The best advice I can give when visiting any new town or city is always to look up above the shop fronts as you walk around. There are usually loads of interesting things to see, and these days most places seem to have largely the same shops anyway!
I had a pint of the Dark Spartan Stout 5% at £3-20 by the Parker Brewery. It was a real treat, black and thick with a nice creamy head. There was a beautiful malty flavour with chocolate and coffee notes. A meal in its self.
The Parker Brewery is, as the name implies, run by the Parker Family from a micro brewery not too far away in Bank next to Southport. It was started up in 2014, and by the end of the year had expanded and moved premises to a 5 bbl plant. The beers are all named after tribes etc. I will definitely look out for them as if the others are a good as this then they will be worth the wait. They can be found in around 12 pubs in the Liverpool, Ormskirk, Southport, Formby area, including the Hopvine at Burscough and the Ship and Mitre down the road here.
This mosaic mural was on Castle Street and depicts a nautical scene. On the bottom right you can also see the signature of the designer Frank Murray in 1889.
The building that the mosaics embellish is the British and Foreign Marine Insurance Co. Ltd. With the flag of St. George of England and the Liver bird of Liverpool
On the other side of the door is this Venetian themed mosaic. The mosaic was completed by at the same time as the building in 1889 by Antonio Salvati who started his workshop on the island of Murano in the Venice Lagoon in 1859, and it is still there.
On the opposite side of Castle Street is this lovely building now with Cafe Nero gracing the street level. It was built in 1892 as the Adelphi Bank. I love the decadence of having terracotta on the ground floor and bands with the stone. And niches with statues! I wish I had taken a good picture of the big bronze outer doors as they depict sets of brothers such as Castor and Pollux and Achilles and Patroclus, as adelphi means sibling in Greek.
The lovely old brick building, that would have been quite a tall building in its day, is now dwarfed by the new developments at Mann Island. It was the pumping station that kept the Mersey Tunnel dry, and also the ventilator to allow the smoke from the steam engines using the tunnel to escape. The tunnel was built in 1882.
Just a couple of doors up from the Ship and Mitre from the last blog is the Excelsior. It is named after a Liverpool sailing ship. It also has a bit of pedigree for being next to the 1960's Headquarters of Higson's the Liverpool brewers. Inside has been modernised, but in a fairly stripped back way. It is not a pub to come for the decor, although pleasant enough. Unfortunately the TV's always on mar things for me. The reason to come to the Excelsior is the beer from the Casque Mark pub. There were six hand pulls on when we dropped by.
I had a pint of the Dark Spartan Stout 5% at £3-20 by the Parker Brewery. It was a real treat, black and thick with a nice creamy head. There was a beautiful malty flavour with chocolate and coffee notes. A meal in its self.
The Parker Brewery is, as the name implies, run by the Parker Family from a micro brewery not too far away in Bank next to Southport. It was started up in 2014, and by the end of the year had expanded and moved premises to a 5 bbl plant. The beers are all named after tribes etc. I will definitely look out for them as if the others are a good as this then they will be worth the wait. They can be found in around 12 pubs in the Liverpool, Ormskirk, Southport, Formby area, including the Hopvine at Burscough and the Ship and Mitre down the road here.
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