Find out first-hand what our volunteers have been up to over the last few weeks on our building recording project with Museum of Liverpool. Sharon Matthews explains all…

Do you remember the TV programme ‘Time Team’ hosted by Tony Robinson? Well I do, and I was always fascinated by what the time team got up to and what was found during the dig. I’m also interested in how old buildings can be regenerated and given new life with a new use. So volunteering at Lister Steps was a great fit for my interests, while being ‘in between jobs’. 

I signed up to be a volunteer to help record the building before any of the changes start happening and was invited to an afternoon session to hear all about the Old Library and the Lister Steps project. Our first day was on 11th September, there were four of us volunteers and we were introduced to the archaeology team from the Museum of Liverpool. They showed us one of the walls that needed recording, and to my surprise it a wall full of graffiti! It was explained that archaeology wasn’t just about what’s under the ground, but also above. In fact archaeologists are interested in anything that’s historical, social and culturally significant.

Using a scale of 1:20 we were shown the painstaking method of measuring and recording on graph paper the multiple layers of graffiti we could see on the wall. It’s the same method that’s used during an archaeological dig. Even though it was only graffiti, I felt a bit of pressure to be as accurate as possible, as I knew this was going to be a historical record. It took me and my partner Ellen 4 hours to record the large white piece of graffiti.

On 15th September, I attended Lister Steps' first Heritage Open Day event. Vanessa, who is one of the archaeologists, explained some of the artefacts that had been found in dig sites around the Liverpool area. She wanted to show the visitors what might be found during the dig that will be taking place at the library next year...Time Team here I come! It was lovely to meet some of the visitors who were sharing their memories of the Old Library.

My final day of volunteering was on Wednesday 19th September. This is when I got an extra chance to glimpse into the life of an archaeologist. We were shown software that they use to turn the scaled pencil drawing into a digitised image which is then used to put into a project catalogue at the end. Clare, from the Museum of Liverpool, did all the technical stuff for me and I just did the nice bit, digitally drawing over the original work. This image shows what I did on the day, but it still needs the other layers adding, and it was undecided whether to change the colours to make them more representative of the actual colours.

So, what did I get out of my volunteering experience? I got to meet new people; I got to find out more about the project (it’s so much better being involved); I got to learn new skills and brush up on my maths; I got an insight into the work of an archaeologist...and although it was too early for the ‘Time Team’ experience, I’m certainly looking forward to the dig next year.

I’d encourage anyone interested to get involved, Olivia and her team are very welcoming.

On Saturday 15th September, we ran our first ever Heritage Open Days event, linking into a national network of heritage sites and organisations who opened their doors to visitors for free across two weeks in September.
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Visitors were able to look around the grounds of The Old Library and get up close to the building with our Conservation Architect Alan Gardner, who gave some really interesting talks about the history of the building and its key architectural features. We then encouraged people to follow our blue chalk arrows round the corner to Lister Steps nursery where we were joined by some of the teams helping us throughout the project. 

​Our design team from OMI Architects talked people through the plans for the building and created an interactive ‘fly-through’ of the interior, giving  visitors an idea of how the finished building might look.

Periscope CIC, who are helping to document and film the project as it progresses, were on hand to talk about our community journalism training programme next year and showed off some of the work they’ve produced on similar projects. 

​​The community archaeology team from the Museum of Liverpool and our building recording volunteers revealed the multiple layers of graffiti they recorded on the building last week and got hands on with some finds from previous archaeological digs; this gave visitors a flavour of what we could find when we run our own dig in the grounds of The Old Library next year! 

Overall, we had 185 visitors throughout the day which is an amazing turnout. Lots of people signed up to hear more about our upcoming volunteering opportunities and added their fond memories to our Memory Line (we’ll share some of these soon). Everyone was so supportive of the project and it was really encouraging to hear that so many people are looking forward to using  the building once again. Thank you to everyone who came along, especially our volunteers Azuka & Andrew, who were on hand to welcome people at the library, and Anthony who was busy snapping photographs throughout the day.
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We’re hoping this is the first of many successful Heritage Open Days events for The Old Library!

This week we’ve been at hard work at The Old Library getting the grounds ready for our upcoming activities and events. With our archaeology volunteers and the Museum of Liverpool team on site soon to carry out external building recording, we needed to make sure they could access the outside of the building. We also wanted to make everything is safe for visitors to our Heritage Open Day event where our design team will be running guided tours around the grounds.

After 12 years with no gardener, the grounds were very overgrown so we had our work cut out. Luckily we enlisted the help of our amazing volunteers, some of whom do similar work in Newsham Park on a regular basis, and they joined us for a walk-around where we came up our plan of attack. Then earlier this week, Don, Denise, Vinny, Karen, Mark & Laura arrived armed with shovels, loppers, wheelbarrows, litter-pickers, rakes and elbow grease to get stuck in.

It took a full day and a half but by the end the sun came out and we had managed to clear some good spaces round the front and back of the building by strimming weeds & cutting down bushes. We also showed  The Old Library some love after clearing the drive and picking up at least 15 bags of litter!
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It was a fab team effort and we are so thankful for the help of our volunteers, we simply couldn’t have done it without them. If you’d like to come along and admire their efforts, our Heritage Open Day event will run on Saturday 15th September from 10am to 3pm!