ABSTRACT
Home to cultural institutions like FACT and creative workspaces like the Tea Factory along with a number of arts spaces, it is also the place to find some of the city’s largest bars and clubs. Add to the mix several thousand residents and a certain degree of tension is inevitable, if also quite a lot of excitement. All of this so nearly didn’t happen. Back in 1990 the area was in a sorry state. Many of its buildings were vacant, some falling into dereliction and others having been cleared to create car parks. What it did have going for it was the fact that it was almost entirely owned by the council. They had inherited a single land holding covering 80 acres and 388 buildings encompassing most of the quarter. It could have been a unique opportunity for regeneration but didn’t work out that way. In 1990 the council agreed to sell the land holdings to a company called Charterhouse Estates. This was not necessarily a bad idea; Charterhouse was owned by the architect Roger Zogolovitch, who was a partner in CZWG Architects with Piers Gough (and indeed a founding Academician of the Academy of Urbanism). They paid £10 million for the land and buildings and developed plans that would have turned the Duke Street Quarter, as it was then called, into an artist-led cultural quarter. Unfortunately, that was not what happened. An 1992 article by Rosie Millard in the Independent newspaper tells the story of artists left frustrated, not being able to agree leases on buildings and unable to invest. The problem was that the country had gone into recession, one of the effects of which was that property values fell, leaving many homeowners in negative equity. Charterhouse may have been painted as ‘big bad London developers’, but their intentions weren’t bad and they weren’t big enough. They had bitten off more than they could chew and their bankers lost confidence, pushing the company into liquidation. Then the worst possible thing happened, the 80 acres were bought by a parking operator attracted by the area’s potential for surface parking – surely ending any hopes of regeneration? Today the quarter is known as Ropewalks, a name that only dates from the regeneration initiatives that finally got underway later in the 1990s. It is a good name, explaining its elongated blocks stretching uphill
from the original ‘pool’ from which Liverpool takes its name. The pool was Liverpool’s first enclosed wet dock, opened in 1715 to keep ships afloat when the tide went out. In order to maintain their ropes, merchants bought long strips of land up the hill. Within a few years the area was developed and the rope-working activities moved elsewhere. However, the long strips of land left their imprint on the quarter that subsequently emerged. This was initially a quarter of grand houses for merchants and ship captains. Their houses included warehousing so that the merchants could keep a close eye on their stock. However, as the area became more crowded and less pleasant, the
merchants decamped to the new neighbourhoods built on the ridges above the city (see Hope Street, page 178). This allowed their warehouses to expand and the area between Bold Street and Duke Street
became a ‘lively’ dockside quarter. Chinese sailors jumping ship settled at the top of the hill, creating one of Europe’s first Chinatowns. Liverpool Rope Walks Partnership was formed to kick-start regeneration in 1997. Made up of stakeholders including Liverpool City Council, English Partnerships, private companies and community representatives, it commissioned an Action Plan that set out how the area might be tackled. However, what really made the difference was a deal with another developer. Given the experience with Charterhouse, it was maybe a
surprising choice to go with a young Liverpool entrepreneur, Jonathan Falkingham, together with his associate Tom Bloxham in Manchester. According to Urban Splash’s website Concert Square in Ropewalks was their first scheme. It included the extraordinary idea of a long bar serving directly onto the space that would be more at home on a beach in Ibiza than the north of England. Needless to say, it worked (who wouldn’t want a bit of Ibiza in Liverpool?) and the square is now central to Liverpool’s nightlife. Since that time Urban Splash have converted five buildings in the area, including the Vanilla Factory and the Tea Factory, to provide creative workspace and apartments. The public sector’s contribution is to be seen in the public realm and in grants to aid the conversion of buildings. A comprehensive public-realm scheme by BDP has been used to transform most of the streets in the area with high-quality materials and street furniture. In addition to Concert Square, five further public spaces have been created. Perhaps the most extraordinary of these and the one that best encapsulates the history of Ropewalks, is Wolstenholme Square. Originally a fine residential square, it declined over the years until it was an isolated space surrounded by tin sheds. This made it a good place for nightclubs because there was no one to disturb. The sheds were converted into a series of venues, the largest of which were the Kazimier and Nation. The latter is where Cream started as a residency before growing into a world-wide brand with clubs in cities across the world, a record label and a major festival called Creamfields. The square acts as a chill-out space for the bars and is dominated by the amazing Penelope sculpture by the Cuban-born artist Jorge Pardo. The history of the square, and perhaps also of Ropewalks, came full circle with the approval in 2014 of proposals for a large student housing scheme. Regeneration it may be, but it will also mean the closure of the clubs that have become central not just to Ropewalks but to the city’s identity.
