is an apparently undistinguished Georgian property, just shy of 200 years old now, in a long row of similar houses, most of them occupied by doctors. It has been Liverpool's Harley St for God knows how long (I certainly remember my parents yakking about it in the 1960s - a very long time ago), and speaks of the prosperity of shipping and of the triangular trade that made the city rich: nearby is the faded though beautiful - and unselfconsciously named - Gambia Terrace. Rodney St would certainly have been one of the city's best addresses in the 1940s when Edward Chambre Hardman, portrait photographer, occupied the property with his wife and former employee, Margaret. Having one's picture there was quite a thing - quite the thing, in fact - and he served the well to do for many years, always working in black and white in a studio where he controlled the light, the poses, the backdrops. Such was his perfectionism and such was the time taken to scrutinise negatives for stray hairs and so on, that customers could wait weeks or even years for their prints to come. There was plenty of money to be made before the city's near-terminal decline in the 1960s and 1970s, and the couple must indeed have made a fortune - though they spent the lot taking landscape pictures for pleasure and lived in three pokey upstairs rooms at the back. Mr Chambre Hardman died in 1988 and the house was taken over by a trust, though nothing much was done to it. The National Trust stepped in a few years later and opened it three years ago and offers guided tours. Thoroughly enjoyable.
