ABOUT THIS PICTURE

This image shows St Nicholas Church and George's Dock, Liverpool, in, I guess, the 1880s. The dock was later filled in and is the site of the Liverpool waterfront's famous Liver Building.

St Nicholas's is dedicated to the sailors' patron saint. Without a doubt, many of my Liverpool ancestors will have worshipped there and/or been baptised, married or buried there.

My Bramhill family lived a stone's throw away, in Gibraltar Row and Denison Street. My great grandfather and gt gt grandfather were Mersey waterboatmen, so this sight would have been a daily part of their working lives.

Two years before he died, my father, Captain William Frank Bramhill, took me to St Nich's. At the time, we knew little of the family tree as his own father had died in 1922, when Dad was nine. However, it was clear that, as a veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic, the church meant a lot to him.

The original picture was a black-and-white print given to me by Ron Formby of www.scottiepress.org. Click the links below to see full-size versions of the picture in its original and modified state.