# Liverpool International Garden Festival Site



## sallybear (May 11, 2009)

Apart from a short visit to a roller disco in the Pleasure Island complex, I haven’t been here since I was 8 when I visited the Festival Garden’s with my family, and remember it well. 

My friend who is studying architecture has been using the site for her final thesis and we went to take some photos to accompany her work. Was amazed at the way this place has ended up. The way nature is completely retaking this place is amazing. 

Bit of history:

_In deepest south Liverpool, there is a garden where no one ever goes.(hmmm) Twenty years ago, it would have been full of people enjoying the views across the Mersey. In one summer alone more than 3.5m people flocked there to see its Japanese pagoda and wildlife gardens. But now it lies abandoned, with shopping trolleys half submerged in fishponds and piles of rubble in the main pavilion. 

This isn’t a secret garden - when it opened in 1984 as Britain’s first garden festival, it was hailed as ‘a five month pageant of horticultural excellence and spectacular entertainment’. Even now it is passed every day by thousands of drivers travelling into Liverpool, who can still see many of the festival’s original sculptures and landscape features from the road. Yet few people have ventured inside the site for almost two decades, kept out by a rusting wire fence. 

Of course, this is not how it was supposed to be. As one of five national garden festivals held during the 1980s and 1990s, the Liverpool event was supposed to act as a focus for regeneration and provide the setting for quality development in the future. 

Based on the Bundesgartenschau, introduced in post-war Germany to bring war-damaged areas back into use, the concept was first mooted as a regeneration tool by former environment secretary Michael Heseltine in 1980. A programme of five festivals was devised, to be held biennially in Stoke-on-Trent, Glasgow, Gateshead, and Ebbw Vale, starting with the Liverpool international garden festival. 

Each festival took a derelict piece of land, reclaimed it and turned it into green space for the event. While festivals only lived for one summer, it was hoped they would encourage investment and development long afterwards._

Some painted wood, not sure what it was from






Seating from the go-cart track, not sure if this was part of the later Pleasure Island





Tyre barriers from the carting circuit





One of the many wooden structures that linked parts of the site





Watch for the holes in the wood!





Found this inside large remains of building near the old carpark





Part of the Japanese Garden's 





Massive doors near the remains of the festival hall





remains of the dragon slide, remember going down this as a child





Sculptures now hiding in the undergrowth


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## The_Revolution (May 11, 2009)

Wow I had no idea this was still there. I also remember going here as a kid (more like dragged here by my parents).

The ultimate nature garden now I guess.


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## jonney (May 11, 2009)

Gateshead's garden festival site ended up the same way. It was built on contaminated land from the local gas works next to Dunstan Staithes (as seen on Get Carter) and eventialy they built houses on it (contaminated land/houses mmmmmmmm). How long before the same happens there.


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## klempner69 (May 11, 2009)

This is very different indeed..dont suppose you have any pics of the place when it was in full swing so we could compare?Great shots too.

Stu


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## sallybear (May 11, 2009)

There are plans for housing on this site also, but to be honest plans for this place have come and gone over the last 25 years since it shut. Politics and emmissions from the landfill underneath have kept redevelopment plans at bay. Not sure for how long now though.

How it once looked:


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## klempner69 (May 11, 2009)

Thanks for putting these up,it brings back memories of when i used to stay in Willaston and i used to travel up to Kirby then on to a place of which i cant remember its name..it used to be at the top of the Wirral overlooking the Mersey toward Bootle...it was a seaside town with no real visitors!The train ride from near Willaston went through several little villages including Port Sunlight,home of the Lever Brothers empire...ah the memories.....anyhow,back to reality.

Stu


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## sallybear (May 11, 2009)

klempner69 said:


> Thanks for putting these up,it brings back memories of when i used to stay in Willaston and i used to travel up to Kirby then on to a place of which i cant remember its name..it used to be at the top of the Wirral overlooking the Mersey toward Bootle...it was a seaside town with no real visitors!The train ride from near Willaston went through several little villages including Port Sunlight,home of the Lever Brothers empire...ah the memories.....anyhow,back to reality.
> 
> Stu



The line you went on to West Kirby and Willaston and onto Port Sunlight is now called the Wirral Way. Dissused for a long time now, nice to meet someone who once travelled along it. Hadlow Station (Willaston) has been preserved and is now a museum.

Seaside town was probably New Brighton, hey day was really in the early 1900's. Did it still have the big tower when you went there?? Like a dodgy version of Blackpool tower??


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## klempner69 (May 11, 2009)

Yes,New Brighton..when i last went in the mid 90`s,it had a tower i am sure..the council had just spent a fortune on the sea front making it a very open like prominade..i really liked the place,but there was one thing missing...lots of people to make it buzz...you serious about the train going up to where i used to catch the ferry being dissused???It was a lovely line to travel on.Another place i liked that was strange...a place looking over to North Wales over grassy mudflats...it was a seaside village but rarely saw any sea....oh dear,the grey cells have let me down again.

Stu


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## sallybear (May 11, 2009)

The station for the Ferry is still there, but the branch line that went to West Kirby, through Port Sunlinght and Willaston was dissused at Hooton all the way 12 miles around to West Kirby. 

The place that never saw the sea was Parkgate, great for an ice cream even today. Occasionally gets a visit from a very high tide, but all silted up now, a marshy wetland, great for wildlife!


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## Foxylady (May 11, 2009)

What an interesting thread! I love 'forgotten' gardens and there are some lovely things that you've included in you photos, SallyB. Klempner's reminiscences brought back some memories too...know what he means about New Brighton, but I sort of liked that empty feel about the place.
Great pics, btw. Cheers.


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## sallybear (May 12, 2009)

Just a little bit more info on my friends plans for this site, I mentioned she is a student of architecture, almost finished now, and just a couple of pages from her project on this site. Really interesting IMO, enjoy. THere is a LOT more to this project, just a couple of the most interesting pages.


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## ashless (May 12, 2009)

*!*



sallybear said:


> Based on the Bundesgartenschau, introduced in post-war Germany to bring war-damaged areas back into use..........to be held biennially in Stoke-on-Trent, Glasgow, Gateshead, and Ebbw Vale, starting with the Liverpool international garden festival.




Anyway, good work Missy! I wonder where the Lennon statue is now?


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## sallybear (May 12, 2009)

ashless said:


> I wonder where the Lennon statue is now?


 It's on the corner of the Hard Day's night hotel at the top of Matthew Street in Liverpool.


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## ashless (May 12, 2009)

sallybear said:


> It's on the corner of the Hard Day's night hotel at the top of Matthew Street in Liverpool.



Nice one!

I'll have to have a look next time I meet the relatives.....yes, I am half scouser!


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## thompski (May 12, 2009)

ashless said:


> Nice one!
> 
> I'll have to have a look next time I meet the relatives.....yes, I am half scouser!




This is normally where I make some sort of remark, but alas two days without sleep has taken its toll


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## Vintage (May 12, 2009)

There was one of these in Newcastle or maybes on the Gateshead side in the 1990's, i remember going a couple of times when i was a wee bairn, Does anyone remember this one? I 'think' theres a housing estate on top of it now, I also remember they had a sculpture of a boy in the river or something, Anyone from the north-east remember it?


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## Monkey Boy (May 31, 2009)

jonney said:


> Gateshead's garden festival site ended up the same way. It was built on contaminated land from the local gas works next to Dunstan Staithes (as seen on Get Carter) and eventialy they built houses on it (contaminated land/houses mmmmmmmm). How long before the same happens there.



Similar story in Liverpool. It was built on infilled docks/landfill and I believe at one point there was an oil refinery or something there.

They've already built on some of the site. The houses opposite the Britannia (the pub you can see in the top right hand corner of the first period photo) going up to where the tip is, have had a number of occurances of subsidence in recent years.


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## Monkey Boy (May 31, 2009)

sallybear said:


> The station for the Ferry is still there, but the branch line that went to West Kirby, through Port Sunlinght and Willaston was dissused at Hooton all the way 12 miles around to West Kirby.
> 
> The place that never saw the sea was Parkgate, great for an ice cream even today. Occasionally gets a visit from a very high tide, but all silted up now, a marshy wetland, great for wildlife!



Hate to be pedantic, but that line didn't go through Port Sunlight. 

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stations/h/hadlow_road/index.shtml


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