Liverpool’s best pubs – part 4: Peter Kavanagh’s

You know when you’re on the 86 bus gliding down Catharine Street and you glance to your right briefly to see the outline of a pub just inside Egerton Street, before ploughing on determinedly towards Uni? I’d wager very many of you know the one… I’d also wager very few of you have ever been there.

If so, you are missing out: Peter Kavanagh’s is a jewel in the crown of Liverpool that’s within walking distance of campus, but tragically rarely visited by studentkind.

The history of the establishment is lengthy and fascinating – too long for this article – but publican, merchant, inventor and alderman Peter Kavanagh, having grabbed the license to the place in 1897, left behind what has over time become a masterpiece of eccentric interior design.

In many regards, it resembles the set from a shop from one of the many Harry Potter and the Repetitive Theme films, combined with a Channel 4 documentary about hoarders who, for unfathomable reasons, believe that old Milky bar wrappers may one day come in handy around the house.

I think Peter may have a problem.

The walls and ceilings are festooned with all kinds of memorabilia: from bicycles to puppets, radios and oil lamps, and on one wall a large, battered old crocodile skin. The star attractions, however, are large murals depicting scenes from, amongst others, Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, and a couple of urns that are the final resting places of old regulars (now permanents), who wished to be interred in the place they’d spent so much of their natural lives, avoiding their families. Sentiments I’m sure we can all sympathise with.

Is it cheap? Well, it’s no Raz. But as is clear with all of the pubs on this exhaustive list, it isn’t always about finding the least expensive option. You pay extra for the experience, and frankly, this is a 5 star experience.  It’s a small red room, dimly lit to ensure polar bears you’ll never see and who murdered Horatio Chapple in his sleep (without provocation I might add) get to keep their habitat for a few hours longer (or until China builds another power station).

Now just look at Peter Kavanagh’s. Just look at it. Someone’s gone to the trouble of killing a crocodile in the name of décor. Those seats are made of real cow. The table tops are copper. There are dead people in urns, willing to risk the wrath of God on Judgement day to stay in this pub. Does the Guild have real cows? Does it make furniture out of precious metals? Has Sam Butler ever wrestled a Cayman and slung it up on the wall of his office? Is the Vice-Chancellor planning on having his funeral pyre in Abercromby Square?

It’s not the sort of place you come to as part of a night out, and it can’t compete with the hipster oases on Bold St. It would be a real shame, however, for you to complete your three years in this city and not to try and visit a few of its quirkier, more historic places. You know, the ones that don’t appear on the tourist guides alongside the Cavern Club, Anfield and the Tate. And Peter Kavanagh’s public house is most certainly one such place.

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