Sports Pavilion, Geoffrey Hughes Athletics Ground, Church, Liverpool, L18 (Grade II)

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 01/06/2020

SJ 38 NE 392/7/10034 LIVERPOOL MATHER AVENUE (South West side) Sports Pavilion, Geoffrey Hughes Athletics Ground

II Pavilion in three sections, with men’s changing rooms, clubhouse bar and cafe, cricket pavilion and grandstand. 1961-1963 by Gerald Beech for the University of Liverpool. Reinforced concrete with some brick cross walls; tile hanging to changing rooms (south-west face renewed), the clubhouse mostly glazed. Flat roofs with timber soffits.

The three elements linked by covered timber bridges at first floor level, each with steps that continue the handrail of the bridge as a strong horizontal feature that extends also to the cricket pavilion. This last has steps to either side. The changing rooms are set over ground floor equipment room and workshop. The clubhouse with ground floor store, first floor bar, second floor cafe and third floor office and tank room. Changing rooms with continuous clerestory glazing and roof lights, and the clubhouse with continuous full height glazing, all set in steel frame of square units with pairs of top lights. Particular features are the lack of corner mullions and the strong horizontal provided by the bold timber handrails inside the bar and cafe.

Grandstand comprises three long concrete steps with rear handrail, supported on concrete column foundations. A plaque on the side of the clubhouse records that ‘THESE GROUNDS WERE PRESENTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL FOR THE RECREATIONAL USE OF STUDENTS IN MEMORY OF GEOFFREY HUGHES WHO DIED ON ACTIVE SERVICE IN FRANCE IN AUGUST 1918 AGED 33. THIS PAVILION RECEIVED A CLASS 1 CIVIC TRUST AWARD I 1963 THE YEAR OF ITS COMPLETION’.

This elegant little building relates well to the pond and copse close by. Gerald Beech was a lecturer in architecture at Liverpool University, and his close attention to every detail of the brief and of the ensuing inter-relation of horizontals and verticals is remarkable. It was praised by the Architects’ Journal as ‘a building on which rather more than the usual amount of thought and imagination has been spent’.