FRIDAY FOTO 32 - TOXTETH, LIVERPOOL - WHERE I GREW UP

(Terraced houses in Hughson Street)

An official photo, taken around 1963 by the City Council, prior to the properties being purchased and subsequently demolished under a Compulsory Purchase Order.

Hughson Street in Toxteth, Liverpool was where I spent my formative years, up until the age of seven years old. 

Number 25 in the street had been the home of my grandparents, William and Elizabeth Welsh, prior to my birth. Following this, my parents, brother and I also lived in the same property, which only had two bedrooms - one front and one back - and a small back kitchen and front reception room on the ground floor. My aunt slept on a pull-out couch downstairs, while my grandparents had the front bedroom. My family, the four of us, all slept in the rear bedroom. 

There was no bathroom in the house, an outside WC being supplied instead which had been situated at the bottom of the back-yard. A large brick coal-shed also stood outside in the yard. This had formerly been built as a bomb shelter and used by our family during WW2 when German bombers attacked the city during the Liverpool Blitz of 1941. The gap between the two blocks of houses to the right of the photograph was where numbers 27 and 29 once stood. 27 took a direct hit from a bomb and 29 had to be demolished as it had been too badly damaged to repair. The subsequent 'bommie' which was created, (the bulldozed area of land where the houses had once stood), then became a play area for two generations of our family. 

This photograph brought back so many memories for me when I found it posted on one of the Liverpool Facebook pages, but it was to surprise me even further when I enlarged it and looked at the image more closely.

The front door of number 25, next to the bommie is open and there are children playing outside. The boy outside our home looks suspiciously like my brother Gary.  

Amazing to think that the official council photographer chose that particular moment to record the properties which were to be demolished in just a few years time, as well as recording my brother and his friends at play.     

FAMILY HISTORY - HUGHSON STREET, LIVERPOOL 8

HUGHSON STREET - LIVERPOOL 8 (click for video)

This is a short segment of converted movie film showing some of our family in Hughson Street, Toxteth, Liverpool. As well as seeing a few of the family themselves, there are also glimpses of the area around my gran and grandad's house, with Northumberland Street at one end, after passing Prophet Street just seen on the right. Toxteth Street is at the other end, across Park Street which led up toward our school.

The film was shot around 1965 / 1966 and you can clearly see the 'bommies' - those empty spaces where houses once stood before they were blasted by the German bombs which fell during the war. One of them lies alongside our own house, the bomb falling as my Mum and parents sheltered in their bomb shelter, which stood in the yard just to the left of where my grandma was standing in the above photograph. My very existence being saved by a mixture of pure chance as to where the bomb fell, and also a few layers of sturdy brick. 

 Finally there are some shots of the cobbled streets, new housing being built and also our own back-yard - whitewashed to make it look as sparkling as the washing Gran used to hang on the line.  

Mr brother Gary playing my plastic 'Beatles' guitar, and also myself - on the same toy drum-kit I played on March 1st 1966 while sitting in front of their black and white TV, watching a broadcast of the Beatles live from Shea Stadium.

This is just a short glimpse of our lives back then... I only wish I had more. 

I hope you enjoy it...

FAMILY HISTORY - THE BOMMIE (1959)

The photograph attached here shows a young three year old boy (yours truly) standing in an ordinary street in Liverpool in 1959. The house behind me was the home of my grandparents, Lizzie and William John (aka Jack) Welsh, and it was an ordinary two-up, two-down terrace in Toxteth, just like thousands of others in many similar streets throughout the city.

To the right of the house is what was known in Liverpool as a ‘bommie’. This was a flat area of land, sometimes rubble strewn, which represented all that remained of a building that had been destroyed during the German bombing raids during WW2. Even though it was probably thirteen years after the war had ended when this photograph was taken, it was not the general policy of the local Corporation to spend money rebuilding properties on small pockets of land such as this. What funding they did have was being spent developing new housing estates away from the city centre, out toward the green belt land which would eventually make up the suburbs. So while this piece of rough dirt and broken rubble might well have been a blight on the local landscape, along with countless others like it the land would become a playground for youngsters just like myself, until eventually the entire area would be cleared and redeveloped with new housing many years afterward.

Yours truly in dubious trousers outside my Gran's house in Hughson Street

This bommie had been a house almost exactly the same as the one my grandparents lived in until one fateful night during an air raid when the property took a direct hit from a German bomb.

At the time of the raid the occupant of the house, a lady called Mary O'Prey, was sheltering in my grandmother’s air-raid shelter in the back yard. There would have been plenty of space inside for several families, who would sit out the raid using orange boxes or whatever they could find for seats, wrapping themselves in blankets as protection against the cool night air - their faces illuminated by a couple of flickering candles as they would read or sing songs to their children in an attempt to reassure them. Some of the men would be absent during the raids. Just like Mr O’Prey and my grandfather they had a common duty to fulfill and would be out on the streets, air-raid wardens who braved the elements and the bombs to patrol their local area.

The sound from the bombs plunging down from the sky around them must have been deafening; with hundreds of explosions being heard from Dingle to the town centre as the shadowy swarm passed by overhead. The growing drone from hundreds of aero engines filled the air, but presently even these were superceded by the unmistakable whistle and banshee wailing of a German bomb falling worryingly close by. All would hold their breath and pull their babies closer to them, closing eyes and muttering words of comfort to themselves as the sound grew to a terrifying crescendo. It would have ended with a sickening thud, followed almost immediately by an enormous explosion - the sudden noise shaking the ground and also the strong brick walls which surrounded them. Slowly, as the noise died away and dust settled within the shelter, Mrs O’Prey was heard to turn to my Gran and say: 'There you go. You've lost your house Lizzie!". However, when the all-clear was finally given and everyone made their way wearily out of the shelter, it was only then that the woman realized it was, in fact, her own home which had actually been destroyed. The shock and devastation she had probably felt at that time just cannot be imagined.

And so it was that thankfully, my family was one of those who had the good fortune to survive those terrible nights in Liverpool. If it would have been any different, or the bomb had fallen a few feet further over to the left, then that three year old boy might well not be around to tell the story he’s telling now. However, my family were not the only individuals who had good fortune that night. As a postscript to this story I can reveal that the family had a pet dog which was reportedly in the house at the time of the blast. The dog was later found, shaken but alive, inside a house in Fernie Street about thirty yards away. It had been blown up into the air by the force of the explosion and sailed right through a back window of the property to land within the bedroom beyond!

Some of those same Fernie Street properties can be seen in the photo behind me but alas, the name or breed of the fortunate dog is not known.