Life in the city centre 'village' generations of families called home

Liverpool city centre isn't something you'd typically associate with a "village". But Upper Frederick Street and the surrounding roads are lined with bungalows and semi-detached homes you’d typically expect to find in the suburbs.

Despite the developments of new hotels and apartments in the area and the close proximity of Liverpool ONE, if it wasn't for the occasional hum of passing traffic and nearby building work, you could easily forget you were in the city centre all together.

The homes are just a stone’s throw away from the hustle and bustle of Hanover Street. The story of how they ended up there dates back to the 1980s and is one of defiance of families who were determined to stay in the place they called home.

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Back in August last year, the ECHO spoke to people about their memories of living in the area and how it's changed over the years. Sisters Pauline and Sandra Mackey were born and bred in Kent Gardens in L1 where they lived with their family, including mum Margaret Jenkins and Nan Latisha.

Pauline, 70, previously told the ECHO: "Our mother was born in 18 Upper Pitt Street by St Michael's. Our parents and our grandparents when they got bombed out [during WWII] they went to live in Kent Gardens, and then from there that's where they stayed.

"For me it was the happiest days of my life Kent Gardens. It was very cosmopolitan. It was absolutely fantastic, it really was. Everyone was so happy. We used to play rounders and do the [skipping] rope and all of us would get into the rope. It was fabulous.

"As you're starting to grow up, people leave and then you get different people coming in who are racist. Some people down here don't like that being said but we're brown skinned so we know what it's like. All these different people moved in and then our mother had a heart attack and we moved into Pitt Street then."

'We'd always been in Liverpool One and we didn't want to be uprooted'

Aged 19 at the time, Pauline said: "We never wanted to go to Pitt Street but we had to because of our mother being ill. When we went to Pitt Street it was horrible, it was damp."

The creation of tenements - a term usually used to describe flats with shared access and stairway - in the 1920s and 30s was driven by a need to tackle slum housing and a provide better standard of living for working class families.

However, by the 1980s this kind of housing had fallen out of favour and required considerable renovation to bring them up to standard. This led to the eventual demolition of tenements like Kent Gardens in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Pauline and Sandra's mum Margaret was among 34 families who joined forces to form a housing co-operative in 1981 when they learned their tenement homes in Pitt Street, Upper Frederick Street and Kent Gardens were due to be demolished.

Determined that their community should not be split up, the Kent Gardens Co-operative met weekly to discuss plans for their new dream homes which they hoped would be built around the corner from the tenements they lived in.

An ECHO article from April 1983 said: "As neighbours have moved out to be rehoused in council properties in other parts of the city, cooperative members have pored over plans to build modern homes with gardens in the waterfront area where many of them grew up and are now raising their own families.

"Few of the windows in the old blocks are curtained now, most are covered with metal sheeting. And the fact that cooperative members have stayed on in what is becoming a bleak, brick wilderness is a symbol of their will to fight for new homes where they want them."

Sandra, 70, recalls her mum going campaigning with other members of the housing co-operative for the new homes, which were eventually approved by the then Militant led Liverpool City Council.

She said: "We'd always been in Liverpool One and we didn't want to be uprooted." Sandra, 70, recalls her mum going campaigning with other members of the housing co-operative for the new homes, which were eventually approved by the then Militant led Liverpool City Council.

"We'd always been in Liverpool One and we didn't want to be uprooted." Sandra said her family were also concerned about the racism they might face if they moved to another part of the city that they weren't familiar with. She added: "When you're brown, black, you can't go and live anywhere, whereas if you're white you can go and live anywhere in the world."

The family moved into their new home on Lakeland Close in L1 in 1989 where Sandra and Pauline still live to this day. Today Lakeland Close and the surrounding roads are home to a mixture of social housing and privately owned properties.

'I say we're like a village now surrounded by apartments and hotels'

Irene Hall, who has lived in her home on Upper Frederick Street since the early 1990s, described the area as like a "village" where "everyone knows everyone". The 70-year-old lived in the Lydia Ann and Kent Gardens tenements for many years and had a job packing rice at the nearby Heaps Rice Mill, which is now being turned into apartments.

Irene said: "I would go back tomorrow to them days. When you come back to a house you're in, but in those days there was always someone out having a ciggy on the landing that you could have a talk with.

"All the nappies and the clothing would be out on the landing. They were happy those days. I say we're like a village now surrounded by apartments and hotels. I know all the people here. We have been reared all together and my children have been reared with their children. I'm happy here, I feel safe."

Demand for houses in the area is high due to their central location, with prices being driven up in the current climate.

'You just can't beat this area. We used to call it the island'

Francis Rowan, 58, who has also lived in the area all his life, told the ECHO: "You can't get a house around here for your kids. It's so expensive. It's always been a community here. Down here is like living in the country, everything is on your doorstep."

Growing up in the area, Francis recalls playing in the empty dockers warehouses and having huge fires on bonfire night. His nan ran the Queen's pub at the bottom of Norfolk Street before becoming the landlady of the Central pub opposite Liverpool Central Station.

He said: "For my generation it was an adventure. All these empty warehouses, you'd just go in them and play. You went out at nine and came back at five - it was brilliant.

"On Park Lane you had a pub on every single corner, a butchers, a chippy, a chemist - you had everything. It was like the high street. You just can't beat this area. We used to call it the island. You've got Duke Street, Park Lane and if you go down it's an island and everybody lived here."

Pauline and Sandra said they still face racism in the area today and prefer to keep themselves to themselves. During their time living on Lakeland Close, they've seen a great deal of change from old dockers warehouses being converted into apartment blocks to the arrival of Liverpool ONE.

The area is now at the start of a new chapter with Heaps Rice Mill being converted into hundreds of new apartments and a 260 bed new hotel being built on the corner of Park Lane and Liver Street.

Pauline said: "I think it's fantastic that it's changing. I really do. There's never been anything big like this in this area. This is all new for the next generation too. I hope to god we see a lot of it before we go."

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