大象传媒

From the Adelphi to St George鈥檚 Hall Lime Street contains a great amount of history. In 1897 the Lumiere brothers visited Liverpool and filmed scenes across the city. Their footage of Lime Street contains the first moving pictures of the city.

Liverpool City Council鈥檚 Community Historian Steve Binns has studied the Lime Street in depth and says it gets its name from its original purpose. "Lime Street was set out in 1790, named after William Harvey鈥檚 lime kilns. In 1804 the doctors at the local infirmary complained about the smell, so they were moved. But of course, the street kept its name.

鈥淚t must have had a very frontier atmosphere in the 19th century. It was beyond the edge of the old town boundary.

鈥淎ll that changed with two arrivals. The railway first in 1851, then in 1856 and St Georges Hall which opened in 1854.

Steve says that St Georges Hall, designed by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, is one of the most important buildings in the city because of the growth of the city at the time of its construction. 鈥淪t George鈥檚 Hall turned Liverpool from a provincial north of England town, to the second city of Empire. Its nearness to the station is of great significance. It was Liverpool鈥檚 message to the world.

Punch & Judy was a popular attraction

鈥淚f you looked out of St George鈥檚 Hall on the day of opening, you would have seen thousands of houses. They couldn鈥檛 leave it "stuck out there like a sore thumb" as one person said, they had to connect it to the old town. William Brown Street was that connection.

鈥淭he library and museum of the 1860s; the Walker Art Gallery, now refurbished, of the 1870s; the good old Empire Theatre, of another name in 1871, then under its modern name in 1925 and the North Western Hotel - all of these buildings turned Lime Street into a dramatic quarter.

The plateau outside the hall has been the scene for many of the most important events in Liverpool鈥檚 history. Steve Binns says that the area has acted as a focal point for public gatherings. 鈥淐rowds gathered there after the death of Gladstone, the death of Queen Victoria, the assassination of John Lennon. 30,000 people awaited the verdict in the Maybrick and Wallace trials. The return of football teams, the Beatles, the declarations of governments and elections.

鈥淎ll of these have brought people onto that sometimes rather breezy open space.鈥�