To the Post Office

God is a hook in the sky

Andrew Taylor

Relics are the true autobiography – Iain Sinclair [1]

13^th July 2024

Managing to block out some time to devote to this project, I wondered how best to make use of the rare commodity of time. After reading the original Thomas De Quincey 1803 diary in June, I was taken by the drafts and notes De Quincey made for his letters. Thinking also of his essay The English Mail Coach, I thought it was time I walked the route that I imagined De Quincey would have taken to the Post Office in Liverpool town.

I used the 1803 map to ascertain a route that De Quincey might have taken to get to Everton. We need to remember that Everton was rural with few roads. There were fields and paths alongside the arterial roads which remain today.

Everton village is not served today by rail or tram and is only partially served by buses. I decided to walk, De Quincey’s favourite mode at the time of his stays in Everton. I needed to get to the starting point – Middle Lane, later Everton Terrace. I decide to take the train to Sandhills station and walk from there.

From Sandhills, I walk up Sandhills Lane and cross the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and turn right onto Commercial Road. I took this route 40 years ago when I was on a Youth Training Scheme (£25 a week - £15 keep to my Mum and £10 for myself) on Boundary Street. The early morning train from Kirkby to Sandhills was a short trip lasting 10 minutes and the 10-15 minute walk was bolstered somewhat by strolling past the British American Tobacco (BAT) factory on Commercial Road. The factory, which has subsequently been repurposed as apartments, opened in 1912 was part of a long association that Liverpool had with the tobacco industry. I’d walk past BAT with my headphones on – the cassette Sony Walkman - playing The Chameleons or The Smiths probably the BBC Radio 1 John Peel Sessions, taped off the radio. Today, however, the provider of music is my phone and the music, somewhat appropriately, is the album ‘Ex:Re’ by the band Ex:Re the solo project of the band Daughter’s Elena Tonra. I say appropriately as the album is matching my mood as I walk streets last walked 40 years ago. It’s a melancholic album, a break-up album, and the opening track is called ‘Where the Time Went.’ This is a question that I seem to be asking myself a lot these days. The overarching memory, however, (music and its associated memories sometimes fade through time) is that of smell. The sweet, freshly cut hay smell of the tobacco that would mix with the diesel and leaded petrol of early morning city bound traffic and linger especially so during those Winter mornings, was distinctly unique. It’s a memorable smell. So much so, that a friend in the 1990s who used to roll his own cigarettes, would open a fresh pouch of tobacco and offer it to me to smell. An instant transport route back to Commercial Road.

Today, there are no sweet smells. The overarching odour is that mix of diesel, oil, exhaust, salt and the sea, that seem to be exclusive to port cities. A recognisable but quite difficult to describe smell. That was the smell on Commercial Road. The weather was overcast with a temperature hovering at around 15 degrees.

I cross the road and turn left onto Boundary Street, the opposite way to where my YTS was based, and head up the incline towards Stanley Road. I’d toyed with the idea of walking to the Everton Stadium from Sandhills and navigating my way towards Everton from the docks, a reverse of the walk I made to the docks in late May. For some reason, probably because I’d been watching videos on YouTube recently of the progress of the stadium, I chose not to head that way. However, on turning onto Boundary Street, I was compelled to look over my shoulder and there the stadium stood on the edge of the lip of Boundary Street. I paused and took in the fresh view. For some reason, I didn’t expect to see the stadium from this perspective. What a treat. Was this an early sign that the walk was going to be successful when I got to Everton and walked to Liverpool?

At the junction of Boundary Street and Stanley Road another sign, this time a literal sign, was making itself known:

It was the Taylor Street Industrial Area that intrigued me. I consider myself to know Liverpool well. I was born here and have lived in various parts of the city for over40 years, yet, I’d never heard of the street that I share my name with. Odd.

Along Stanley Road another memory comes into focus. I suddenly remember the after ‘work’ (cheap labour) YTS drinks on a Friday afternoon in The Lighthouse pub on the corner of Stanley Road and Boundary Street. Alas, this time the memory is rekindled by a vacant space – the pub has been demolished. Back then, we’d drink for an hour or two and then head into Liverpool and buy some music. It won’t be the first demolished ghost pub that I see.

Stanley Road and the triangle of Scotland Road and Great Homer Street are barely recognisable. I wonder what De Quincey would have made of these scenes. Scotland Road was a major thoroughfare to the town in 1803. Today, it’s been redeveloped. Well, what stands for redevelopment these days. There’s a Tim Hortons (a Canadian fast-food chain that serves good coffee though), a Sainsbury’s supermarket, a KFC and a McDonalds. This stands as progress. At the time of De Quincey’s sojourns in Everton, there were fields to navigate on his walks to Kirkdale and Bootle, and though there was housing and commercial premises at the town end of Scotland Road, there was little in terms of infrastructure the Kirkdale end, aside scraps of wasteland alongside the wider lanes leading to the town.

I can’t help but think that the influx of fast-food restaurants and supermarkets are short-term fixes to a long-term problem in poor inner-city areas. The fast-food signs, the neon the garishness, the warm spaces in winter, the air-conditioned coolness in summer offer little more than temporary patches of positivity.

Crossing the now busy four lanes of Scotland Road, I pass the remnants of one of the lost pubs of Scotland Road. The top two floors of the three-storey pub are missing their frontage. The reveal is like a partially realised time capsule – there are four rooms exposed, peeling paint and faded strips of wallpaper on show and one can easily picture the lives lived there: the armchairs, the TV, the fires. The shuttered ground floor – the former pub feels like its embarrassed and is somehow trying to hide its dereliction.

I decide to walk along the St. Anthony’s Church side of the road, past the half-closed side streets like Newsham Street which has a burned-out hackney cab parked rather forlornly half on the pavement. St. Anthony’s was built in 1833 to replace a former chapel that was built in 1804 on the corners of Scotland Road and Dryden Street.

I skirt the church, turning left down Chapel Gardens with Great Homer Street being my destination to get towards Roscommon Street. I sent a text message to my friend Ian to tell him that the last time I was near Great Homer Street on a Saturday morning – Market Day – was in 1979 with a mutual friend from school, Evo.

Great Homer Street market, known locally as ‘Greaty’, is now tucked into the city end of the street, near to Roscommon Street. In its heyday, the market ran for a mile along the street from Cazneau Street to Kirkdale Road. It was compared to London’s famous Petticoat Lane for its wide-ranging stalls and two department stores. One of the city’s first Woolworths was on Greaty, however ‘its real appeal was linked with its distinctive little stores.  There were 17 grocers and 27 butchers with over 190 separate businesses' [2]. Like Scotland Road, Greaty had a lot of pubs that disappeared during the clearances of the area in the 1960s.

Pleasingly the market was bustling. People were waiting at the bus stop at the bottom of Roscommon Street heading back to the city. Great Homer Street like all the major arterial routes to and from the city, is busy.

Immediately heading up Roscommon Street, a quietness descended to be undermined on occasion by the thrum of the traffic from Great Homer Street. A blackbird’s song breaks  from the dense parkland at the side of the pedestrianised street. At first, I thought it was a song thrush, that increasingly rare bird that would sing at first light on those walks to Kirkby station when I was on the YTS. But alas not. No mind. I love the blackbird and the melodies that they create.

I pass a few pedestrians as I’m walking up the street. No doubt that they’re heading to the market, as my grandmothers who lived off Roscommon Street would have done when they were raising their young families. I pause at the entrance to Langrove Street where the Ormrod family lived. I think of the signet ring that I’m wearing and of my Grandmother Ormrod who lived somewhere on Langrove Street. I wonder where my Great Grandmother lived. The 18caret gold that I’m wearing is partly made of gold that would have been worn around here. It’s a moment for me to pause. There’s plenty of history in this corner of Everton. It’s odd to think that my Grandparents lived in close proximity to each other in those then narrow streets.

Netherfield Road is quiet, compared to Great Homer Street and Scotland Road. I cross and take the steps up to the Everton Park viewing platform from where I’ll begin today’s walk proper. I take in the (legitimate) graffiti. 

FRIENDS OF EVERTON PARK

THE GREEN ROOF OF LIVERPOOL

YOU ARE IN EVERTON

The steps are covered in glass, each foot forward I take results in a loud crunch. There are weeds, remnants of daisies growing in the cracks. As the steps shift slightly to the left, a hooded man sits quietly, head bowed. He’s surrounded by plastic water bottles and doesn’t acknowledge my movement as I pass him. Could this be one of those signs? Could it be? Dare I dream that this could be a manifestation of De Quincey? Some ghostly representation? The man appears to be young when I see him raise his head while I’m on the platform looking across to the bay. He doesn’t see me. Or does he and chooses not to acknowledge me?

I turn and head further along what was Middle Lane, then Everton Terrace and realise that the steps that I’ve climbed are the modern way of climbing the former split where the Terrace stood. Everton Terrace stood over two levels with shops making up the lower level and housing on the upper level. There were steps between the two and a large central arch at one point which led to a further set of stairs. Beyond, was Heyworth Street.

I take in the view. That view that De Quincey knew so well. I take time to photograph some of the graffiti up there:

ACAB

THE MOST VIOLENT

ELEMENT IN

SOCIETY IS

IGNORANCE

EAT

THE

RICH

SEX WORK

IS WORK

PROSSY

WAKE

UP

LIVERPOOL

FUCK

D

TORIES

There was also, a rather beautiful, stencilled image of Christ with arms aloft like the famous statue in Rio de Janeiro. Considering the sectarian past of this area, the clashes between the Orange Order and local Catholics, this was a welcome sight.

What was this area like when De Quincey was holidaying and idling here? It was a village, and not dissimilar to how it appears today: green. During the time that my family were settled in Everton, it was one of the most densely populated areas of the U.K. Of course, the merchants and their mansions have gone, but the steepness and layering from Netherfield Road up to Heyworth Street still exists, alongside the view that I’ve written about before. This view that so enraptured De Quincey exists today, relatively unspoilt. The influence of the view on De Quincey was so strong that years after his sojourns in Everton, he would cast his mind back in an opium induced reverie, fondly recalling the view.

Despite being young, De Quincey had the foresight to ingratiate himself with his neighbours, giving him access to what passed for the Liverpool literary scene at the time. One of his neighbours up in Everton was William Clarke, a friend of William Roscoe. Roscoe was a polymath, excelling in botany, he was a poet, artist, art lover, politician, lawyer, banker and businessman. He is perhaps best-known today as an instigator of the abolition of slavery. De Quincey also befriended James Currie who was a physician and an editor. Later, De Quincey would go onto savage Roscoe and Clarke in his book Autobiographical Sketches published in 1837, where he would cast Roscoe and Clarke’s circle as ‘pseudo intellectuals suffering from delusions of grandeur.' [3] He would also mock Roscoe and his poetry, which more than likely was a generational swipe as De Quincey was favouring the likes of Wordsworth and Coleridge. However, becoming acquaintances of the likes of Clarke and Roscoe, De Quincey gained access to the township of Liverpool’s literary networks in the form of bookshops, salons and coffee houses. Clarke also allowed De Quincey access to his extensive library. So why did De Quincey turn on those who gave him access to their libraries and introduced him into Liverpool literary life?

We have to remember that De Quincey was a teenager who was away from school and family and was determined to make a success of his time away. Well, aside from the juvenile later swipes, there was a sense of jealousy too. Clarke, Currie and presumably Roscoe, had become friendly with one of De Quincey’s idols, Coleridge. Coleridge had visited Liverpool in 1800 on his way back north to the Lake District. As Robert Morrison notes, Clarke and Currie had seen a ‘great deal’ of Coleridge who was working on a second edition of Lyrical Ballads, the work co-authored by Wordsworth. At the time of its first publication in 1798, Lyrical Ballads contained four poems including ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ [4]. The edition to which Coleridge was working towards in 1800 in Liverpool, included a preface by Wordsworth which was later seen as the manifesto of the Romantic movement. We know that De Quincey was a fan of Wordsworth already but perhaps his fascination with Coleridge came to the fore when, through his Everton based friends, he solved the mystery of who the ‘friend’ was that Wordsworth announced had written the other poems in Lyrical Ballads. It was none other than De Quincey’s hero, Coleridge.

Coleridge was heavily on De Quincey’s mind during his stay in Everton in 1803. Not only was Coleridge listed in the diary under the title ‘Poets’, but De Quincey speaks to Coleridge directly later in the diary by namechecking the Ancient Mariner [5]. Writing on Monday night, May 9, 1803, De Quincey writes the following:

“What shall be my character?” I have been thinking this afternoon – wild - impetuous – splendidly sublime? dignified – melancholy – gloomily sublime? or shrouded in mystery – supernatural – like the “ancient mariner” – awfully sublime [6].

*

Again, people are using the steps where I spoke to the man who was training there in May. This time it’s a football coach making one of his players run up and down. I walk on down Middle Lane and to the lock-up. Rain is beginning to lightly fall and I button my jacket and head down past the lock-up and onto Netherfield Road.

This is the beginning of the walk tracing De Quincey’s walk to the Post Office in Liverpool at 3.40 p.m. on May 31^st 1803. Though I’m using the ‘Map My Walk’ app to help record my movements, I’m ensuring that the dérive today is instinctive and without the use of maps. After earlier consulting the 1803 British Library maps, I initially guessed that De Quincey would have walked down William Henry Street and across towards the town. I ignored my instinct and headed straight down Everton Brow. I knew that in 1803, there’d have been a route across towards Islington. I imagined this to be Soho Street, so I aimed for a left-hand turn off the Brow.

As I walked down the Brow, I noticed the shutters of the Blue Dragon chippie (Fish and Chip shop) being rolled open. The thing that caught my eye was that despite the name of the shop, the colour of the signs are red and gold. An odd combination.

I find Soho Street and notice that it’s inevitably been altered since De Quincey’s time. The road sweeps right and the original road now continues at the bottom of William Henry Street, accessible on foot until the bend with William Henry Street. I knew from my work with the maps that Soho Street leads directly to Islington, one of those major roads into the city today as it was back in 1803. Today, there were a group of men standing around a car with the bonnet up outside a lock-up garage. They paid no attention to me. It seems that I’m invisible today to those who pass by. Good.

I reach Islington and suspect that De Quincey would have had an easier time navigating the road than me. Saying that, the pedestrian lights are in my favour (another sign? Whatever it is, I’ll take it) and I managed to cross over St. Anne Street and onto the lower end of Islington quicker than I thought I would. I knew that St. John’s Church was on the site of St. George’s Hall and imagined that De Quincey would have favoured the route through to Whitechapel via the churchyard. The churchyard, now St. John’s Gardens, leads directly down towards Whitechapel. Again, the pedestrian lights were being kind to me, and I crossed Hood Street with ease. I considered that De Quincey may have skirted the church and used Lime Street to access Church Street via Charlotte Street. However, a number of roperies were in-situ there, owned by a Mr. Platt and a Mr. Dean. Public access seems to have been restricted.

What perhaps is most fascinating about walking these shared streets, is the fact they are primarily the same today in terms of their layout. Of course, some streets like the aforementioned Dale Street, have been widened and the roperies have long gone from around the city. Writing about London in 1823, De Quincey could easily be writing about Liverpool, ‘London with its eternal agitations, the ceaseless ebb and flow of its ‘mighty heart’’. We need to remember the rapid growth of Liverpool in terms of its port and the associated population increase, and the ebb and flow of the river. What is certain and is perhaps more obvious today, than ever, is that the city of Liverpool does indeed have a mighty heart.

Today, Liverpool is a very different place to when I was the age that De Quincey was first wandering its streets. I think of this as I’m wandering again in light rain, along Whitechapel past the Met Quarter built on the site, and incorporating the remaining elements of, the old Victoria Street / Whitechapel Post Office. Liverpool has had a long association with the Post Office.  Partly due to its geography and the city’s status as the country’s second largest port, the importance of the Post Office was obvious. The office that De Quincey used off Church Street, eventually moved to the city’s Custom House, before moving to the specially built office on Victoria Street / Whitechapel which opened in 1899. Today, the shopping centre’s tenants include Tesco.

At the junction of Lord Street, Paradise Street and Church Street, I turn left away from McDonalds with its 400 upstairs seats, onto Church Street. I’m getting close now to my destination. Church Street is so named after another long-gone church. St. Peter’s was built in 1700 to be later demolished in 1923 to make way for a Woolworths department store. Today there’s a Maltese cross embedded in the floor or Church Street to mark where the church stood. The building that replaced the church itself has undergone regeneration during the completion of the Liverpool One project. An arcade from Church Street runs through to Peters Lane, and in keeping with the fact that a church stood on the spot, is named Church Yard. There’s a personal connection to this.

At the time of redevelopment, a rather grand and post-modern looking pavilion was built in the arcade. One of the architects for the project was my old mate, Sean who used to busk at the Pier Head during the International Garden Festival in 1984. Sean was a co-founder of the architectural practice Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT), who won the commission to build the pavilion. In typical Liverpool planning fashion, the wonderful pavilion was torn down and replaced by a more formal looking structure. Speaking with Sean about this, he mentioned that there were difficulties in letting the building (though I did see, back in the day, tenants in the building, in the form of a coffee shop, if I remember correctly) and that he only saw the pavilion once before it was demolished [7]. This is rather reminiscent of the Rachel Whiteread sculpture ‘House’ that existed only for a short time before being demolished in East London. Whiteread’s sculpture – a cast of a house was situated at 193 Grove Road in Mile End. It stood at the site for 11 weeks before being demolished [8].  Perhaps what appealed most about ‘House’ was its ghostlike qualities. The piece was in essence the cast space of the inside of a Victorian house. With the notion of what has gone before, lives led alongside the greyness of the cast concrete, ‘House’ was praised and vilified in equal measure.

As the Church Street entrance to the Post Office that De Quincey used was blocked by the building of another department store, I walk right, into Church Alley and left onto School Lane, opposite the Bluecoat. It’s then that I realise that the Bluecoat was in existence when De Quincey was roaming these streets. The Bluecoat, a mainstay at the heart of the city then, and now. I think of the personal connection and the garden sitting days in the late 1980s.

The rain is back. Taxis attempt to turn after dropping fares off at the Old Post Office pub. I take a quick photograph.

I need to try and track a magazine down for my mum and wander through the dreaded Liverpool One shopping centre. My final route takes me down Mathew Street and its increasingly theme park like landscape. I do stop to photograph Bill Drummond’s manhole cover and the portal to the Mathew Street ley-line. I’m half hoping that its magic will somehow rub off, perhaps the photograph will help, as I’m intending to walk up Bold Street to meet my friend Helen at the Egg Café for some lunch and some writing chat. We end up discussing Kathleen Jamie’s new book Cairn, that Helen’s just bought and the ideas for the books that both of us are writing, which are not too dissimilar. Helen’s writing about Malcolm Lowry and place and I’m rooted in place with this book that I’m writing.

I skirt through the Bluecoat Garden for old time’s sake and once more past the Old Post Office pub. When I get to Bold Street, I pause at the position on Bold Street, where the timeslips have been reported to happen. I pause on the spot. Look at the former Dillon’s and in turn, the Lyceum. I get a sense that nothing will occur, due to the rain perhaps, or because Nic isn’t with me. Instead, I scour the paving for signs of manhole covers. There are none to be seen.

3.42 miles/ 5.52 km

References

[1] Iain Sinclair, American Smoke (London: Penguin, 2014), p.74 (e-book version).

[2] 'The Lost Tribe of Everton & Scottie Road: A Walk into History'. Available at: https://losttribeofeverton.com/histories/a-walk-into-history/ [Accessed 17^th July 2024].

[3] Arline Margaret Wilson, Culture and Commerce: Liverpool’s Merchant Elite c.1790-1850. Unpublished PhD thesis, Liverpool University, 1996, p. 47. 

[4] Robert Morrison. The English Opium Eater (London: Phoenix, 1999), p.76.

[5] Thomas De Quincey, Works of Thomas De Quincey Volume 2, ed. Grevel Lindop, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater 1821-1856, (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), p.15. The list of poets that De Quincey notes in the diary are: Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Milton, James Thomson, William Collins, Thomas Chatterton, James Beattie, Robert Burns, William Penrose, Robert Southey, S.T. Coleridge, William Wordsworth!!! (De Quincey’s exclamation points).

[6] Thomas De Quincey, Works of Thomas De Quincey Volume 2, ed. Grevel Lindop, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater 1821-1856, (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), p.25.

[7] Email from Sean Griffiths to the author, 15th July 2024. For more about the Pavilion see https://www.placenorthwest.co.uk/fat-unveils-pavilion-design-for-liverpool-church-yard-arcade/ [Accessed 15th July 2024].

[8] ‘I was traumatised at its demolition’ – Rachel Whiteread on making House. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/jul/18/traumatised-demolition-rachel-whiteread-house-saatchi [Accessed 18th July 2024].

Andrew Taylor is a poet and writer living and working in Nottingham. His most recent publications are: European Hymns (Shearsman, 2024) and There's Everything to Play For: The Poetry of Peter Finch (Seren, 2025). www.andrewtaylorpoetry.com