We left the hotel fairly early in the morning having taken the Water street heading towards the Pier Head. Behind us the imposing Georgian-style Town Hall building whose magnificent dome was added in 1754.
For centuries the Pier Head is said to have been Liverpool's foremost departure point for passenger shipping with hundreds of thousands having boarded the liners there in the 19th and early 20th centuries in search of a better life in the New world.
One of three 20th century buildings (known as the three Graces) give Pier Head its identity, it is said - The Port of Liverpool building (1909), Italianate in style with a classical dome, the Royal Liver Building (1911) with its copper liver birds on top and the Cunard Building (1916) in the middle of those showing Italian, Greek and American architectural influences.
Indian Building detail (1923)
The whole water front bore the mark of the old days and the importance it had in the lives of those in shipping, commerce and port-based industries but also the darker side to it, which despite not being visible is remembered in the Slavery Museum, just a bit further into the Albert Dock.
(To be continued)
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