During the mid 18th Century Liverpool began its first phase of rapid urban expansion. The burial ground for the church, with a small chapel, was consecrated and opened for use in 1767 but the church itself was not completed until 1784. The architect of the gothic style church building was Timothy (sometimes given as Thomas) Lightoler. It was in 1775 that the first stones were laid for St John’s Church. Construction of the Church was completed in 1784. In the year it was completed, St John’s served one of the most crowded and poorest areas of the city. Mid-1780's Burial records indicate the degree of abject poverty to be found locally. Nearly one-in-two of the deaths that occurred were of children whilst in only one–in-four cases were people able to fund their own, or a relative's, funeral. One-in-four burials were of paupers, two-in-three of whom were from the Poorhouse. However, in order to effect better transport links to the town from London and Manchester it was necessary to either purchase at considerable expense property on the right hand side of St. John's lane or sacrifice part of the churchyard opposite. After debate the latter was decided on and it was not long before the exhumation of bodies began. The bodies, exceeding 2,000, had been buried a varying depths and were in varying stages of decomposition. They were removed with great care and in one instance four guineas, two half guineas and two seven shilling pieces fell from a woolen jacket that had resisted decay with the money divided between the workmen.
In 1854 work began on St George’s Hall, designed in Neo-classical style by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, winner of the architectural competition for the building. St John's Church had been located hard against the West elevation of St George’s Hall and was a factor in the more simple design form of this side of the Hall, with its lack of a portico. Soon after the work commenced on St George’s Hall, developments began which led to the demolition of St John's Church and later to the laying out of St John’s Garden. In 1865 the churchyard was closed for burials, 82,491 bodies having been interred in the grounds, with early Baptismal records containing a number of mentions of people from Africa, Jamaica, New Guinea and other countries. These record possible mariners or, reflecting that most unsavoury aspect of Liverpool’s past, slaves given English names.
In 1880 Liverpool was established as a separate diocese from Chester and a Cathedral was planned to the West of St George’s Hall on the site of St John’s Church. It was then decided that the Anglican Cathedral should be located at St James’ Mount to dominate the Hope Street skyline, avoiding a clash in styles between the two major buildings and providing a great civic space more fully revealing the Western elevation of St George’s Hall. In 1897 under the Liverpool Churches Act St John's was closed with the last Sunday service taking place in St. John's on 27th March 1898. When the church was demolished, Peet wrote, 'For more than a century this unsightly structure has been allowed to disfigure the landscape ... as an example of ecclesiastical art the church of St. John has not a single redeeming feature....'. Under a facility granted on 11th December 1888 Liverpool Corporation was empowered to lay out the churchyard as the public gardens to be known as St. John's Gardens. The Garden is claimed to have been designed initially by the sculptor, George Frampton, as a setting for existing and proposed pieces of public sculpture reflecting the City’s new found economic, political and cultural status. This memorial garden is part of the William Brown Street conservation area in the city centre, a beautiful place to relax or have a picnic, and escape the hustle and bustle of the city centre.
The terraced sculpture gardens display listed monuments from the late Victorian and Edwardian era. They include the Alexander Balfour monument, a merchant shipowner; Regimental monument, memorial to the King’s Liverpool Regiment; William Gladstone monument, who was Prime Minister and born in Rodney Street; William Rathbone, founder of the district nursing movement and the University of Liverpool.
http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2022/01/remembering-liverpool-structures.html
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