Storehouses of Empire

CHAPTER 4

Postscript:
The decline of the Liverpool warehouse

As long as trade patterns and the means of moving and storing goods remained largely unchanged, Liverpool's warehouses performed an essential role in the economic life of the city. But forces beyond the city's control began, in the 20th century, to reduce their usefulness and to deplete the building stock. The collapse of the region's manufacturing economy in the middle decades of the century - particularly the loss of the cotton industry - reduced the flow of goods - both imports and exports - that for a century or more had sustained the life of the port. War, too, took its toll on warehouses, the blitz of 1941 razing many to the ground, and post-war reconstruction saw the demolition of many more.

The ways in which goods were moved around and packaged affected the nature of storage facilities. The movement of some bulk items like grain, which had been contained in sacks that a single man could carry, was mechanised so that the loose cargo could be transferred by elevators and conveyors for storage in hoppers. This change had begun in the 19th century, for the Waterloo Corn Warehouse of 1866-8 had been the first in the world to introduce fully mechanised working (Fig 42).
The mid-20th-century sugar silo built by Tate and Lyle behind the northern docks developed the handling of bulk cargoes (Fig 43a-b), and the later storage tanks in the same area demonstrate how bulk liquids are handled in the modern age, a far cry from the casks and barrels of the 19th century (Fig 44). The introduction of container transport further reduced the handling of goods, and the development of the container port to the north effectively left the old docks, and the warehouses that had served them, isolated from the flow of traffic (Fig 45).

For less bulky commodities, the revolution in handling has been no less far-reaching. For these goods, the fork-lift truck has replaced muscle power, and this has had two consequences for warehousing. First, the fork-lift truck is more safely operated at ground level in unobstructed spaces rather than on the cluttered upper floors of a multi-storeyed warehouse. And, second, the vertical reach of the fork-lift truck is far greater than that possible by muscle power. Especially when aided by packing on pallets, goods of great weight can be stacked to much greater heights. Once this became possible, the advantages of ground-level storage became obvious, and the unsuitability of all but the low-rise warehouses for modern storage needs was plain to see. The future of most historic warehouses, therefore, depends upon finding new uses.

Figure 42 The surviving wing of the Waterloo Corn Warehouse, designed by G F Lyster and built in the years 1866-8 to provide fully mechanised movement of grain. [AA029293]

Figure 43a Tate and Lyle's Sugar Silo, 173 Regent Road, built 1955-7. The massive concrete arches provide an immense internal storage space. [AA045127]

Figure 43b This interior view of Tate and Lyle's Sugar Silo shows the conveyer system on the roof of the building. [BB92I8803]

Figure 44 Modern bulk storage in the docks: the lorries on Regent Road show how bulk materials are now transported. [AA045266]

Figure 45 The container port: giant cranes lift the containers from ships to stacks on the quayside, and then on to lorries for onward transport. The port lies to the north of the old dock area. [Reproduced with permission of The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company; DP002421]

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