When I left the house for a Friday Walk on an actual Friday I had, as so often, no idea where I was going. But walking round the corner I had an idea.
The weather was dreich, to use a lovely Scottish word. Cold, rainy, overcast and dull. Kind of like I was in a cloud. So my idea was to get on the first bus that came, then get off it when the rain stopped or when it reached its terminus, whichever was the sooner.
The first bus when it came was a 68, which I’ve already been on several times this week. But rules are rules even if I’ve only just made them up, so I got on.
“He’s going to walk round Stanley Park for the second time this week“.
Where my partner Sarah often works as an Independent Funeral Celebrant.
Not all that many people get buried these days compared to when this was opened in 1863. At that time here and where we’re going to walk today – see I’ve made up my mind already – we’re on the very edge of the City of Liverpool. This a vast burial ground opened to relieve the overcrowded cemeteries of the city centre.
On the map you can see that though the streets around the football ground are built, it’s farmland on the northern side of Priory Road except for the Cemetery and a ‘Fever Hospital’.
Together, of course, with many more thousands of the graves of those who didn’t have to fight because they did, particularly in the wars of the first half of the 20th Century.
I know someone who’s involved with Homebaked who’s also involved here. So I’m sure he could tell me more. Another friend has told me of someone called Billy who’s often around here and is an expert on the place. But I don’t go looking for him today, this is a day for me, a day to be on my own. Think my own thoughts, or nothing at all. I wander on.
Or at least where I first lived, Diana Street by Goodison Park.
I explored along there as part of my Walton Hall Park walk last year.
A friend called Pete Growcoot lived along here. And I’d walk around many mornings in the 1970s for a lift into the housing place where we both worked. Mostly we’d drive there in his Lotus Cortina, to my delight. But occasionally Pete would utter the dread phrase ‘I think we’ll go on the tandem today!’
Walton only became part of Liverpool in 1895. So, again, we are walking out beyond what was the edge of Liverpool not all that long ago.
Yes I know it’s spelled wrong but that’s what it’s called.
Not that modern health centre, but the former workhouse behind it. By 1954 when I arrived it had become one of the newly acquired NHS hospitals.
On the map the ring road looks like it’s being laid out but is not yet built. To the north the hospital can be clearly seen as ‘West Derby Union Workhouse’ with just one hospital wing in it. Again, farmland to the north and in Bootle.
Clearly an old roadside tavern where coaches and horses could pull in on the way to and from Preston and Glasgow.
Why Tuesdays? Who knows, but it was.
And it certainly didn’t have function rooms. Didn’t have food beyond crisps or peanuts. You’d have got yourself barred out asking for a pork pie or anything else sophisticated like that.
I’d missed this one going, haven’t been along here in a long time. But I’m doing my best on the rest. Which I’ll tell you about some time.
Built in 1855. So far then we’ve seen a cemetery, a workhouse and a gaol. All constructed beyond the limits of the 19th Century city.
Long gone now.
When I was growing up, coming here was a credible alternative to going to town. It’s only one road, true. But it was packed with quality shops. Now half of them aren’t really shops at all, but money lenders, tanning salons and bookmakers.
I’m so very sad to see this happen to what was one of Liverpool’s principal high streets. So many of my memories are here. Here’s one.
My Nan lived nearby – we’ll be going there in a bit – and we’d come here after visiting her to get the bus home to the suburbs, where we’d moved in the late 1950s. Sometimes while waiting for the bus we’d get to go to a Coffee Bar that had magically opened along here. They had a Juke Box, and I loved to press my face up against it while it played the records my mother would put on. Mostly slop by Cliff Richard, her favourite. Then this one time, pronouncing the just learned letters carefully I said to her:
“What does L-i-t-t-l-e R-i-c-h-a-r-d sound like?”
Fearing he might be a diminutive version of his near namesake Cliff. Well, heaven was with me, she went with my choice and the sound when the needle hit the record nearly knocked my head off:
“A wop bop a loo bop a lop bop bop!”
I’d had no idea until that moment that a human being could do that. That music could be not just exciting, but wild on a scale that would normally get you sent off to bed without your tea for a week! It was my rock’n’roll moment. It changed the rest of my life.
So that even today, walking along sad, tired Walton Vale, if you passed a man with a camera singing ‘Tutti Frutti’ by Little Richard it was almost certainly me. I only hope I sounded half this good:
I was wearing thermals on this still cold day, so didn’t want to go inside anywhere. But for another day this looked busy and good.
This was around 1970 when I wandered in and asked the scowling inhabitant if he ‘had anything by Elton John?’
“Al Bowlly’s what we have in here. Al Bowlly, a proper singer!”
Let’s move on.
Duly catalogued for Sarah’s Monkey Map.
Moss Lane is here, running through the middle of an area that’s almost all farms. Settlement beginning near to the railway at Orrell Park. And the terraced streets of the Klondyke beginning north west of still rural Linacre Lane.
Hope Marie’s got a Jukie in there with Little Richard on it?
This was the cinema where me and someone called Linda came to see ‘Easy Rider’ back in 1970. She mustn’t have liked films about drug-smuggling hippies, because she never went out with me again.
Just crossing into Bootle, hadn’t realised it was so close to the docks.
We did too, for a few months in 1957 while we waited to move into our new house out in Maghull. Here’s the house and my Nan, Elizabeth Gerrard, back in 1956.
The last words I remember her saying to me being:
“I never thought I’d live to see the bloody Tories being voted back in.”
One of Liverpool’s more interesting bus routes, back along Walton Vale, then weaving its way through Fazakerley, Norris Green and Old Swan. Fully documented in this ‘Great Bus Journeys’ post.
So that’s it then, a good day, a Friday Walk around the northern edge of Liverpool as was and half a century of my own life. In a busy time of early mornings and evening meetings it’s so good to do this sort of thing. Just be. And wander aimlessly.
Loved this Ronnie, for so many reasons! I identify with that moment when you hear a piece of music that changes your life and yes, has ‘listen to that again and you’ll go to bed without your tea’! feel about it! Dangerous and wonderful and well worth the risk! So important these sorts of documents on daily life. So glad you take the time out to do this;
Thank you Lindsay. Daily life is the best bit really!
Walton Library is still being fought for. We may not be successful but we will not go gentle into that goodnight. We were there in the rain on National Libraries Day and we got tremendous support from the residents there. Appreciate your wanderings and wondering.
Loving your remembered last words from your Nan. I feel much the same these days. Should the world last till the next General Election I hope this bunch of (insert your own rude word here) are well and truly trounced. I just pray that they haven’t totally destroyed the bedrock of our society by then.
Thanks Maggie. They really are doing a concerted grab at everything aren’t they? My Nan would have had no time for them whatsoever!
My Dad was born in Seafield Road, Orrell Park in 1953. Thanks for posting another good photographic journey.
You’re welcome. He’s more or less my contemporary then. If he ever ran up and down the back entry of Marsh Avenue in the 1950s I’ve probably met him!
Yet again Ronnie we have much in common. This is my old stomping ground – I am a proud North Ender. I am intrigued by the Linda you took to see Easy Rider in the 70’s as I too went to the Carlton to see it !! Sadly the North End shopping districts don’t fair so well as Allerton Road and co. I wonder does any one remember the Vimto shop near the swimming baths at Queens Drive. Also the river that runs parallel to Rice Lane through Stalmine Road and come out in the Rec and at high tide the cellars in Stalmine Road used to be flooded. Worthy of note is the freeze on the small building next to the Plough – (I also drank in here on a Tuesday) just above the pizza sign it shows images of animal,s this was the gatehouse to a zoological garden that stood here and the original brick wall still stands behind the the Dunny and the houses in Stalmine Road. T he area has quite a history that is often neglected.
Thanks for resurrecting some fine memories !!
Be more than a little astonishing if amongst our many parallel experiences and opinions we once went out with each other!
I remember the Stalmine Road floods from when i was at LHT and we were doing up the terraced houses round there in the late 70s. And The Plough being next to the zoo has been mentioned on Twitter too. Piece by piece, story by story, the history of the place is being told.
My nan and granddad (and therefore mum!) lived in Orrell Park, so for me Walton Vale and the railway lines remind me of my childhood. Sadly the footpaths need to be gated and Walton Vale doesn’t seem to be faring as well as it was even into the late 90s. The amount of pounds I spent on toys in a pound shop there was something to behold… You don’t hear Orrell Park mentioned often, so it’s good to hear about other people’s memories of it. Need to properly visit Walton village some day.
Hi Martin, I’m really enjoying spending so much time working in and walking round North Liverpool. Where you come from will always be ‘home’ and it is.
Walton Vale is strange. Hard to avoid the feeling of deliberate blighting going on?
Thanks for the pictures. Brought back memories! Im from orrell park, just off moss lane. My mates used to say, even when we had moved away, that walton vale was my mums spiritual home. I made a film about walton library, to little me it was a proper palace of literature, a place to give you high minded ambitions. So sad to see it drip drip away. It was erected the same year that robert tressel was buried across the road in rice lane. https://vimeo.com/114168325 If you fancy a watch!
I was born 1947. 1a Windsor rd. i bought my first record from that shop up in the Orrell, “The railroad runs through the middle of the house” My dad used to manage the Garage by the Railway Bridge in your Photo, its now a tyre place, When the Grand Prix was on, Ferrari used to base the mechanics and cars there. They would drive the F1 cars up to Aintree along the Vale, along with all the spectators cars. No tax discs or Police or the like. Drove back recently, God whats happened to the Vale, all the jiggers have been blocked off, must be rife with crime. We used to play in the old bombed church and play footy in the Wartime Emergency Water Supply, we got down in it by rope about 25 ft deep. Someone stole the rope, the Fire Brigade got us all out about 12 oclock at night. There where a few thick ears that night. They filled it in and built the Windsor pub in its place………………… I think we have seen the best of the Vale…..Sham
I loved your article.
In the mid 60s my family moved from the Dingle to “a posh area with trees in the street” so from 6 I grew up in a flat above the Liver Launderette in Moss Lane,Orrell Park. I emigrated to Australia in 1981 and have only been back a couple of times since.
I really enjoyed your photographs and imagining going on the walk through the areas I spet my childhood and teenage years in. The memories poured. The Rec, the side streets and jiggers I ran through, so many mates (sadly several passed away so young),The Devo Park, the chippy, The El Toro, The Red Pepper, many pub crawls from the Black Bull to the flyover…… All a long time ago.
Now seeing how Walton Vale shops are it makes me sad. Obviously every area changes over time but hopefully Orrell Park can regenerate.
Thanks for reviving my memories.
Thanks Helen, there are a lot of local people working hard in Walton and Orrell Park now. But thanks so much for the detailed memories of growing up round here.
Loved reading this. My nan was off Rice Lane, in Eskdale Road from about 1972. I remember the bakery you mention and can still taste their barmcakes on Saturdays. Nice pic of the railway bridge too – when I lived there in the 90s I’d say to the taxi driver “just left after the Nova autos bridge, please”.
What a great enjoyable read. First date with my wife in the Plough. Thanks.
Dave.
Well done Dave. What better venue for a first date and a long and happy marriage!
Wow, what a journey back through time. I lived in Moss Lane from 1950 until 1972 and remember all of those places including Anfield Cemetery where my mam lies. I am due to go back in March and can’t wait to walk the streets again and savour the memories. I had a Saturday job in Dangerfield’s butchers in Northfield road and used to deliver meat to your nans street along with newspapers from my paper round.
Researching family tree and stumbled across this while looking for old pictures of Devonfield Road and its history (still looking). Loved your blog. How lucky you are to have an early history all in one place; we moved nearly every year because my dad was in the navy. I like your sentiments too and the fact you choose to write about it.
I lived in Kingfield Road up until the age of 8 in 1976 when we moved out to Crosby (v posh) and have great memories of running round the block to Elmfield Road (where my mum was born), playing out in the road, and going down the Vale where you had lots of independent shops as well as Woolies, Freeman Hardy Willis, the church and the school Blessed Sacrement. I remember going to the laundrette on Moss Lane mentioned above. Happy Days.
Hi Ronnie,
Sorry to say I don’t remember you (was too young) but I’m with my dad Pete just now and we’re having a good laugh about the “dread phrase” of taking the tandem.
Hope you’re well,
Alex Growcoot
P.S. Great blog!
All well thanks Alex. And I do remember you, but you were very young, yes. Glad you like the blog and say hello to Pete for me? No doubt the tandem’s still outside, next to his boat?