Remembering Liverpool Structures - Kent Square & St. Micheal's

 

In 1814 authority to build a church was granted under the St Michael's Church Act, 17th of June 1814. The church was to stand on a certain piece of land lying between Kent Street, Cornwallis Street, Upper Pitt Street and Granville Street. The Commissioners named in the Act raised the sum of money stated and began building the church in 1816, closely modelled on St Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square. However construction proved to be very expensive (the total cost of the building was £45,267 10s 6d, which is roughly equal to £2m+ today), and by 1823 all the money had been spent and the church remained unfinished. A further Act was passed stating that the Corporation was to finish building the church within three years at its own expense. The new church, St Michael's Church Upper Pitt Street, was consecrated on the 28th of July 1826. The inscription of the foundation stone, laid in 1816, read: "This plate is affixed to the first stone of a church to be erected under the name of St Michael at the expense of the parish of Liverpool and was laid on the 26th day of June in the 56th year of the reign of King George the Third in the year of our Lord 1816 by Sir William Barton knight mayor, Jonathan Blundell Hollinshead and Eichd Bullen bailiffs, Samuel Renshaw and Robert Hawkmoor Roughsedge rectors, George Syers and John Merritt wardens and John Foster architect." St Michael's was considered to be one of the finest churches in Liverpool and many consider it to be one of the greatest 'lost buildings' of Liverpool. Constructed in a classical style, the fine portico, with ten full and two half columns standing at 31 frets 8 inches at the western end, was modelled on the Temple of Jupiter in Rome.The steeple which originally stood at 201 feet was hit by lightning in 1841 and subsequently lowered. In 1919 the bells from St Nicholas’s New Chapel were installed in St Michaels. It was indeed one of the most elegant churches in Liverpool and one of the last remaining Georgian churches in the city centre.

The area around Kent Street and Pitt Street was the centre of Liverpool's Chinatown and Kent Square was once a very fashionable place to live, and even into the early twentieth century it held its charm. Charles Reilly, the University's dynamic professor of architecture described it as, "one of the most charming things in Liverpool .. it is a tiny square, not really a square but an oblong, with a single narrow street entering the middle of each of the two shorter sides … it is like a Cambridge court rather than a square only it is Georgian, with all the elegance that implies. It contains some very fine houses and the finest square in town, Great George Square. It also contains that jewel in an ancient setting, Kent Square. The houses are small and refined. The doorways are in pairs, raised above the ground, and giving onto a stone landing .. each doorway is pedimented and the entablatures have varying motifs modelled on them, some ram's heads, some urns, some flowers. Many of the doors – neat six-panel doors with raised panels – have even their Georgian knockers left. It is altogether charming. At present one wise decorator lives in it and some Chinamen. If anyone, however, wants to found a settlement, and at the same time preserve a beautiful thing, let him buy these houses."

St Michael's In The City - re coloured

In May 1941 the church was badly damaged by enemy action and the remainder of the building was demolished in 1946. It was replaced by a small, mediocre modern building, its size perhaps in keeping with the shrinking local population but the congregation remained together, meeting in halls and school basements. A new church was erected and opened on the 24th of September 1960.

The whole area around Pitt Street up to Great George’s Square is now a disappointment as sadly, no visionary came forward to preserve the Square as, within little more than a decade, the area was demolished to make way for council tenements, which lasted little more than fifty years before they too were reduced to dust. 

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/11/remembering-liverpool-structures-india.html