Snow Scenes in Postcards

For the last ten days or so, the nation’s weather forecasters have been addressing us in their self important faux-demotic on the subject of snow. In ever more apocalyptic terms we have been warned to expect unprecedented extremes of freezing temperatures and snowfall. If it was their intention to induce fear and dread, their success is demonstrated by reports of panic-buying of basic foods and supplies. TV newsgatherers have been out and about in the snow covered uplands in anticipation of blood curdling tales of human suffering – you can sense their disappointment when their interviewees respond with stoic acceptance of the tribulations of winter. In the meantime, the red tops have reworked the weather event as The Beast from the East in a phrase that neatly evokes the national paranoia over immigration that has poisoned political discourse in recent years. As a reminder that winter hardship was, and remains so for many, a routine event, we offer a selection of vintage postcards from winters past. To see some illustrations of snow scenes posted in 2010, please follow this link.

Round the Docks

The work was demanding and dangerous, the workforce was casualised and routinely exploited and the workplace was disorderly and perilous but the image of the docks held a special place in the imperialist imagination. All of Britain’s maritime supremacy and economic power as a nation that traded to survive was focused on the dockside. Despite the development of mechanised lifting gear the greater part of the labour involved came from physical effort – enormous quantities of finished goods and raw materials were loaded on and off ships by hand. A picture of ceaseless activity is placed before us. Rail mounted cranes, teams of horses, motor vehicles and railway wagons compete for space on the quayside, above them swing cradles of locomotives or turbines and hoists bearing cotton bales, sacks of sugar or animal carcasses. A compelling theatrical scene of wonder for the spectator and a raucous, turbulent and unstable environment for the manual labourers where the threat of serious physical injury could come from any direction at any moment. 

Our old friend the shipping container killed off this spectacle and replaced it with a highly formalised aerial display of bar-coded containers – all very fascinating in a different way but totally inaccessible to the general public. It’s a world of computer commanded reach-stackers, gantry cranes and side-lifters manoeuvring outsize boxes from ship to shore and back again with maximum cost effectiveness in an anonymous intermodal zone where the most frequently heard sound is the warning beep of reversing vehicles. 

Liverpool India Buildings

As the coalition proceeds with its ideologically driven “bonfire of regulations” property developers are tempted to employ ever more extreme measures to “sweat their assets”. The notion that buildings of architectural merit should be protected is perceived as an inconvenient bureaucratic barrier to economic growth. Listed buildings are never more vulnerable than when a new owner comes on the scene, all puffed up with the conceit that here is an asset just waiting to be transformed by his unique vision. Such a fate has befallen a grade II listed office building in Liverpool, India Buildings in Water Street, completed in 1930 where owner Green Property plans to do away with the handsome vaulted shopping arcade that runs through the building. Gavin Stamp writing in Private Eye 1329 makes the case for retaining the arcade and correctly describes India Buildings as “a monumental essay in modern commercial Classicism”. Local campaigners are doing their best to oppose this vandalism but history is not on their side. The city of Liverpool has, in the last decade, been a test bed for the privatisation of public space. All of which only encourages developers to disregard public access issues in the interests of maximising their revenues. 

Tunnel Visions

The Liverpool skyline is justly celebrated but something of its splendour is owed to the presence of a clutch of windowless monolithic towers constructed for the ventilation of the Mersey tunnels. The cutaway drawing above, courtesy of the indispensable 1930s part-work Wonders of World Engineering, explains all. Enormous turbo-fans scoop massive volumes of stale and polluted air from the tunnels below and allow fresh air to replace it, making it possible for motorists to complete their subterranean crossings without fear of suffocation.


George's Dock Ventilation and Control Station at the Pier Head is the most ornamented of all the towers. This was an age of big engineering statements (Bankside Power Station) to which the mass audience was broadly receptive. Technology enjoyed a much greater respect from the public for whom there remained a positive association with progress toward a better world for all. The tower (left below) was designed by Liverpool's most eminent inter-war architect, Herbert J Rowse as he left behind the classicism of India Buildings (1923-30) in favour of the Art Deco/Aztec/Streamline-inspired styling on display here. The tower was faced with Portland Stone and inscribed with stripes and repeat patterns. The surface was embellished with relief sculptures by Edmund C Thompson and an extraordinary elongated carved figure to represent Speed (by Thompson again, with assistance from George C Capstick) complete with helmet, goggles and emerging motorcycle wheel.


The Woodside Tower at Birkenhead (right above) has a ziggurat contour and a carved relief of a Machine Age column. After more than 75 years these uncompromising buildings have become accepted as part of the city’s skyline although there must have been some who found them intolerably brutal when they first appeared. Whether the recently completed Pier Head Ferry Terminal, holder of the Carbuncle Cup for 2009 will command a future place in the affections of Merseysiders remains to be seen.