GUIDED TOURS
Lifestyle chats to Chris Cannon of Hidden Liverpool Tell us about Hidden Liverpool? Hidden Liverpool is my vehicle to give guided tours and educate people on the lesser-known aspects of the city’s history. As well as my own tours and educational talks, I also guide on the Liverpool City Explorer open-top busses and have worked on a contract basis for Liverpool City Council as a tour guide for St George’s Hall, which, at times, required me to dress up as a Georgian Footman. Last month, I worked with Liverpool ONE to promote their new Heritage Trail – for that I was dressed as an 18th Century privateer! I try to make my tours a little different than most by mixing up ‘old’ history with more contemporary stuff and little quirks of architecture or the like. Also, if I’m feeling cocky, I’ve been known to say to people “If you don’t learn something that you didn’t know already, I’ll give you your money back!”. I’ve never had to give a refund yet! When did you set it up? I officially launched Hidden Liverpool in 2016, but it had been in planning for some time. What do you offer? I give guided walking talks around the city as well as offering local history talks to schools and local groups. What do you love about the city? Wow. That is a tough one to narrow down. There’s lots of things… When I was younger, most of my weekends were spent clubbing in the city, it was probably the best night-life in the Northwest, if not the country at the time. Some would say it still is, I’m sure. Now that I’m ‘more mature(!)’ I have come to appreciate the subtleties of the place that you tend to miss when you’re younger. The friendliness of strangers and the willingness of people to help others is like no other place that I have been to. Also, the fact that you can walk into a pub 16
by yourself and end up chatting to a random person without an issue. That’s something that I miss when I’m elsewhere. I’ve met so many interesting people in pubs around the city, it’s astonishing. And how can I not mention what the tourists all say. When you speak to people who have never been here before, they are always amazed by the incredible buildings we have. That’s something that every now and again even I take for granted because, as far as I’m concerned, they’ve always been there. How long have you studied the city? I’ve had an interest in history of Liverpool ever since I was a kid, I think my mum instilled a love of history in me, but I really started getting into the nitty-gritty of things around 2007. After my dad passed away, I realised that I knew next to nothing about his side of the family, so I signed up to Ancestry to start researching his family tree. I found out that the Cannons arrived in Liverpool around the 1880s and lived in the old court housing around Vauxhall and Everton. That piqued my interest to find out more, so I started looking seriously into the socio-economic history of the area and found out about the deep hatred between the Irish Catholics and Protestants because one of my ancestors was tried for the murder of a Catholic man (he narrowly escaped being hanged due to a technicality). That trial took place in St George’s Hall and from that, I decided to learn about the history of the building. It grew from that really. It helps that I am a sponge for information and have a knack for remembering names and dates. What are the most popular tours? My Heritage Corridor Tour seems to be the most popular. It’s a three hour walk from St George’s Plateau to the Pier Head, but even though I have a fixed route and spiel, I’ll change it on
the fly from time-to-time if somebody mentions something that they are particularly interested in. For example, I had a group recently with a lad doing his A-Levels. One of the things he was studying was the city’s direct and indirect links to slavery. I concentrated on that aspect of things for him. Another example which occurred only a couple of weeks ago was when I took an American family around. They were fascinated by Liverpool’s links with America, especially the connections around the Confederates and the American Civil War. I made it more interesting for them by fleshing out some of the stories that I tell of Liverpool in those times. Pretty much every tour I do ends up being slightly different because I always try to find out what people are interested in learning and aim it specifically fit them. Are you always finding new facts? Oh, yes! Normally when I’m following a line of research, I’ll fall down a rabbit-hole and end up reading about something that has nothing to do with my original investigations. I’ve also found quite a lot of ‘common knowledge’ about parts of the city and its famous sons and daughters that is 100% incorrect. I started collating this info just to keep a note of them, but I must have at least the start of a book now, there’s that many.
