Where the Old Town Meets the New Walls

Walk up Victoria Road on a grey January morning and you're walking through two New Brightons at once. There's the one painted on the gable ends, bold and bright and unapologetic. And there's the one underneath it. Older. Darker. Stranger than most people realise.

For years we've been asked the same question in Rockpoint Records: who can show us round? People arrive having seen the murals online, stand at the bottom of Victoria Road, and want the story. Not just the name of the artist. The why. The what-came-before.

So we're really proud to announce that NBCF is partnering with Fort Perch Rock Events and Wallasey Days Gone By on the New Brighton History & Art Murals Tours.

And the timing couldn't be better. Fort Perch Rock is marking 200 years this year. Two centuries of standing guard at the mouth of the Mersey, watching this town rise, fall, and rise again. There's no better place to begin a walk through New Brighton's past than the battery that has seen all of it.

Here's what makes this one different. It isn't a history tour with a few murals tacked on. It isn't an art tour with a bit of heritage sprinkled over the top. It's both, woven together, because in the Victoria Quarter the two have always been tangled up.

Captain Mike Lowe by Brezaux

The tours are led by local historian and author Tony Franks-Buckley, a man who knows these streets and their secrets better than most. Meeting at the fort, Tony takes you on a 90 minute walk through the old streets of New Brighton and into the Victorian world that shaped them. The influence of the era on Victoria Road and the streets around it. The Gothic appetite for the macabre that gripped the 19th century. The crime scenes time has quietly buried. Tales from the river. A bit of light comedy along the way. And the authentic truths behind stories that have been half-remembered for generations.

Then the twist. Some of the most notorious Victorian crime stories in the North West played out in streets that are now surrounded by the OpenAIR Gallery, in New Brighton's Victoria Quarter (the regenerated Victoria Road / Union Terrace cluster). So as you stand where history happened, Tony also walks you through the artwork that now looks down on it. Who painted what. Why it's there. What it means for a town that decided to reinvent itself with paint and nerve.

That's the part that gets us. The walls that tell today's story, standing on the streets that hold yesterday's.

We've always believed street art works best when it's rooted in place. These murals didn't land from nowhere. They grew out of a community that refused to let New Brighton be written off. Putting them side by side with the town's deeper history gives visitors something you can't get from a quick scroll on Instagram. Context. Connection. A reason to come back.

The practical bits

• Tickets: £16.99

• Meeting point: Fort Perch Rock, New Brighton Promenade, CH45 2JU

• Duration: around 90 minutes, setting off at 11am and finishing in time for lunch

• January dates: every Friday, starting with a New Year's Day special on Friday 1st January, then 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th January

• Free parking, five minutes from bus and train

• Disabled friendly, toilets on site

• Under 18s welcome (tickets required) and dog friendly

Places are limited, so book early: Book your tour here

If you've walked past these murals a hundred times, come and see them properly. If you've never been, there's no better introduction. And if you're starting the new year looking for something a bit different to do with the family, the dog, or the friend who says there's nothing to do round here, this is it.

Two hundred years of the fort. A decade of the Victoria Quarter coming back to life. One walk that joins the dots.

See you at the fort.