Walking in the footsteps of mesolithic man

A man, his dog, a team of archeologists and the footprints from a forgotten age

Dear members — we like to step into the past every now and then at The Post. Only Tuesday we had a gorgeous piece from first-time Post writer Melissa Blease who recounted her memories of growing up in the Everyman Bistro in the late 60s. Today we venture a few thousand years further back in time to discover how you can track the movements of ancient man on Formby Beach, sans time machine.

Our Thursday edition is, as always, for members only, but readers on the free list will be able to view the top of this email, and should join up as members now if they want to read the rest and support the future of independent journalism in Liverpool and the rest of the city region. It works out at about £1.25 a week if you pay for an annual subscription, probably less than a bag of easy peelers for your stocking, but every bit as juicy. 

Going, going, gone..: Today marks your last chance to get your hands on what some critics (us) are calling the “Northern prose bundle of a lifetime.” No: we are not talking about those extremely second-hand Roger McGough tomes your uncle gifted you last Christmas, complete with biro commentary in the margins. We are talking new, we are talking sexy, we are talking “North Country: An anthology of landscape and nature” (worth £14.99) which you get absolutely gratis when you sign up for either an annual gift subscription or an annual membership today. Also included in the prose bundle? A handwritten card, penned by yours truly, or one of my lovely assistants (other writers at the Post).

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Your Post briefing

County Ward councillor Gerard Woodhouse has been blocked from standing at next year’s council elections by the Labour Party. The Echo have seen an email sent by Labour's regional director, informing Woodhouse that “a lack of campaigning or Labour activities” were the reasons behind the decision. Woodhouse told the Echo the panel had “no compassion” and that his mental health issues, which had put him in hospital for two weeks, as well as his food bank work which meant he couldn’t go campaigning on Saturdays, had been overlooked. When The Post looked into Woodhouse in August, we found that he levels of involvement in council work had dropped significantly. Twelve years ago, when he was first elected, his attendance at Town Hall was near perfect. Last year, he attended approximately one out of every two council meetings (in 2021, he was expected at 22 meetings and missed 10 of them). But might there be a deeper story here? Our investigation also reported on Woodhouse grossly exaggerating how many people his L6 Community Centre has helped, telling spurious tall tales in the local media and using offensive language to a fellow councillor. As one councillor told us recently; “your investigation shone a light on something a lot of people have known about for a long time”. 

The Flanagan Group, the Liverpool-based contractor that worked on Unite the Union’s controversial Birmingham hotel development, have released a statement after the Union passed two reports looking into impropriety and “potential criminality” onto police. TFG said they have “no detailed knowledge of the content of Unite the Union’s report or any understanding of the internal processes within the organisation and therefore it’s inappropriate to speculate,” adding that the “contract was delivered in accordance with Unite the Union’s demanding operating standards and protocols.” They emphasised that “the clients also appointed legal advisors, a contract administrator and architect [..] and assigned a project specific convenor, now a Unite the Union executive council member, to monitor compliance.” The reports were commissioned by Unite’s current General Secretary, Sharon Graham, after costs for the project, started by her predecessor, Len McCluskey, soared from £7 million to £98 million.

In continued attempts to find £73 million in budget cuts, Liverpool City Council has launched a consultation into the future of its One Stop Shops around the city. One Stop Shops offer in-person direct support for people to access various council services, there are currently nine sites, with two open full time, and seven part time. The proposals would see a 70% reduction in the services, with option one leaving the Kirkdale location open two days a week, and all others open one day a week, and option two keeping Kirkdale open three days a week, Norris Green two days a week, and all others shutting. The consultation is open until the 6th January, with a final decision coming from the council in March.

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Post Picks

🎄 Contrasting festive songs with a round of Punk Rock Bingo, the Liquidation x Bido Lito! Christmas Music Quiz returns to Birkenhead’s Future Yard this evening. Offering a range of prizes including band merch and gig tickets, the quiz will be raising money for two charities, The Whitechapel Centre, which provides support for homeless people in Liverpool, and national mental health charity MIND. Tickets are £4 per person, and can be pre-booked here, or in-person.

🎶 The Tung Auditorium welcomes The Liverpool Welsh Choral for a Festive Fanfare this Saturday. The special concert mixes classic carols with traditional Welsh melodies and a number of original pieces. Standard tickets are £20, and concessions are £15.

🖨️ At Metquarter this Sunday, Karen Edwards of Red Button Press is hosting a workshop where you can learn all about block printing and get to take away a unique table runner and napkins. Thanks to sponsorship from Liverpool BID Company, GPO Food Market, and Metquarter, the tickets are only £13.09.

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By Jack Walton

Approximately 8500 years ago, a man made his way across Formby Point beach in hot pursuit of his prey — a crane. Whether he was hunting the crane for food or for its feathers, perhaps for some kind of mad mesolithic head-dress, we don't know. What we do know is that he paused briefly, possibly trying not to alert the bird to his presence. We know this not thanks to me constructing a time machine or simply making it up for dramatic effect, but because of the next best thing: his footprints are embedded in the beach's surface. 

At this point, you might be seized by a certain scepticism: aren't footprints usually washed away by the tide within a few hours? You’d be wrong. Using a technique called “carbon dating” archeologists have managed to trace these prints back thousands and thousands of years, uncovering a lost slice of Formby history.

The story of the discovery, however, starts with a man and a dog. By 1988, Gordon Roberts had retired from working as a schoolteacher, but he still had a daily routine. Almost every day he would take his puppy, Kim, who he’d found stray on the streets of Liverpool, to the Formby coastline for a walk.

The sand dunes of Formby Point. Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.

It became their spot. And in 1989, they finally found what they’d been looking for. Roberts had heard about “mysterious cattle hoofprints” on the beach, they were part of local folklore, not quite Formby’s version of UFO crop circles or the Loch Ness monster but near enough. But here they were in the flesh. Etched in the mudflats along the shoreline were hundreds of little footprints.