St John's Gardens and its Monuments

All monuments and structures described below are listed Grade II. From 1767 the Gardens directly to the west of what became the site of St George's Hall were a burial ground with a small mortuary chapel, but Liverpool's rapid urban expansion also required a church to be built here and St John's was completed in 1784. 

St George's Hall was sited so that there was very little space between it and the church (see above) but changes were envisaged here as elsewhere in this area. 

The churchyard was full and closed for burials in 1865, and in 1880, when the diocese of Liverpool was created, St John's was proposed as a possible location for a cathedral. 

The latter went elsewhere but, when St John's was closed in 1897 and subsequently demolished, sculptor George Frampton suggested the conversion of the churchyard to a garden for the display of public sculpture, an idea that was realised by the Corporation Surveyor, Thomas Shelmerdine. 

The Gardens slope westwards from St George's Hall towards Old Haymarket and the Mersey Tunnel entrance. They are bounded by a retaining wall, the work of Shelmerdine, in rusticated Darley Dale stone to match the Hall and incorporate entrance gates and steps to west and south. 

Also on the south side the wall includes public conveniences and here one may still see fragments of the Gardens' original Art Nouveau railings. Within, the Gardens are terraced and symmetrical. 

A further retaining wall runs across them between William Brown Street and St John's Lane forming an amphitheatre at its mid point; the main axial path continues west to Old Haymarket with planting beds and paths on either side. 

Within this are placed six monuments, bronze figures of the city's leading citizens and social reformers: Alexander Balfour, champion of destitute sailors and their families, (dated 1889) by A. Bruce Joy; William Rathbone, founder of the District Nursing movement and the universities of Liverpool and Wales, (dated 1899) by Frampton; Sir Arthur Bower Forwood, merchant, shipowner, Mayor and M.P., (erected 1903) by Frampton; William Ewart Gladstone, statesman and native of Liverpool, (dated 1904) by Sir Thomas Brock; Monsignor James Nugent, founder of boys schools and supporter of Irish and other poor emigrants who passed through Liverpool, (erected 1906) by F. W. Pomeroy; Canon T. Major Lester, founder of ragged schools and children's homes in Liverpool (erected 1907) by Frampton. 

A seventh larger monument by Sir W. Goscombe John to the King's Liverpool Regiment, dated 1905 and comprising Britannia on a stone pedestal above military figures and accoutrements, has become the forerunner of the number of commemorative military and other plaques more recently placed in the Gardens.