The Holy Cross
Historical events collide in North Liverpool
The Holy Cross Pieta depicts an almost bloodless, milky-skinned Jesus, lying in the arms of his virgin mother. There’s nothing particularly unusual about the statue itself, except that rather than being housed in a church or cathedral, the Pieta stands at the end of a residential cul-de-sac in North Liverpool, protected by a glass case and fenced off within a small garden. The juxtaposition between this dramatic religious artwork and the nearby block of council flats gives Standish Street a dreamlike, almost nightmarish quality. Close-by, there lies what remains of a recently demolished 1960s flyover; a literal road to nowhere. The buzz of the city-centre, just five minutes’ walk away, is still audible as a distant rumble, but there is also a haunting quiet on Standish Street, in front of the dead Jesus and the grieving Mary.
On the Fence is a Plaque that reads:
“Near this spot stood the mediaeval SAINT PATRICK’S CROSS which traditionally was believed to mark the place where Saint Patrick preached before sailing to Ireland in AD 432.”
The plaque adds to the feeling of mystery that Standish Street exudes. The Pieta, for many years, was displayed inside The Holy Cross Church, which was demolished in 2001. The Holy Cross was a Catholic Oblate Church that served thousands of parishioners over several generations; a parish that bordered Vauxhall, an area so Irish that it once had an Irish Nationalist MP.
The Cross referred to on the plaque seems to have stood at the junction where Hatton Garden, Tythebarn Street, Vauxhall Road and Great Crosshall Street all meet. A Superlambanana stands there now; a 17 foot creature, half lamb-half banana; the work of a Japanese artist, Taro Chiezo. The sculpture was supposed to be nomadic, travelling around to brighten up different parts of the city, but it has been hidden here, off the beaten-track, for many years. The Lambanana has seen better days, its once bright-yellow paintwork has darkened with the grime of the city, and started to chip away, giving a leprous appearance.
The website, St Patrick’s Cross Liverpool quotes 19thcentury architect James Picton as saying: “At the cross-roads stood St Patrick’s Cross…There exists no information whatever as to the time of this or any of the other great crosses…It has been gravely propounded that St Patrick sailed from Liverpool in A.D 444 on his way to evangelise the Irish, and that the cross was erected to commemorate the event!”
Picton seems sceptical of the historical accuracy of the belief in Patrick’s connection to the cross; the cross itself disappeared around 1775 (though the name of Crosshall Street refers to its existence.) The Irish community of North Liverpool exploded in the 1840s, due to the potato blight; it seems almost too perfect that they chose as their home an area connected to their own patron-saint. But whatever the truth of the matter, North Liverpool was definitely a hotbed of Catholicism from the Victorian age onwards.
On Tithebarn Street is a bar called Shenanigans. It’s a cosy little place to get out of the wind that blasts in off the Mersey. The young staff are Irish, arrived in Liverpool quite recently, probably as students. It has a ‘not-quite-but-almost’ authenticity about the place, so it’s possible to sit by the window with a pint of Guinness and imagine yourself as an immigrant in the 1800s, desperate for a taste of home. But it’s warm inside Shenanigans, with self-consciously quirky decorations hanging from the ceiling; when the population first expanded in these parts, the pubs would have been loud, dirty and perhaps even a little scary.
Many gangs operated in the area. The most notorious of these, The High Rip, committed the ‘Tithebarn Outrage’ in 1874, kicking a man from one side of the street to the other, for refusing to give the leader of the gang money for a pint of ale. This was a place of extreme poverty and life was cheap; yet while people lived ten to a room in cockroach-infested slum housing, Liverpool was paradoxically one of the richest cities in the world.
Just five minutes’ walk from where the Holy Cross once stood is Rumford Place. During the American Civil War, Rumford Place was where wealthy confederates hung out, drumming up money for the war-effort. Liverpool had feathered its nest with International Slavery, and even after that trade was abolished, the town still profited from Slave labour by importing large quantities of cotton. The Liverpool elite had a lot to lose if the North won, and many were open supporters of the South.
In 1865, a devoted follower of the Confederate cause arrived at Liverpool’s docks and spent a short time in the Holy Cross church. His name was John Surratt, a fugitive from the law, accused of conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. It doesn’t seem clear why Surratt came to Liverpool, but the city’s connection to the confederacy would surely have been a factor. It may seem strange that Father Charles Jovliet of the Holy Cross chose to give refuge to Surratt, but almost everything about his stay in a “Secret chamber…” at the church is strange.
John Surratt was one of a group of Confederates who had apparently planned Lincoln’s assassination; a group which included Surratt’s mother, Mary. While he fled the country, his fellow conspirators, including his mother, were tried, and executed.
In his book John Surratt: The Lincoln Assassin Who Got Away, Michael Schein quotes a State Dept Cable from September 1865 which says: “Surratt has arrived in Liverpool and is now staying at the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Cross.” His whereabouts were known due to an informant, Dr Lewis JA McMillan, surgeon onboard The Peruvian; the ship on which Surratt made his trip across the Atlantic. McMillan kept in touch with him and gave several reports to the authorities. And yet no attempt was made to arrest Surratt in England. Could the conspiracy to kill Lincoln have gone even further than it initially seemed?
It’s hard to gauge just how long John Surratt stayed in Liverpool. Though it looks likely that he travelled to London at some point, he was possibly back in town on the 5th of November, when the Confederate ship Shenandoah surrendered on the Mersey in what is sometimes referred to as the last act of the American Civil War.
When he left Liverpool, Surratt became a member of the Papal Zouaves (he’s pictured above in full uniform), the army of the Vatican City. After many more adventures, he was eventually returned to the United States where he was put on trial. He claimed though he had been part of an earlier, abandoned plot to kidnap Lincoln, that John Wilkes Booth had acted alone in the actual assassination. This defence had not saved his fellow conspirators, but for some reason it was enough to spare Surratt the noose. He went on to live a long and peaceful life, dying in his 70s at his home in Baltimore.
The Pieta Statue survived the bombing of the original Holy Cross church during the second world war. When the church finally closed its doors in 2001, demolished to make way for student accommodation, the Pieta statue was saved by local residents.
As for St Patrick…well, Liverpool does have well-attended St Patrick’s Day celebrations each year, due to its Irish Heritage, but the idea that Patrick gave a sermon here before heading to Ireland is almost certainly myth. Liverpool didn’t receive its charter till 1207 and little is written about the area before then. Likewise, St Patrick is a figure around whom much legend has been built and few facts are known. Even before the Irish came in large numbers in the 1840s, many Irish workers had inhabited the city, and it is perhaps these workers who created the legend around a cross that was probably intended as a simple road-marker. The St Patrick’s Cross Liverpool website theorises that the cross may have been damaged irreparably during the English Civil War, much like the nearby Liverpool Castle. If so, this is just another layer of history that can be added to the Holy Cross parish.