Among the most enjoyable of the huge variety of tours at the IHBC’s Manchester 2017 Annual School was the visit to Liverpool, and this has featured in in the Liverpool Echo of 16 July, with an article by Dan Longman Affiliate in the NW Branch.
IHBC lead School Organiser and Branch assistant on the tour, Katie Wray, said: ‘We are delighted to have led the NW organising committee and celebrate heritage and infrastructure across the NW. Our visit to Liverpool was particularly well received by delegates and it is also a delight to see the ongoing regeneration of the docks.’
Dan writes: The IHBC put on record their thanks to Liverpool for showing off the region’s heritage transportation at its very best’
The tour, led by John Hinchliffe of Hinchliffe Heritage (former Liverpool World Heritage Site Officer) and Graham Arnold (former Conservation Officer for Wirral and Sefton), and assisted by the School’s lead organiser Katie Wray, explored Liverpool’s Historic Transport on which the organisers write:
The huge scale and importance of Liverpool’s historic docks made it the Second City of the British Empire in the late 19th C (according to Benjamin Disraeli!) and they still embody the outstanding universal value which justified Liverpool’s inscription on to UNESCO’s World Heritage list in 2004, as the supreme example of a commercial port. The operational needs of the port stimulated a continual process of improvement in port facilities and the supporting transport infrastructure which was necessary to carry goods and people over-land, on canals, railways and roads and through tunnels. The spirit of innovation, driven by commercial need, spread throughout the city and resulted in a book-full of national and global “firsts” and superlatives, including the construction of one of the first domestic airports in 1930 and even the invention of football goal-nets by the City Engineer, J. A. Brodie, in 1889!
View the newspaper feature and for background see the Liverpool Echo
For more about the School programme follow the links from Manchester2017
