We’ll come back to this image in a bit and what it might imply, but first let’s get out walking. On my own today, Sarah’s back at her funeral celebrant work.
I love the quiet days when Christmas has gone and today begins so sunny it would be just wrong not to take my camera out for a look round.
Where they had their street party just a few weeks ago.
All of them looking at their very best framed by a deep blue sky in the low winter sun.
(‘It’s called mallow’ Sarah tells me later. ‘It is a late summer flower, so in an ordinary year you might see it into October’.)
(So you know – the rubbish was successfully re-homed to the guilty party who’d left their address in the suitcase!)
Well as you can see HMS builders are working on the Liverpool Mutual Homes houses today, just opposite the Community Land Trust houses we currently have on site. They’re nearly finished and we’ll be starting on some more in the next few weeks. Also the co-op, Terrace 21, should be on site with their five houses early this coming year.
As well as all that us and the City Council are dealing with one of the corner shops…
It was already partially collapsed when the storms in December brought some more of it down, so that what was left was so dangerous the City had to have it demolished. Carefully and in consultation with us. Because that’s the now exposed gable wall of our house at 19 Cairns Street next to it there.
So there you are. A site visit even on the quiet days when I’m not working!
It’s a shop now but back in the early days when I worked around here in the 1970s and 80s this was the offices of Neighbourhood Housing Services who did great work with co-ops and house renovations back then.
“In January 2012 The L8 Law Centre Trustees (now called The L8 Legacy Projects) commissioned a public artwork to commemorate the people of Liverpool 8.
The work, a large metal figure ‘8’, symbolises the spirit and journeys of the people of the area. This is a special piece of work that everyone will relate to, many of our ancestors arrived in Liverpool by sea and the links of the 8 reflect this, everyone has connections with the past and with the future.”
Thank you Joe Farrag, as ever, for the explanation. An honour to be recording this with you.
I stood up in the exposed roof beams of these houses while they were being renovated forty years ago, just after I’d started working for Liverpool Housing Trust. I didn’t thereafter make a habit of that sort of thing, I think it was a ‘new starter’ test in the days before health and safety had been invented!
At the far end of Bedford Street South something new is rising where little Myrtle Street Precinct used to stand.
Only partially finished and clearly containing yet more student housing. And opinions? Well at least it’s matching the scale of the Canning neighbourhood around it, and anyway all buildings have to be new at first. Looks like there’s good use being made of the roof spaces up there. And if that had been there back in 1973 when I was starting my Sociology degree just across from it in the Eleanor Rathbone building, I’d have more than loved to live here.
John Lennon was born here. So, many years later was my daughter Clare. Probably why they’ve still got the bunting out!
Respectable and properly old ghost signs don’t exhort us to ‘drink responsibly’.
Always a pleasure to walk along.
It’s too crowded for my quiet day and I turn back. Having forgotten that while these are quiet days for me, for many others they’re the days of ‘taking the Christmas presents back to the shops to swap them for something they actually want’.
And while I’m here can I raise a question about ‘the pedestrianised bit?’ These days there are always cars there. Parked, as you can see and beeping their way past us pedestrians. And they’re not the cars of the traders. So can anyone enlighten me?
Grumbling, I walk on.
Top fact in the Wikipedia link there is that for all the times he was Prime Minister he never got on with Queen Victoria, who would complain:
“He always addresses me as if I were a public meeting.”
Time for a sit down.
There used to be a view of the river from here before that Hilton Hotel in Liverpool One blocked it.
Then across Parlaiment Street to Windsor Street.
This is a Carnegie Library, opened in 1902 by Andrew Carnegie himself
Which I’ve written about many times on here before. Particularly bemoaning the fact that the future of them was taken out of our Liverpool hands for a while.
It will take lots of discussion, by Liverpool people about Liverpool streets. And it won’t be easy in so many ways. But I think we have the will and the creativity between us all to come up with something that will work for all concerned. So let’s see?
A good quiet day, full of reflections and possibilities.
Enjoyable to read as always Ronnie.
The Bold St “pedestrianised” bit gets me too. I read recently that Bold St and Prescot St (outside the Royal Liverpool hospital) are the main hot spots in the city for parking fines.
Thanks Stephen. The parking fines are probably mostly at the top end of Bold Street which is always aggressively farmed!
Great photo’s and read ta. Just to explain what the Statue is actually about…
Eight in Eight
In January 2012 The L8 Law Centre Trustees (now called The L8 Legacy Projects) commissioned a public artwork to commemorate the people of Liverpool 8.
The work, a large metal figure ‘8’, symbolises the spirit and journeys of the people of the area. This is a special piece of work that everyone will relate to, many of our ancestors arrived in Liverpool by sea and the links of the 8 reflect this, everyone has connections with the past and with the future.
Thanks Joe, I’ve included your words in the post now.
I thought of the words of the Bard of Dundee, William McGonagall:
“All men now bewail and bemoan
The death of William Ewart Gladstone.”
Good to hear from you Robert. I’m sure he was, as Sarah here will say, no day at the beach, but he didn’t half stick to his principles. Perhaps attempting to atone for the fact that the family became rich in his father’s day through the slave trade?
There are rumours of Baltic Creative maybe expanding into the Welsh Cathedral – http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/stop-rot-look-inside-toxteths-10473051
Well that would be a very good use for a grand old building.
Was struck by seeing some of the most beautiful streets in the city and some of the most unloved, side by side in your photos.
Hope that there’s more love to go around in the New Year!
Thank you.
Though some of those streets that might appear to be unloved are loved the most tenderly by many of us.
Of course, sorry, think I meant to say ‘unloved by officialdom’, not the campaigners and residents. Hope 2016 brings more good things to Granby4streeets, Homebaked, the Junk Food café and everyone else who’s involved.
Thank you, and for the good wishes for us all. There is much to be done.
Wonderful post.
Photos are great, some of the streets and buildings you’ve snapped have very special memories for me, particularly Canning Street, where I lived as a teenager from 1969 – 1973 and the Catholic Cathedral; I was absolutely fascinated by it as a boy after it opened in May 1967. I used to love to see its bells ringing, for some reason – the four bells in the modern concrete bell tower fascinated me – and I remember sunny Sunday mornings in the autumn of 1967 when I would wait until I heard the bells ring to call the faithful to Mass, and I would ask Mum to let me go to the sweet shop in Myrtle Street to buy a bar of chocolate or something so that I could take a diversion to watch those bells!
I was sad to see the old Myrtle Street Shopping Precinct go, I remember it being built in 1970 – 1971, and I remember the grand opening – a sort of local community event, in about October 1971. Hmm, 1971, T Rex, Hot Pants, The Postal Worker’s strike, the back end of the Vietnam War years, it all seems like a different planet now.
On a more serious note, I find it amazing, sad, disgusting even, that there are so many empty homes when there are people – an increasing number of them due to capitalist oriented policies – sleeping out rough.
Finally, regarding Ringo Starr’s old home, I suggested two or three years ago that the council blue plaque it, renovate it, and furnish it in the manner it would have been in when Mr. Starr was growing up there, and make it into a local museum. Apart from an acknowledgement from the Council, I never heard a dickie bird more.
Anyway Ronnie, thank you for all of your posts over the last year, and all the best for 2016.
David Sakho
Thank you David. As for the empty homes, what we still have of Granby, the remaining 4 streets, is well on its way now. So next we as a city need to seriously consider what we’ll do about all of our other empty homes. The Welsh Streets and everywhere else. And I’ll be doing my best to help with that in 2016.