Review

At number 10 Mathew Street, 18 steps below street-level, was the world-famous cellar club known as The Cavern. Used as a shelter from Hitler's Luftwaffe, the former wine and spirit warehouse was also an egg packing factory before it opened as a Jazz club on 6th January 1957 - modelled on Paris's Le Caveau Cavern. The jazz was soon swept aside in the city's skiffle craze.

The club closed its doors for the last time in 1973 and was demolished as part of the Liverpool Underground expansion; The Cavern Walks shopping complex was built on the site in the early 80s. During excavations for the shopping complex, 50% of The Cavern was found intact; thus, The Cavern was reopened underneath Cavern Walks on a fraction of its former site.

Today's club is slightly more than 18 steps below street-level and is much larger than it was in the 1960s. The small, subterranean cellar, as seen in a million newsreels, is still in evidence, but has been supplemented by a larger club/venue that is built perpendicular to it. The classic image of The Cavern is immediately familiar at the bottom of the stairs: three long, narrow rooms with a small stage at the far end of the central one. The painted wall behind the stage is in a patchwork quilt of colourful shapes, each bearing the name of a famous band to have played here. The walls surrounding the stairs into The Cavern contain life-size paintings of people evidently queuing to get in.

Today's stage is longer than it would have been in the 1960s. The drumkit occupies an area larger then the one onto which the whole band would have been crammed 40 years ago. Opposite the stage, at the other end of the room, is the small bar. The central room contains several small tables, and through the seven arches to each of the side rooms are many tables and chairs that resemble garden furniture.

The air-gaps and electric-socket plates in the roof of the rooms are not features of early-20th century cellars, and a closer inspection of the walls reveal they're covered in minute graffiti. At the rear of the left-hand room are the toilets, and at the front of the right-side room is the cloakroom, which sadly lacks the original cloakroom attendant from the 60s: Cilla Black.

Review by mr_psm