My name is Jonathon Wild, Proprietor of Braygreen. I am also a Local Historian and as you will have seen from my extensive portfolio, I have designed, written and I run ten websites in total. Five websites are of a historical subject, and five are hard fought campaigns on Liverpool’s historic and listed, yet abandoned buildings.
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I have been a Historian for twenty-five years and in that time, I have helped to save two buildings from demolition with strong campaigning, and careful historical research to bring these two buildings back to life. St John the Divine’s Church in Fairfield, and Eddesbury in West Derby (Grade 2 listed).
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I regularly liaise with Historic England and Save Britain’s Heritage, and they know of my campaigns for local buildings in Liverpool. I have been featured on TV (BBC Northwest), I have spoken on Radio (Radio Merseyside) and featured in many articles in the Liverpool Echo on my historical buildings. I am no stranger to the media. It would be a good opportunity to put some background to my portfolio and provide some of my career highlights as I’ve had one or two interesting careers in my time.​
SONY/PLAYSTATION - Between 1994 and 2007, I worked for Sony PlayStation as a Games Tester/Development Assistant. I was fortunate to start my career pre-Sony with the Games Development company Psygnosis who operated out of Sefton Street in Liverpool.
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During my tenure with Psygnosis, I was fortunate to see the last of the SNES/Mega Drive/Mega CD hardware platforms and was responsible for testing on some of the last games created for the Mega CD and of course, while the Amiga and PC were going strong, testing on these systems also.
I saw the birth of the PlayStation 1 when Psygnosis was bought from Sony and when we moved to a new building in Wavertree, I was responsible for lead testing on some (now) historical titles. Destruction Derby is probably the most widely known early PlayStation title. I headed up the testing of the PlayStation version, the PC version and finally the Sega Saturn conversion.
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Memorable titles within the early Sony days allowed me to add my name to hundreds of PlayStation credits including ‘The Getaway, ICO, Destruction Derby, WipEout 2907, Gran Turismo 3’ and a whole host of other fantastic titles. In the latter part of my career, I was the Development Assistant and lead tester for the official Formula 1 Titles at Sony working on the PlayStation 2 title ‘F1 05’, the PSP version and finally the PlayStation 3 title of F1 06 seeing the birth of the PlayStation 3. I also had the pleasure of meeting Murray Walker!
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With the closure of the studio and redundancy in 2007, I completed a very successful 13 years with Psygnosis/Sony and should I ever return to Games Development in the future, I can say that I witnessed the birth of the PlayStation thirty years ago!
HISTORICAL CONSULTANT – As a local historian, I provide historical backgrounds for areas around Liverpool and am very knowledgeable on our historical buildings in Liverpool. Therefore, I was delighted to accept the role of Historical Consultant for a large hotel business in Liverpool. With multiple historical buildings in their own portfolio, I was asked to come on board for several reasons.
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First and foremost, to understand the history of the buildings that we own. Their background, their role within Liverpool from the past, and their role within Liverpool at the present time. To meet and greet VIP’s and noted names that had a special connection to the buildings, and to bring to life, the hotels and businesses that we ran under the main portfolio so that each guest were given the opportunity to learn about this fantastic buildings, which brought additional repeat business back in to the buildings from return use purely based on the excellent feedback we received on their grand tours of the buildings while staying with us. Two of the buildings stood out for me were 30 James Street, (formerly the White Star Line HQ in Liverpool) and the former St Peter’s R.C Church in Seel Street, Liverpool, now a successful pub.
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If we were to take 30 James Street as a prime example of my love of history and combining this with the Hotel, I heavily researched into the history of the building and was asked to provide a complete write up of the building’s history all the way back from 1896 to the present date. The end result can be found on the ‘Written Books’ page on this portfolio. A 100-page document on the complete history of the building. This document was used to promote the building and its complete connections with the former White Star Line HQ but also brought to life the current buildings use as a grand Hotel. Copies of this document were forwarded over to interested parties, and I was able to meet and greet people who were staying at the building to provide them with a full guided tour of the building, a warm welcome to the building and its features, and provide historical content on my VIP tours to those who wishes to see all the features of the building but didn’t know who to speak to.
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I met families connected with the White Star Line, families who had relatives on the RMS Titanic and interested people who always wanted to see inside this fantastic building. On the other side of town, I was responsible for the historical aspect of the former (1788) St Peter’s R.C Church which operated as an exclusive Restaurant/Club. Again, like the above, I was tasked with researching the complete history of this fine building and what resulted was a massive eighty-page document of over thirty-six thousand words alone detailing the immense history of this fine former Church.
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When our guests had the opportunity to choose a restaurant for their evening meal, I would warmly suggest that they would head over to the former Church and they would find themselves in one of the oldest Churches in Liverpool and they would have a guided tour of all of the main features on the building. Most importantly, there were no greater VIPs in this building than Mother Teresa, where she came to visit Liverpool in the 1990’s and the former Church was opened up as a special occasion for her visit.
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For the many people I met and talked to who were staying at our hotels, as a Historical Consultant, I brought these buildings to life and provided such rich unique history that our guests would come back time after time to stay because of the history of the buildings that we owned and the personal interaction and warm welcome I gave them. My role of Historical Consultant wasn’t just bringing the building’s history back to the present day, but it was directly liaising with our guests and future guests by talking to them and understanding their reasoning for staying with us and then providing a bespoke tour to showcase our finest historical and listed buildings.
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If you have a historical building in Liverpool that serves as a Hotel, contact me!
BRAYGREEN
