NML home > Merseyside Maritime Museum> Maritime Archives and Library > Displays > Liverpool - port of cultures > Indian seamen's hostel dayroom

Our venues

World Museum Liverpool
Walker Art Gallery
Merseyside Maritime Museum
International Slavery Museum
National Conservation Centre
Lady Lever Art Gallery
Sudley House
Museum of Liverpool

Photograph of dayroom in T and J Brocklebank Ltd Indian seamen's hostel, Mere Hall, 1942

Archive reference B/BROC/7/5/12

Large room with men reading in armchairs and on sofas

Liverpool shipping companies employed large numbers of Pakistani and Indian seafarers. Initially their contracts began and terminated in India, but later they stayed in Liverpool and some companies set up specific accommodation for them. Mere Hall in Noctorum, Wirral, was designed by Edmund Kirby in 1880 for solicitor John Gray Hill. It has now been converted into apartments.

Maritime Archive and Library information sheet 18 has a brief history of the Brocklebank firm, with details of records held in the Thomas and John Brocklebank Archive.