove Avenue, Woolton, Liverpool L25 | Getting there Bus 76 from Liverpool One bus station to Menlove Avenue Limecroft/Evesham Close | Tip Woolton Picture House in Woolton Village, the only single screen cinema left in Liverpool, retains many of its Art Deco features and still has intervals with usherettes selling ice cream.