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While the newly completed Liverpool One is the latest sign of Liverpool city centre’s development the first shoots of regeneration began 25 years ago when the Cavern Walks development opened.

Beatles sculpture in Cavern Walks

Now home to a clutch of designer shops, including Cricket and Vivienne Westwood, the shopping centre was born in the early 1980s, at a time when Liverpool was being battered economically.

Opening in 1984, it was built on the site of the world famous Cavern Club, at a time when the potential of The Beatles heritage industry was only just beginning to be recognised.

The Cavern Club closed in 1973 after it had been compulsory purchased to make way for a ventilation shaft for Liverpool’s underground rail loop line.

Ultimately the shaft was never built, though the warehouses on the site were demolished, meanwhile The Cavern remained intact beneath the ground, filled with rubble.

Doves of peace

The design of Cavern Walks makes several references to The Beatles, Cynthia Lennon designed the terracotta reliefs that line the outside of the building.

Paul McCartney plays the Cavern in 1999

The use of a dove over the Mathew Street entrance is an allusion to John Lennon’s desire for peace, while the rose also used in the design was Lennon’s favourite flower.

The statue of the Beatles which occupies the ground floor of the centre was made by sculptor John Doubleday who was commissioned by Royal Life Insurance, it was unveiled by Paul McCartney’s brother Mike on 26 April, 1984.

Liverpool born architect David Backhouse designed Cavern Walks with the concept of the development coming to him on the day of John Lennon’s death in 1980, "One morning, I opened our front door and a friend of mine was on the doorstep in tears," David recalls.

"He told me John Lennon had been shot and was dead.

"That morning I completed the design’s for Cavern Walks and Mathew Street’s renaissance."

Excavation of the Cavern Walks site began in 1981, the work uncovered the original Cavern Club which had simply been filled in when the fruit warehouses above had been removed in 1973.

While the Cavern was intact the foundations were deemed to be unsafe to carry the weight of the new building so the club was destroyed with the original bricks being reused to build the modern day Cavern Club which opened in 1984.

The shopping centre opened in Spring 1984 with the adjoining rebuilt Cavern Club occupying 75% of the site of the original.