The Custom House was a 19th-century Neo-classical building located in Liverpool, England. It housed a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

, dock office, and offices for

Customs Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting tariffs and for controlling the flow of goods, including animals, transports, personal effects, and hazardous items, into and out of a country. Traditionally, customs ...

and

Excise file:Lincoln Beer Stamp 1871.JPG, upright=1.2, 1871 U.S. Revenue stamp for 1/6 barrel of beer. Brewers would receive the stamp sheets, cut them into individual stamps, cancel them, and paste them over the Bunghole, bung of the beer barrel so when ...

. It was built on the site of the historic

Old Dock The Old Dock, originally known as Thomas Steers' dock, was the world's first commercial wet dock. The dock was built on the River Mersey in Liverpool, England, starting in 1710 and completed in 1716. A natural tidal pool off the River Mersey ...

in 1839 and operated up to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

when it was partly destroyed during the

Liverpool Blitz The Liverpool Blitz was the heavy and sustained bombing of the English city of Liverpool and its surrounding area, during the Second World War by the German ''Luftwaffe''. Liverpool was the most heavily bombed area of the country, outside Lo ...

, then finally demolished in 1948. Today the area which formed the base of the building makes up part of the

Liverpool One Liverpool ONE is a shopping, residential, and leisure complex in Liverpool, England. The project involved the redevelopment of 42 acres (170,000 m2) of land in the city centre. It is a retail-led development anchored by the department store ...

shopping complex. It is considered amongst Liverpool's most regrettably lost buildings.

History

Following the closure of the

on 31 August 1826, plans were made for the construction of what was to be Liverpool's fifth Custom house on the site which was filled in with concrete prior to construction. The town's surveyor, John Foster, who would later go on to design

The Oratory The Oratory stands to the north of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral in Merseyside, England. It was originally the mortuary chapel to St James Cemetery, and houses a collection of 19th-century sculpture and important funeral monuments as part of the ...

and

St James Cemetery St James's Cemetery is an urban park behind Liverpool Cathedral that is below ground level. Until 1825, the space was a stone quarry, and until 1936 it was used as the Liverpool city cemetery. It has been designated a Grade I Historic Park by H ...

, was charged with designing the H-shaped building located parallel to the shoreline. On 12 August 1828, the first stone was laid by Liverpool's mayor,

Thomas Colley Porter Thomas Colley Porter (1780 – 2 October 1833) was Mayor of Liverpool, England, from 1827–1828. The election, in which he defeated Nicholas Robinson, was mired by accusations of corruption. Parliamentary historian Margaret Escott says that ...

, to mark the start of construction; this took 11 years, with the building opening in 1839. In 1941, during

, the Custom House was hit with a bomb, partly destroying the building but ultimately leaving its structure intact. After the war had ended, the government (who owned the building) refused to repair the building despite protests, and it was subsequently demolished in 1948. Notably the building was a subject of a painting by

John Atkinson Grimshaw John Atkinson Grimshaw (6 September 1836 – 13 October 1893) was an English Victorian-era artist best known for his nocturnal scenes of urban landscapes.Alexander Robertson, ''Atkinson Grimshaw'', London, Phaidon Press, 1996 H. J. Dyos and ...

References

;Citations ;Sources * *

External links

Photos
Demolished buildings and structures in Liverpool Buildings and structures in the United Kingdom destroyed during World War II

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

Buildings and structures demolished in 1948

History

References

Further reading

External links