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Thinking About Granby & the Welsh Streets

I’ve been thinking about Granby this week. Talking about it too, along with several of us there who were involved in setting up the Community Land Trust a few years back. We’ve been talking to a journalist is all I’ll say and you’ll be able to read what we said within the next couple of weeks.

This is the Aditya Chackrabortty article about Granby referred to here.

For today my thinking took me to the first Granby Street Market of the year. The first ever, in fact, to be run in February. And what a February day it was. ‘Dreich’ I’d be saying if I were Scottish. Dreich anyway. Off the 86 bus on Upper Parliament and through to Granby Street. Past the side street names that still remember all the gone now original streets of the area. Mostly cleared from the 1970s on and replaced with various kinds of newness over the years since.

Continue reading “Thinking About Granby & the Welsh Streets”

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Granby Street Market, September 2017

The great L8 Street Market is well into its eighth year now but I haven’t been around Granby or anywhere else much recently, so it was good to step out on a fine September morning and arrive at Granby again.

The Market runs pretty much all year now on the first Saturday of every month.
And since last year has run on Granby Street itself, the road being closed for it.
The market has grown and thrived in the extra space.

A real mixture of stalls here. All kinds of food, art, crafts, bike repairs, general interestingness and some they sum up as ‘car booty-ness.’

But best of all loads of people and the place itself. I was involved here for many years of course and it’s great to be back among friends again. Conversations flowing easily in the morning sun. Continue reading “Granby Street Market, September 2017”

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In Granby: The Street Market returns

This Saturday, 2nd April, sees the return of Granby 4 Streets Market. Now in its seventh year, the market this year moves out onto its new home on Granby Street itself.

Granby Street L8.
Granby Street L8.

We’re expecting Ducie Street, the last of the 4 Streets to go on site, to do so some time this summer.

Ducie Street, where the Markets were held last year.
Ducie Street, where the Markets were held last year.

So we’re moving out onto Granby’s historic trading street, as our direct tribute to the heritage of the area, where the whole of Granby Street was filled with shops, from Princes Avenue through to Upper Parliament Street. Public consultation we had done last year through Writing on the Wall came back strongly with the message of how much the shops are missed. So each month now we’ll be adding the Street Market in to the offers from our friends, the shop owners who’ve continued to trade on Granby Street. Continue reading “In Granby: The Street Market returns”

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A Very Good Friday

Realising I haven’t had a day off working for two weeks, when I get up on Good Friday and the sun’s out, I go out too. Walking to town on one of my circuitous routes. Beginning a few roads from where we live in Wavertree.

On Lidderdale Road.
On Lidderdale Road.
From where a path runs alongside the railway.
From where a path runs alongside the railway.
All the way to Lawrence Road.
All the way to Lawrence Road.

So just a couple of hundred yards away from always busy Smithdown is this peaceful stroll.

Past pieces of almost rural past.
Past pieces of almost rural past.

Continue reading “A Very Good Friday”

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It’s Liverpool 1969: Growing Up In Granby

cleaning the pavement outside her homeA while back something precious arrived in the post in Granby from Nick Hedges. A CD full of photographs he’d taken in 1969 and soon after of life in Granby and around Liverpool 8 in those years. He said we could make whatever use of them we thought best, so I’m going to use a selection of them on this post today, as I continue telling the evolving story of Granby.

As you can see in these years Granby is full of people looking after their homes and the streets where they live. And in the years leading up to 1969 Granby Street, the main street through the middle of the area, is lined with all kinds of shops on both sides of the road.

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68.granby4
Corner of Selborne Street.

A sign there pointing along to the public baths on Lodge Lane that still existed then. Continue reading “It’s Liverpool 1969: Growing Up In Granby”

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A Granby 4 Streets Poem

Cairns Street.

At the last Granby 4 Streets Market, local community organisation Writing in the Wall presented some of the work done at a series of events they’ve been running for us lately. These events were about people getting together and telling their Granby stories. Getting a shared sense of the history and the rich culture of the place as part of working on its future, specifically working towards what we’ll do with the Four Corners, where the shops used to be at the corners of Granby Street and Cairns Street.

Hazel Tilley, on the right here, in Cairns Street.
Hazel Tilley, on the right here, in Cairns Street.

Everything that was read was powerful and real and truly rooted in the place being written about. And one, this poem, struck me so powerfully at the time, painting such a vivid picture of what the Granby people have had to go through to get to where we are now, that I asked its writer if she’d let me publish it on here. She said yes.

 

A rant about the bins
(And how other people always seem to know the best way for us to live)
By Hazel Tilley

“So, houses are knocked down, because someone who’s never walked down Granby Street
knows how to improve our area, and the best way for us to live.
And people are moved out, because the shops are closing down
And the area’s neglected.
And the other people, the ones who know the best way for us to live, smell money
So, they ignore the history of each brick and slate and skirting board,
Of each life spent in each house. Continue reading “A Granby 4 Streets Poem”

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The May Market: Rain and Inspiration on Ducie Street

After yesterday’s preparations, time for the Street Market itself.
Ducie Street - 1And yes, it was a ‘making your own fun’ kind of a day. “May Bank Holiday weekend? Oh, you’ll want that to be cold and rainy then?” Ah well, we enjoyed it anyway, here on the corner of Granby Street and Ducie Street in Liverpool 8.

Granby 4 Streets Market, this morning on Ducie Street.
Granby 4 Streets Market, this morning on Ducie Street.
Bustling.
Bustling, busy.
And full of curious characters.
And full of curious characters.

Continue reading “The May Market: Rain and Inspiration on Ducie Street”