Flagging

Today has been one of those days when I've felt particularly uninspired and couldn't seem to find anything interesting to blip. Then I walked through Exchange Flags and figured it was worth a few snaps...

Exchange Flags is a piazza in Liverpool's 'commercial district' with the Town Hall on one side and Grade II listed office buildings on the other three. It was here, close to the Cotton Exchange, that Liverpool merchants used to conduct their business back in the 19th century.

The central monument to Lord Nelson (designed by Matthew Coates Wyatt and sculpted by Richard Westmacott) was erected by public subscription in 1813 with a major donor being the anti-slavery campaigner William Roscoe. The chained figures around the base represent not slaves but French prisoners, about 4,000 of whom were held in Liverpool during the Napoleonic wars. Perhaps appropriately, many of the offices you can see in this picture are occupied by the Ministry of Defence...