Liverpool Waters Must Pay Tribute To Liverpool Greats.

New waterfront development should anchor itself in city

Liverpool Waters is the landmark £5.5bn scheme which is now under construction on Liverpool’s iconic waterfront.

Split into 5 distinct new districts, each will add fresh elements to the growing city of which it is being born. Public Squares, roads and places will be created and populated by the people who call Liverpool home, so its only fitting that these vast new areas should reflect the great figures that fought to make our city what it is today.

Future Liverpool has identified many areas within the master plan of Liverpool Waters which could be named after our iconic forbears, and we want you to tell us who you think should be selected to be honored in the names of our new public places.

We have some suggestions of our own to get you started:

John Hulley

(19 February 1832 – 6 January 1875) was an English gymnastics and athletics entrepreneur who encouraged public participation in physical education to improve health and well-being, and was one of the instigators of the Olympic movement in Britain. At his Liverpool Gymnasium in 1865 he established the National Olympian Association, the forerunner of the British Olympic Association. With William Penny Brookes and Ernst Georg Ravenstein, he organised the first National Olympian Games in 1866. He organised a series of Assault-at-Arms gymnastic events in Liverpool and Manchester. He organised six Olympic Festivals between 1862 and 1867 in Liverpool and Llandudno.

Name of place within Liverpool Waters:

OLYMPIAN PARK – The main park within the development. The central area of which most things will surround.

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Catherine Wilkinson

(1786–1860)^[2]^[3] was an Irish migrant, “wife of a labourer”, who became known as the Saint of the Slums.^[2] In 1832, during a cholera epidemic, she had the only boiler in her neighbourhood, so she invited those with infected clothes or linens to use it, thus saving many lives. This was the first public washhouse in Liverpool. Ten years later with public funds her efforts resulted in the opening of a combined washhouse and public baths, the first in the United Kingdom.

In 1832, cholera broke out in Liverpool. Wilkinson took the initiative to offer the use of her boiler, house and yard to neighbours to wash their clothes, at a charge of 1 penny per week,^[5] and she showed them how to use a chloride of lime to get them clean. Boiling killed the cholera bacteria. Once these activities came to their attention, Wilkinson was supported by the District Provident Society and William Rathbone. Convinced of the importance of cleanliness in combating disease, she pushed for the establishment of public baths where the poor could bathe. In 1842 the combined public baths and washhouse was opened on Upper Fredrick Street in Liverpool, and in 1846 Wilkinson was appointed superintendent of the public baths.^[1]^[6]

In 1846 the Mayoress presented Wilkinson with a silver teapot from Queen Victoria en-scribed “The Queen, the Queen Dowager, and the Ladies of Liverpool to Catherine Wilkinson, 1846.”^[7] Wilkinson died in Liverpool and was buried in the St. James Cemetery.^[3] with the inscription:

CATHERINE WILKINSON. Died 11 November 1860, aged 73. Indefatigable and self-denying She was the Widow’s friend. The support of the Orphan. The fearless and unwearied nurse of the sick. The originator of Baths and Wash-houses for the poor. ‘For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.’ St. Mark, 12th Chapter, 44th Verse.

In 2012, a marble statue of Kitty Wilkinson was unveiled in St George’s Hall.

Name of place within Liverpool Waters:

WILKINSON STREET – A street which could house a modern facility for swimming, bathing and general well being.

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Michael Heseltine

(born 21 March 1933) is a British Conservative politician and businessman. Having begun his career as a property developer, he became one of the founders of the publishing house Haymarket. Heseltine served as a Member of Parliament from 1966 to 2001, and was a prominent figure in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, including serving as Deputy Prime Minister under the latter.

Heseltine saved Liverpool during the Thatcher era when the government wanted to put the city into managed decline. As Minister for Merseyside he spearheaded the 1984 International Garden Festival by taking a former rubbish dump and transforming it into a sprawling urban garden with many unique features.

He also seized a huge part of Liverpool’s docklands and reversed it’s dereliction, making it a highly successful leisure destination which continues to strengthen Liverpool’s economy to this day. It was these docklands – The Royal Albert Dock complex, which turned the fortunes of the city around. It’s legacy reverberated in the way we perceived our city after it’s industrial decline. It realigned our path to the one we are on today, where millions of visitors flock to see our historic metropolis and enjoy it’s vibrant arts and cultural scene. Often these visitors then come to live and work within the city and call it home.

He used £10m of public money to purchase land and start Wavertree Technology park.

Name of place within Liverpool Waters:

HESELTINE SQUARE – A place of reflection overlooked by a commercially dominant area.

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Sebastian de Ferranti

(9 April 1864 – 13 January 1930) was a British electrical engineer and inventor.

Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti was born in Liverpool, England. His Italian father, Cesare, was a photographer (son of composer Marco Aurelio Zani de Ferranti) and his mother Juliana de Ferranti (née Scott) was a concert pianist.

Ferranti showed a remarkable talent for electrical engineering from his childhood. His first invention, at the age of 13, was an arc light for street lighting. Reportedly, around the age of 16, he built an electrical generator (that had a “Zig-zag armature“) with the help of William Thomson (the future Lord Kelvin) and later patented the device (called the “Ferranti Dynamo“). He worked for Siemens Brothers at Charlton, London, and in 1882 he set up shop in London designing various electrical devices as the firm Ferranti, Thompson and Ince.

In the late 1880s, there was a debate within the industry about the transmission of electrical power, known as the War of the Currents. Thomas Edison supported a direct current (DC) based system, largely due to his holding many key patents and having set up some power plants supplying DC power. The rival Westinghouse Electric Corporation supported an alternating current (AC) system.

Ferranti bet on AC early on, and was one of the few experts in this system in the UK. In 1887, the London Electric Supply Corporation (LESCo) hired Ferranti for the design of their power station at Deptford. He designed the building, the generating plant and the distribution system. On its completion in 1891, it was the first truly modern power station, supplying high-voltage AC power that was then “stepped down” for consumer use on each street. This basic system remains in use today around the world. One of the remaining supports of the generating hall of Deptford Power Station forms the frame of the sign at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester UK, home of the Ferranti Archives.

S. Z. de Ferranti, the company set up by Ferranti in 1885 with Francis Ince and Charles Sparks as partners, became S. Z de Ferranti Ltd in 1890 and Ferranti Ltd in 1900, after resignation of Ince and Sparks. Ferranti Ltd would outlive its founder and develop the Ferranti Mark 1, the world’s first commercially available general-purpose computer, in 1951.

Sebastian de Ferranti was President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1910 and 1911, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1927. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Manchester in 1912. Ferranti was actively involved in the formation of the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (BEAMA) in 1911 and its first chairman, to 1913.^[1]

In 1932, the London Power Company commemorated Sebastian de Ferranti by naming a new 1,315 GRT coastal collier SS Ferranti.^[2]

Name of place within Liverpool Waters:

FERRANTI STREET – A street fronted by innovative businesses using Information Technology as their core strength.

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Jesse Hartley

(21 December 1780 – 24 August 1860) was Civil Engineer and Superintendent of the Concerns of the Dock Estate in Liverpool, England between 1824 and 1860.

Despite having no experience of dock building, Hartley was the first full-time professional dock engineer in the world. He had previously worked for his father Bernard Hartley, a stonemason, architect and bridgemaster John Carr, and the Duke of Devonshire.

Initially he was appointed Deputy Dock Surveyor to John Foster Jr. However, due to John Foster Jr. resigning three days later, he was promoted to Acting Dock Surveyor. During his service, he not only built new docks, but also modernised all of the existing docks with the exception of the Old Dock (opened in 1715), which had become disused and filled in. The docks at Liverpool grew from 46 to 212 acres (19 to 86 ha) during his tenure.

Between 1841 and 1843 he prepared a number of different designs for fireproof construction of dockside warehouses. In 1843, he made models of warehouse arches at the Trentham Street Dockyard, to test sheet iron lined timber floored building method and brick and iron building materials. Through fire testing of these models, he eventually convinced the Dock Board Trustees of the benefits of his iron framed construction method. These experiments proved the worthiness of his fireproof design and he designed the Albert Dock to these specifications.

Hartley’s improvements over earlier dock and warehouse design included the use of locks to keep the water at a constant level, so that loading and unloading of ships’ cargoes was not reliant on the tide and the enclosure of the dock with high boundary walls, to reduce theft.

Name of place within Liverpool Waters:

HARTLEY SQUARE – The Square which will surround his famed 6-sided clock. The square will be close to the edge of the river Mersey and will be a place to witness the water and river traffic.

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Paul McCartney