Crosby Beach
Crosby Beach
Situated just to the north of Liverpool, Crosby Beach is now the permanent home to ‘Another Place’, the sculpture by internationally acclaimed artist, Antony Gormley. The beach has been awarded the Quality Coast Award by Keep Britain Tidy. The QCA award tells visitors that the standards of beach management are of the highest quality in the UK.
Visitors can walk along the Coastal Path and take in views of the sea, the Wirral and North Wales. Access to this strip of coast is good with four train stations and free car parks at Crosby Marine Lake, Mariners Road and Hall Road. The 22 mile Sefton Coastal Path starts here and a section of the national cyclepath network runs the length of the Park
Warning - Crosby beach is a non-bathing beach with areas of soft sand and mud and this area of coast has one of the largest tidal ranges in the UK and the spring tide can come in very fast. Visitors should stay within 50 metres of the promenade at all tides and not attempt to walk out to the furthest figures.
Another Place
These spectacular sculptures by sculptor Antony Gormley, who also created the 'Angel of the north', are on Crosby beach. Another Place consists of 100 cast-iron, life-size figures spread out along three kilometres of the foreshore, stretching almost one kilometre out to sea.
The Another Place figures - each one weighing 650 kilos - are made from casts of the artist's own body standing on the beach, all of them looking out to sea, staring at the horizon in silent expectation.
Having previously been seen in Cuxhaven in Germany, Stavanger in Norway and De Panne in Belgium, 'Another Place' is now a permanent feature in the UK, at Crosby Beach.
According to Antony Gormley, Another Place harnesses the ebb and flow of the tide to explore man's relationship with nature. He explains: The seaside is a good place to do this. Here time is tested by tide, architecture by the elements and the prevalence of sky seems to question the earth's substance. In this work human life is tested against planetary time. This sculpture exposes to light and time the nakedness of a particular and peculiar body. It is no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe, facing a horizon busy with ships moving materials and manufactured things around the planet.
Why it's special
Antony Gormley created the sculpture Another Place in 1997, three years after winning the Turner prize. It consists of 100 lifesize cast-iron figures spread over a 3.2km stretch of Crosby beach, each staring out over the Irish Sea.
In common with most of Gormley's work, the figures are cast replicas of the artist's own body. As the tides ebb and flow, the figures are revealed and submerged by the sea.
The figures have seen a bit of the world: they were exhibited in Germany, Norway and Belgium before settling in Crosby. They were due to be moved to New York in 2006, but, in the end, the local council relented and agreed they could stay permanently.
Gormley describes Crosby as "ideal" for the sculpture. He said: "When I have been down on the beach myself, the majority of people have been intrigued, amused, sometimes very moved.