Heritage
12 September

Saturday was one of the annual national Heritage Open Days.

Roland and I went to a couple of the venues open to the public in Liverpool.

Firstly, we went to the Toxteth Unitarian Chapel, the oldest dissenting chapel in Liverpool. Originally built as a school in 1611, the Grade I listed building was built by local Puritan farmers who later added a chapel in 1618. After falling into disrepair the chapel was partly rebuilt in 1774 since then the congregation has been Unitarian.

Many of Liverpool's premier families were associated with the chapel. Among them the Holts, the Rathbones and the Mellys. Another famous acolyte, memorialised in a plaque, Jeremiah Horrox, observed the first recorded transit of the sun by the planet Venus.

The interior is all dark wood and green fabric. The outside is plain and Georgian and a tranquil oasis by a busy road.

Down on the dock road, Liverpool's only remaining Bascule Bridge has re-opened after what has been called refurbishment but, having looked the place over, is more simply a preservation job. The bridge itself will never be raised again for sure.

I remember as a boy being in the car with my dad waiting as the bridge was raised and lowered to allow a tramp steamer into the basin by the surrounding warehouses.

It was fascinating to be allowed up into the control room above the road. I've passed under it so many times over the past fifty-odd years and, as a boy, I can remember looking up and wondering what it was like inside. Well, now I know that it is crammed with industrial mechanisms that look almost Victorian.

And I really liked the gas fire. I can just see the old guys in their blue overalls supping on a mug of tea and maybe toasting some bread whilst waiting for the next boat to come through.

The bridge is right next to the Tobacco Warehouse.

This is, apparently, the largest remaining bonded warehouse in Europe. It is certainly a very large structure. Peel Holdings have an interest in this whole area. There are impressive development plans for this area and a similar plot of land on the opposite bank of the Mersey in Birkenhead. The whole investment will cost billions and is scheduled to take thirty years or more to complete.

However, Crosby has had that sort of promise made by property developers and the centre of the village is still a mess because of it. The Littlewoods building on Edge Lane is a masterpiece of Art Deco architecture which was acquired by Urban Splash and has now stood empty for years awaiting the right economic circumstances.

In my most bleak moments, it all feels like empty speculation which will come to nothing. Apart from anything else, I do not understand the economic raison d'être for such projects. Social housing, yes I can see that Liverpool needs much more social housing. But how many more luxury apartments do we need?

I've read a couple of heritage based books as well recently. I cannot remember having anything by Sarah Dunant before although her name crops up in the yearly review of my first year's Journal. However, there is no mention of which book I had read that year.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed Sacred Hearts very much. It is set in a nunnery in Italy shortly after the Council of Trent and thus the context is the fightback by the Catholic Church after the challenge of the Protestant revolution. I liked the insights into the enclosed life; how for a woman what was given up in terms of physical freedom could be balanced out against the measure of intellectual freedom that may be permitted in study and the arts. In this case, one of the main characters is the order's physician -a position which the woman well understands that she would not be able to hold in the outside world.

And I enjoyed the plot as well.

Heartstone is the latest in C J Sansom's Shardlake mysteries set in the later part of Henry VIII's reign. Again, the enjoyment is as much in the historical setting as the working out of the murder mystery which, this time feels somewhat long winded.

The whole story anyway is a ruse to get us to a memorable event of those years shortly before Henry's death. As soon as The Mary Rose is mentioned, you know that the sinking will form a pivotal moment in the narrative. It's a bit like introducing Titanic into a plot - you know that there is going to be a collision with an iceberg at some point.

So, although it held me, I think that my judgement on this novel remains the same as for the previous one in the series, Revelation "slow to get going and overly convoluted".