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Around AnfieldFlagpole Corner
Welcome to part four of our Around Anfield series, where we look at the only remaining part of Anfield that was here before Liverpool Football Club…
Maybe you’ve walked past it and didn’t even notice it was there. Perhaps you’ve seen it on videos and photos taken outside the Kop. Or maybe you’re well aware of it, but not quite sure how it got there. Which is a story in itself!
Standing proudly outside the Kop, on the corner that leads to the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand, is a 50-foot Flagpole. Painted in white, and usually with a red flag hoisted aloft, it was installed in 1891 when Anfield was the home of Everton Football Club.
Most historical reports suggest the flagpole was taken from the Steam Ship Great Eastern in 1891, floated across the River Mersey and hauled up to Anfield by a team of horses before being positioned inside the corner of the Oakfield Road outer wall. If you’ve ever walked to Anfield from the city centre you’ll know it is uphill, so what a task that would have been.
An Ordnance Survey map drawn in 1891 shows ‘flagstaff’ in the corner where the Anfield Flagpole still stands now and at the end of the 1890/91 season the Blues flew a flag from it to mark winning their first league championship, having won the First Division at only their third attempt.
Everton FC moved from Anfield to Goodison Park in 1892 and evidently didn’t fancy taking a 50-foot flagpole with them so it became part of the newly formed Liverpool Football Club and remains outside Anfield today, but what do we know of it?
The SS Great Eastern was an iron sailing steam ship built by J Scott Russell and
Company at Millwall on the River Thames. It was designed by engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and when launched in 1858 was by far the largest ship ever built at 692 feet in length. She had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers from England to Australia without refuelling and Brunel knew her affectionately as the 'Great Babe'.
He died in 1859 shortly after her ill-fated maiden voyage, during which she was damaged by an explosion. After repairs, she was used for several years as a passenger liner between Great Britain and North America before being converted to a cable-laying ship and laying the first Trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in 1866.
She finished her life as a floating music hall and advertising hoarding for Liverpool’s famous Lewis's department store before being broken up at New Ferry on the Wirral in 1889 with her top mast subsequently becoming Anfield’s Flagpole. Or did it?
Kjell Hanssen, a respected historian with an interest in Liverpool FC, discovered an alternative theory after finding a newspaper cutting from the Sheffield Evening Telegraph in 1906 which claims our Flagpole may have been a part of the Royal yacht Alexandra.
The newspaper stated: “Few among the thousands of habitues of the Liverpool Football Ground are aware of the fact that the enormous staff which bears the red flag of the club has historic associations. This flagstaff was formerly one of the masts of the old Royal yacht Alexandra, which was once much used by the Royal Family.
“It was the Alexandra which took the present King and Queen, then Prince and Princess of Wales, to Dublin on their first visit to Ireland so long ago as 1864. The Football Club acquired the mast through a captain now retired and living in the neighbourhood of the club’s headquarters.
“The staff is a very high one, and a great deal of care had to be exercised in placing it in position. The flag it bears is of crimson colour, with a figure of the ‘Liver bird’, so called.”
With no other evidence to support the newspaper’s theory it seems highly unlikely to be true, especially as the only yacht bearing the name Alexandra was completed in 1908, two years after the article was written. One royal yacht does fit the timeline - Her Majesty's Yacht Victoria and Albert II - but that was only scrapped 1904, long after ‘flagstaff’ first appeared on that OS map in 1891.
So it remains likely that it began life on the SS Great Eastern, but whatever its past Anfield’s Flagpole has been a prominent feature of Liverpool FC’s home since 1892 and on matchdays ‘Flagpole Corner’ is a popular meeting point for supporters.
Next time you’re at Anfield be sure to take a look because a piece of history that millions of Reds have walked past over the last 132-years and that has seen it all is right in front of your eyes.
