Twentieth-Century Ruins I

Redundant school sign, Liverpool, October 31st 2008

I am fascinated by the overlooked places in a city, the unvisited places. On a recent visit to Liverpool I found a demolished school slowly reverting to nature, the school buildings long demolished, the sweep of tarmac road way being slowly cracked and heaved by roots and grasses. There were still roadsigns warning drivers of crossing children and even a pale blue Liverpool Education board deterring intruders. (Reminding me of the old school exercise books with the city's coat of arms on them.) The kerbstones in the grounds were slowly disappearing under a year or two's leaf litter and there were still old lamp-posts with broken lamps on them. The hedge has gone shaggy and unkempt but is still recognisable as a hedge; the trees have been left to their own devices and at least one of the beech trees is enormous.

A snapshot into the light; old road patterns and new fences, October 31st 2008

From outside the fence (or what was left of it) the grounds looked like part of the neighbouring gardens, which themselves are a wild space, unmanaged woodland. Part of the school site has been sold off to a healthcare company, and these grounds are slightly better managed, but are still largely a wild space. Dog walkers use these places during the day but at night they revert to wildwood, full of perceived dangers; not bears or wolves but druggies and rapists. This sense of dangerous wilderness in the heart of the urban landscape, this 'otherness', seemed a redefinition of the urban landscape; how much of this overlooked and unvisited wildwood is there in a big city? How much unseen and neglected landscaping, abandoned garden space, even the unreachable and invisible space at the back of a border?

And beyond this exciting idea of wildwood there was the sense of a future gone awry. The school looked as though it was built after 1945 - greenfield site, modern roads and walls - but the future it was part of didn't happen. Instead the school was closed and half the site sold to a private healthcare company. An optimistic post-war landscape that didn't last.

A sign for a school that is no longer there...