The Sailors’ Home

Most visitors to the Liverpool One Shopping area will no doubt have come across an odd but striking feature. At the southern end of Paradise Street stands an elaborate structure made of wrought iron and vividly painted in green and gold. As many by now know, these are in fact the original gates to what was once a grand and revolutionary structure intimately connected to the city’s maritime culture; the Liverpool Sailors’ Home. This article is intended to give site visitors a brief overview of the long history of the Home, and also to encourage any Scousers or Liverpool mariners to share memories they might have of what once was one of the most unique structures in the port city.

By the 1840s, Liverpool had become well-established as one of the busiest ports in the world, and both local and foreign sailors were an everyday presence on the streets around the docks. Many had no fixed abode; sailors often slept rough or essentially lived in the city’s many pubs whilst on shore. Concerned at this situation, and with a typical Victorian obsession with moral standards, several local magnates joined together in 1844 to fund a building which would “provide for the seamen frequenting the port of Liverpool, board, lodging and medical provision, at a moderate charge”. With a patronising moral flourish, the sponsors also added that the Home would be necessary to promote sailors’ “moral, intellectual and educational improvement, and to afford them the opportunity of religious instruction”.

The importance of the Sailors’ Home can be gauged by the extraordinary attention devoted to its construction. No less than Prince Albert laid the foundation stone to the cheers of enthusiastic crowds; the highlight of his royal visit to Liverpool in 1846. Furthermore, architect John Cunningham seemed to put a lot of effort in to the design of the Sailor’s Home. A large and imposing structure, Cunningham designed the Sailors’ Home as a huge, mock-Elizabethan palace, complete with enormous latticed windows, turreted towers and, as Ken Martin recalled, “twiddly bits everywhere”. The completed structure stood out even in a city then renowned for impressive architecture, and proved to be a stunning landmark for decades.

However, although the Liverpool Sailors’ Home was undoubtedly impressive, it was not without some serious flaws. Much attention had been devoted to the exterior of the building; interior spaces and actual accommodation had been put on the back burner. As a result, the heating systems and fireplaces were not completed until 1852, and only days before the building opened. The Home’s first inhabitants condemned the heating in the cavernous stone building as “not fit for purpose”. Even worse, the wrought iron gates at the entrance of the Sailors’ Home were extremely heavy and difficult to move. They were also not properly fixed to the stone archway. As a result, people had to use all their strength to force the gates open, and many times this inadvertently loosed the gates from the archway. At least two people were killed by the gates; crushed to death after the metalwork had fallen on top of them. A disastrous fire in 1860 also gutted the relatively new structure, necessitating a total internal build in the early 1860s.

For over a century, the Liverpool Sailors’ Home fulfilled its primary function and provided accommodation for thousands of mariners from all over the world. Until its closure in 1969, the Home would sharply divide opinions. Some sailors, emerging down the gangways of their vessels would see the welcome site of the mock-Tudor turrets in the distance; a welcome sight and the promise of a safe haven for a week or so. Others saw the Sailors’ Home as a kind of prison, not helped by the cavernous and prison-esque interior design.

One sailor remembered that “the price was four shillings a night for bed and breakfast for men, Boys were about three shillings. It was just a bare cabin. wooden panels, painted green on the walls, iron framed bed and a chest of drawers. a communal bathroom and toilets”. A reconstruction from 2006 confirms the description of the spartan accommodation. Each room was termed as a cabin, with starboard and port denoting which side of the building they were situated. As a Victorian building with basic rooms, sound-proofing was non-existent; one seafarer recalled regularly hearing “Get yer ‘ed down fer christ’s sake!”, “Stuff a bloody sock in it, will yer!” and, as well as curses from several levels booming within the shell of the building. Despite this many have fond memories of the Home’s interior, with Ken Martin remembering it as “a superb building internally” and David Owen praising the Home for being always kept extremely clean.

Life in the Sailors’ Home could also vary greatly. As essentially  “a mid-way home between the seamen and a hostel, for down and outs”, the Sailors’ Home was whatever its occupants made of it. For those who expected a fair standard of accomodation and may have been berthed there for weeks between voyagers, the Home proved to be a generally unpleasant experience. Several sailors recalled: “all meals resembled slimming diets, even Christmas dinners. A little of this and a little less of that, and not much of anything except plates”. Another recalled that sausages “were awful” and were often thrown out of the window, creating a small pile at the base of the building. Tea was commonly referred to as bilge water. The Sailors’ Home also came under criticism from the same philanthropists who had funded it in the first place, horrified that it was turning into “the Great Grog Temple”, no doubt aided by the dozens of pubs along Paradise Street and Canning Place. Alcohol became a defining aspect of the Home, for both good and ill. For high-minded Victorians, the Home became associated with immorality and drunkenness. Decades later, Tony Wailey would comment that “you’d always see lads having a drink out of a bottle or something like that on the terraced steps early in a morning”. But this turned out to be a great strength of the Sailors’ Home. Mariners from across the world, and staying there for varying lengths of time, found companionship amidst the Home, and a willing team of shipmates to go on various pub crawls across the city. For these, and even non-sailors who were travelling through the city, the Sailors’ Home was the perfect place to crash after a night out on the town. The ones with the fondest memories of the Home saw it for what it was; “just a room, a clean room, and somewhere to sleep”. Even the meagre breakfasts became appreciated as a solid hangover cure.

Above all, the Sailor’s Home was crucial in facilitating countless maritime careers. The Home provided a refuge for many famous mariners, such as Titanic’s Captain Smith when he first came to Liverpool as a young apprentice in the 1860s. For other young apprentices and midshipmen, the Home also provided practical support;  the Sailors’ Home Outfitters were able to provide uniforms for cadets on the training ships or replacement uniforms/clothes to any seafarers down on their luck. Most crucially, the Home became the place to find further work. The big, open ground floor was known as “The Pool”. Here, seafarers would be selected by company representatives and if they were deemed worthy, would be taken into an adjacent room filled with long counters, each one labelled either “Firemen” or “Catering” or “Deck”. Company men behind each desk would allocate jobs for their respective shipboard departments. Many former residents of the Home still recall how the shipping company men would often reserve jobs “for their favourites”. Mostly, voyage lengths were not mentioned so there was always the risk of “being Shanghai’ed and sent off a two year trip”. Such was the uncertain life of any seafarer in Liverpool up until the late 20th Century. But the Sailors’ Home was crucial in facilitating this life and giving it’s residents not only a place to rest and sleep, but the promise of further work and ever-more distant voyages.

By the 1960s, shipping in Liverpool had changed. The port’s docks were now much further north and consequently far away from Paradise Street and Canning Place. A later resident of the Home noted that by this point, there were less sailors staying there and those that did now sported collars and ties. Their smart appearance was in contrast to the building itself. Ken Martin noted that the “twiddly bits”, the ornate carvings on the building, had begun to fall off by this later phase. Photos of the building also attest to the growing sense of decay; images from the 50s and 60s show broken windows, cheap repair work on the upper floors and “The Pool” increasingly full of litter. The problematic (and murderous) gates had been dismantled and taken away in 1951 and would not return to the city for 60 years. The Sailors’ Home became ever more dated and obsolete and finally closed its doors in 1969; within a few years the once grand and imposing building would be demolished and the site abandoned until modern regeneration.

The Sailors’ Home is now long gone but as noted, traces remain. Parts of the internal railings remain, with some now incorporated into Portmeirion in Wales. In addition, the stone Liver Bird that once graced the entrance can be seen today in the Museum of Liverpool and most famously, the imposing gates have been placed back in Liverpool, almost to the very spot where they once stood. But it is the vivid memories of the Liverpool Sailors’ Home that continue to give the building a life even years after demolition. Whether a restrictive and Spartan prison or a convenient place to stay and to gain employment, the Sailor’s Home evidently left a vivid impression of countless seafarers. It continues to be talked about, sometimes positively, sometimes with disgust, but always passionately, to this day.

If you have any memories at all of the Liverpool Sailors’ Home please comment below as we would love to hear your own stories and really build a full picture of just what life was like in this unique and long-lost building.

Sources

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/research/mappingmemory/

https://www.chesterwalls.info/gallery/sailorshome12.html

P. Aughton, Liverpool A People’s History

J. Belchem, Liverpool 800: Culture Character & History