L8 HERSTORY An Architectural Guide by Older Women

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L8 HERSTORY

AN ARCHITECTURAL GUIDE BY OLDER WOMEN

The L8 HERSTORY architectural guide and associated exhibition are the result of a research project titled “Designing Care: Countering the Urban Exclusion of Older Women”. The project was funded by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA Research Fund 2020-2022) and the University of Liverpool.

THE TEAM

Principal Investigator Dr. Francesca Piazzoni

Booklet Design Hana Koubková; Kudzai Matsvai.

Exhibition Design Evan Cheng; Luke Fawcett.

Technical Support Stephen Bretland; Matthew Howarth. Research Assistance Yifan Qian; Adrianna Radlowska.

Architectural Drawing Ioana Silvia Branzuca; Ieuan Kearney; Kudzai Matsvai; Louis Swift.

Assembling

Matthew Howarth; Ioana Silvia Branzuca; Evan Cheng; Luke Fawcett.

Printed in Liverpool, November 2022

CONTENTS

The Project

Granby Street

Ducie Street 143 Granby Street

Granby Picture House Al-Rahma Mosque

Granby Street Board School

The Igbo Community Centre St Bernard Church Kuumba Imani Millenium Centre

Lodge Lane

Deeper Life Bible Church Boswell Street Vandyke Street Lodge Lane Public Baths Manchester Superstore The Pivvy Tiber Street School Edge Hill Library

Falkner Square

Peter Kavanagh Pub The Gallery The Embassy St Margaret’s School Sandon Street Caribbean Community Centre St Saviour Church and School Jamaica House

The Project

This guide is the result of a two-year research project with women in the Liverpool 8 neighbourhood. It shows the spaces they like, those that matter to them, and some they prefer to avoid. The project engaged thirty-five women from over the age of fiftyfive to their late eighties. This combined focus on gender and age addresses a problem in the design of cities: architects and planners usually design streets, services, and houses for men, not for women, let alone for older women who may superficially appear to be out of the workforce.

Yet older women are the backbone of our society. Almost one third of the UK female population is over the age of fifty-five, with that number set to increase. Older women not only continue to carry out professional work, but they also take care of loved ones on a regular basis—grandchildren, parents, partners, friends. While they do all this work, which is usually underpaid, if paid at all, older women are forced to navigate cities that do not meet their needs. They wait for buses without being able to sit, find no services convenient to reach, walk on sidewalks with bumpy pavements, and cross dark streets at night.

Even the memories of older women are erased by cities. While big investments go to preserve and promote heritage landmarks that attract tourists (and money), other buildings get demolished or are left derelict. This is a slap in the face to residents who witness their beloved spaces succumbing to the interests of people with more economic power. For older women, who

already struggle to be heard by policy makers, seeing the old buildings they cherish be demolished or left derelict is yet another affront, another reminder that cities are hostile to them.

L8 HERSTORY aims to combat these trends. The guide spotlights older women and the spaces that matter to them as protagonists of a history that may not appear in books, but which deserves to be told and celebrated. The buildings described in this collection, which different women identified as important to them, are not included in city guides. Yet they made the history of Liverpool as much as officially designated heritage sites. Making these buildings and the stories behind them visible is the first step toward elevating voices that would otherwise be erased, setting the basis for cities that centre the needs of older women.

Liverpool 8

One may think that Liverpool 8 does not need to be the focus of another study. This neighbourhood, identified by the postcode L8 and part of the larger Toxteth district, has received media and scholarly attention, especially following the 1981 uprisings known as “the riots.” News reports and published works have well traced the social history of L8 as a racialised territory, a space where demolitions, displacements, and disinvestments deprived residents since the post-war. How residents resisted oppression has also received attention, may their resistance have manifested through organising housing movements, founding Black-owned clubs, creating informal economic systems, or protesting on the streets.

But while the geography of L8 is key to understanding these histories, both its architectures and the ways in which people remember them have remained in the background. The buildings of Liverpool 8—their material details, functions, transformations, and (often) demolition—may be mentioned, but are rarely detailed by academic publications. Meanwhile, pictures of old buildings abound on social media. Instagram and Facebook groups dedicated to a disappeared Liverpool 8 demonstrate the love and sense of loss that residents continue to feel. L8 HERSTORY intends to honour these feelings. Combining architectural drawings, oral histories, and archival information, the guide celebrates the memories of older women who made L8 by fighting to improve it.

The stories told here speak to L8’s long history of loss and resistance. Toxteth was erected between the 1850s and the 1890s. Liverpool was an epicentre of slavery and colonial power at that time. A mile South from the congested centre, the new district offered everything from large mansions for the rich to hyperdense terraced houses for the working poor. If residents were predominantly white back then (visible minorities were confined nearby the docks), the postwar period marked the construction of L8 as a Black space. White residents fled to outer districts since the 1940s. Black Scousers displaced by war-bombs and newly arrived migrants moved to L8’s affordable homes. Excluded from everywhere else in the city, residents made L8 a vibrant space of belonging, a place rich in social clubs, restaurants, and spiritual places.

By the 1970s, when compulsory purchases began displacing people and razing their home to the ground, L8 was home to the highest percentage of single mothers across Liverpool and among the highest in the UK. Those women and their loved ones could not find jobs, were regularly subjected to racialised policing and, when displaced by the city council, were only offered homes in distant, exclusively white neighbourhoods. These and other injustices prompted protests throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Spurred on by yet another police stop-andsearch of a Black man, the uprisings of 1981 stigmatized the neighbourhood further. Slum-clearances intensified throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Entire Victorian streets were replaced by curved cul-de-sacs lined with semi-detached houses. Most collective spaces were demolished.

Residents, and women in particular, did not witness organised abandonment passively. In the mid-2000s, a group of women living nearby Granby mobilised and saved properties from demolition through demonstrations, guerrilla gardening, and do-it-yourself refurbishments. Civic success came at a price, however. If the award-winning Granby Four Streets project (2015) has drawn much-needed attention to the neighbourhood, it has also turned L8 into an attractive destination for new (richer, whiter) residents. While residents and community associations would happily welcome fixtures of streets, houses, and parks, there is also a shared feeling that those fixed spaces would not benefit the people of L8, but those who could afford to replace them.

What Follows

L8 HERSTORY celebrates the women who lived through all of these changes and sought to make Liverpool 8 a better place. The thirteen women who share their stories came to Liverpool 8 from different walks of life. Some were born on the very street they still live on, others travelled across continents. Some actively organised anti-displacement and anti-racist movements, others changed the neighbourhood through more ordinary acts of care—raising children (sometimes of multiple mothers), assisting people in need (often for free), or planting plants on sidewalks (in front of the houses that they were evicted from).

These women made L8 a home for themselves and for others. The spaces described here provided an emotional and material infrastructure for their home making. The guide is organised across three focus areas: Granby Street, Lodge Lane, and Falkner Square. These streets are relatively close to one another. A walk between them takes around an hour (although, the curved closed-ups that replaced Victorian streets in the 1980s/90s intentionally made connections longer and counter-intuitive). Despite their proximity, Granby Street, Lodge Lane, and Falkner Square are microcosms in their own right. Women in each microcosm mentioned the others as unfamiliar territories or, if they moved across different areas, considered that movement a life-changing event.

Each area of focus contains eight landmarks (a building or a street). Every landmark is presented through an architectural drawing, the words of the woman who chose the building for

the guide, and general information on the site found in books, archives, and websites. Of the twenty-four landmarks described here, four were demolished, six now stand abandoned, and three are former community structures that have been converted into apartments. Three buildings were erected during the past two decades on demolished sites.

The buildings vary greatly in their material and architectural dimensions. We see from listed historical sites waiting to be restored (once, and if funds are ever allocated), to low-cost, modern structures that would hardly make it into an architectural guide. Functions also differ. Some women wanted to talk about the street they lived on, others wanted to celebrate a school, a social club, a spiritual space, a grocery store. All these landmarks bear different meanings. They may remind women of happy memories or of struggling times. Some women still deviate their walks to pass in front of the landmarks, others have intentionally avoided them for years. This collection is, of course, far from exhaustive. The historical information that could be found on some of the buildings is limited. Drawings were based on archival and oral sources, but may present inaccurate details. And, critically, the women’s quotes are unfinished. They are small windows onto much more complex stories. Within these limits and boundaries, the guide still hopes to suggest a new way of looking at Liverpool 8, one that honours the experiences of older women and the material infrastructure of care that they used and produced.

Francesca Piazzoni, November 2022

Granby Street

On boxing day, I don’t remember if it was 1987 or 86, there were cherry pickers taking the tiles off the roofs of the houses, so that the rain and the weather would dilapidate the buildings, so they would have more excuses to knock them down. That is how bad the city council was. We were watching them, me and my girls’ dad, and we were like “what are they doing? Those are our houses.” . . .

This derelict street symbolises the resistance of L8 residents and the injustices they endured for decades. Since the 1981, riots, demolitions, displacements, and intentional neglect depopulated the area, forcing remaining residents into a condition of unsafety and deprivation. But residents opposed this orchestrated decline. In 1993, the Granby Resident Association was established to oppose demolition plans, setting the stage for more focused advocacy in the years to come. In the mid-2000s, a group of women started cleaning streets, painting empty homes, organising a monthly street market, and cultivating plants. >>>

. . .

It was terrible because those were the houses that Black people bought. They put together the money to buy those houses because no one would give them nowhere to live. So they lived in Granby and also let rooms to other people. And those people had their house compulsory purchased, not even for a 100 pounds. They were never told, “oh there is grants you can get to fix the house,” they weren’t told, because they wanted the properties off them.

. . .

Residents formalised these efforts by constituting the Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust (CLT) in 2011. As economic stagnation had prevented demolitions to go further, and after years of advocacy, the CLT negotiated with the city council a plan for affordable regeneration. In 2014, the council transferred ten homes on Cairns Street to the CLT. Refurbishment was designed by Assemble, a group of Londonbased architects who also realised the Winter Garden on Cairns Street and the ceramics studio Granby Workshop. Five of the renovated homes were then rented for below market prices while the others were sold under a shared equity system. The scheme received the Turner Prize in 2015. A total of fortyseven properties in the Granby Triangle were renovated in conjunction with housing associations. >>>

They did not consider things in Liverpool 8 to be valuable. It’s only from the 1990s that they all got “oh! let’s change it!” and you got all the middle class moving in now. The community came together to save the houses. But not everyone could do that. People from the outside, who had a very slight link, like “I got an auntie who lived here 20 years ago,” they were able because they had the money. I don’t go to Granby Street now, it’s not the Granby I know.

’’

But while the ten houses on Cairns Street continue to thrive and attract media attention, Ducie Street remains abandoned just behind them. The southern side of the street was demolished between 2008 and 2009. In 2019, the Liverpool City Council approved a plan by West Tree Estates Limited to turn the houses into 45 apartments and build 35 new apartments in the vacant lots in front of them.

Residents have vociferously opposed these plans which they believe would only accelerate gentrification and fail to meet the needs of the community.

I grew up in the house at the corner of Granby and Ducie Street. We moved there when my mother remarried with my stepfather, he was Jamaican. The house was fabulous, it had two pianos, and a guitar. That was in the lounge, because the rooms were so big. And what I loved about it was that the back sitting room had the original bells, each room had a bell so the servants would come up. When I went to view it, six or seven years ago, I noticed the bells had been stolen. The middle door, which was all coloured glass, was also gone. . . .

Built in the 1870s for middle class families, this is one of the few surviving terraced houses on the South end of Granby Street, at the corner with Ducie Street. Like others in the area (see Ducie Street), following compulsory purchases in the 1970s and decades of managed decline, the house was approved for demolition in the early 2000s but escaped this fate. As of 2022, the house stands deteriorating.

. . .

That is a listed building and to see the way it’s standing there, it’s appalling. I know it was sold to a priest and I believe he sold it to the City Council. I walked by it the other day and I noticed one of the attic windows was open, that tells me someone has been in there and it’s deteriorating. The house also had a twocar garage. When I came back from America that had gone. People had just put all kinds of rubbish in it.

’’

It was officially called “The Princes” but it never got called that name, we all called it “the Granby.” Always full. I remember seeing there “Moulin Rouge,” I was 13, and José Ferrer was the leading artist, he frightened the life out of me. After the movie me and my mother were going up Jermyn Street which was very posh then, with the trees, and I remember saying “oh mom I am scared” and she told me “don’t scare me now!” I went there every Saturday. I could name all the picture houses, on Smithdown you had the Cameo and the Playhouse, then the Capital, so many were there. . . .

The Princes Cinema, known as “The Granby,” was opened in 1912 and remained opened for 53 years. A new, symmetric façade was added to the existing building, the billiard Granby Hall, which obtained a cinematographer license in 1909. Hosting up to 400 spectators, the theatre was considered of moderate dimensions compared to others in Liverpool at the time. >>>

It got closed in the 1960s, I want to say 69. Then there was a little nursery built there. Then they demolished the nursery too, that’s gone at least 30 years now. Now it’s nothing, a garden for the kids in the school but they don’t use it much.

. . . ’’

In 1931, the Regent Enterprise Ltd. took ownership of the building and added a balcony to increase seating capacity to 600. After closing in February 1965, the building was initially converted into shops and later demolished in the 1970s. A small nursery took its place in the 1980s, only to be demolished in the 1990s.

Al-Rahma Mosque

The Mosque is the reason I decided to move to Liverpool. I moved to the Netherlands in 1991 because that was one of the few countries that accepted Somalis at the time. Eight years ago, I was living in Rotterdam and came to visit a friend here in Liverpool. She brought me to the Mosque, and I fell in love. I moved here 6 years ago. With my husband still working in Somalia it is important for me to have somewhere to go if I need help. Our centre is like a big family. There are not many women-only spaces in Liverpool you know, many shut down because of the pandemic and never returned. The Mosque feels safe.

This is an important landmark for people of Muslim faith well beyond the Liverpool 8 postcode. Managed by the Liverpool Muslim Society, a charity founded in 1953 by Al-Haj Ali Hizzam, the Mosque opened in 1974, following 10 years of community advocacy for planning permissions. This was the third purposebuilt Mosque in the United Kingdom. The initial building comprised the main prayer room and hosted up to 3,000 people. In 1979, the first floor, the madrassah, and the Imam’s accommodation were added. The Mosque continues to be a reference point for a diverse Muslim population of over 25,000 people. Beyond religious services, Al-Rahma offers classes for adults, sport rooms, and different social events.

5 Granby Street Board School

It was a lovely school, so many actresses and singers went there. It was a Church of England School for boys and girls. They stayed together there, at St. Bernard we divided when we were 8 or 9. In the 1940s my sister went to the Granby School for cookery class. Because St. Bernard did not have classes for that. They went once a week to learn how to make pies and so on.

Later when I had my shops on Granby Street, kids from the school used to come and buy things. My husband and I had 5 shops, at numbers 43, 53, 103, 144, and 138, but that one only lasted 6 months. The school closed in the 1990s. They wanted to knock it down, but we fought to keep it you know, we the community. But it’s not really for us now, I think. It’s this adult learning centre. I see it all because I live right here, but I don’t think it’s good people who go there. I think they do cooking classes there, so maybe more people are going now, but it’s not for us.

The Granby Boarding School was built in 1881. It enrolled boys and girls, infants, juniors, and seniors. Eleanor Rathbone was appointed as manager of this school in the late 1890s. The school was converted into Granby Street County Primary School in 1969. It closed in 1999 when it was amalgamated with Tiber St. Lots. After years of advocacy by the residents, the school escaped demolition and was converted into an Adult Learning Centre in the early 2000s, with conspicuous refurbishments in 2019/2020. With over 20 classrooms, a teaching kitchen, resting rooms, and two IT suits, the Centre offers a range of affordable courses including English for speakers of other languages, digital literacy, and cooking classes.

The Igbo Community Centre

My husband was the president of the Igbo Association, they bought the building in 1988. The Igbo women used it to do their meetings and every new year the children gathered and we did parties. For the new year festival every person could honour any tribe. There was a time we hosted people from different churches and they could use the space to do their meetings and services.

. . .

This Grade II listed building was erected in 1887 as the principal venue of the Deaf and Dumb Benevolent Society. The Society was founded in 1864 by George Healey, a deaf man who wanted to give deaf people equal access to Christian Scriptures. The Society initially rented various premises and, in 1877, started a campaign to raise funds for a dedicated building. Various authorities including the Mayor of Liverpool and Queen Victoria contributed to the cause. The building included a chapel, rooms for schooling and spaces for entertainment. The floors of the dancing room were built to vibrate with the music, providing deaf people with the opportunity to feel rhythms and dance. There were spaces exclusively dedicated to women and men (in 1931, four years after George Healey’s death, a men’s club in his name was created for men to play snooker, chess, and cards).

. . . ’’

We made good use of the place, now it needs repairing. We cannot let anyone in because is dangerous. We can still use the outdoor, last summer we had the youth festival for example, and the women met there. Hopefully soon it will go back to be a space of community.

The Society eventually relocated to West Derby in 1986.

In 1988, the Igbo Community of Liverpool gathered funds and purchased the property for £50,000 and used it as a successful space for Igbo and non-Igbo people. The centre was primarily run by older adults. Events included celebrations of Emume-Ndi-Igbo day, every first of January, the Carnival celebrations in August, as well as regular meetings and parties. While the centre ran successfully for 20 years, in 2007 it closed due to ageing of managing members and rising maintenance costs. Younger and older members of the Community are now coming together again, hoping to bring the Centre back to its people.

St Bernard Church

It was a very active church with a social club. It was run by Father Peter Morgan who is still there today. There were many strong women who gathered at the church, they started the credit union and helped people not to get in debt with money landers. Very brave women, some still live in the Granby area. Many went away.

St Bernard’s Catholic Church, of the St Bernard’s Parish founded in 1888, was erected in 1901 in the Gothic-style popular at the time. It was designed by Pugin & Pugin Architects, sons of Augustus, the architect who designed the interiors of the Houses of Parliament. The St Bernard’s complex also comprised a school which, built in 1884, was extended in 1969 to include a dedicated infant building. It was remodelled in 1977, closed in the 1998, and demolished soon after.

I lived on Berkeley Street when the Victorian houses were here. There was a launderette, next door there was a chemist, then a sweet shop, a fish and chips called Bull, then on the corner a grocery called Mrs. Green’s. I always remember the sweet shop because I had been given a beautiful gift from an American auntie, it was a beautiful heart shaped pendant. And I should have not had it on, I sneaked it out and put it on, showing off. As I ran over the sweet shop grill, the pendant fell in. I have never seen it again. And I often think about it. I wonder, when they demolished the sweet shop, did the workers find the pendant?

. . .

This multifunctional community space was erected in 2004 at the corner of Princes Road and Upper Stanhope Street. The site, demolished in the 1990s, was previously occupied by a corner building with multiple shops and services. The Centre stands as a powerful, enduring legacy of the Liverpool Black Sisters, a Black women’s group based in L8. Members of the group came together during the 1970s to fight discrimination and advance the needs of Black women, which they felt were systematically ignored by men as well as white women groups in Liverpool. The group was named Liverpool Black sisters around 1979, and officially became a charity in 1989.

Recently I came to the Kuumba to do the community acupuncture. I brought the auricular acupuncture from the United States. I was very keen to learn it because, after the 1981 riots, drugs that had never been in this community started arriving. First it was heroin, but the community didn’t go for that. So they threw in cocaine. And we had people that converted to crack and cocaine. It was horrendous, we had young girls and children getting addicted to it.

. . . ’’

I was living in Los Angeles and I met Dr. Michael Smith who had brought the ear acupuncture out of China in the 1960 to the Bronx. He worked with the Black Panthers because they had problems with heroin, he set up a clinic, it’s still there. So I got qualified and brought that to Liverpool, to offer an alternative to pharmaceuticals. That’s the reason I decided to set up Dare to Care. It ran for 32 years. We were very lucky because we got four grants from the lottery. We took away people from any addiction, we were able to embrace the whole community.

Kuumba Imani means creativity and faith in the African language of Swahili. The Centre continues to advance these values as the epicentre of diverse community engagement initiatives—offering classes, and situated as an important gathering point for many. In the spring of 2022, a mural portraying Nelson Mandela was completed by artist John Culshaw under the commission of Mandela, a Toxteth Charitable Organisation committed to celebrating the heritage of L8 while bringing the community together.

Lodge Lane

Deeper Life Bible Church

I love the church because there you hear the word of God, not mixed with anything, just pure word of God. And we meet there as families, everybody knows each other and helps each other. If you are in need of anything, members will do something. On Saturday we visit those who are alone or sick, if a mother has to travel home abroad for a period, other members will take care of her children.

My son introduced me to the church...when I arrived I thought “this is where I belong. No doubt’’.

Part of the international Deeper Christian Life Ministries, the non-denominational Christian Church was built in the 1990s by a group of people from the African continent (mostly from Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone). Since then, the church has served as an anchor for the people who every Sunday travel from across the Merseyside region to join its services.

Beyond its spiritual function, the church serves as an important hub of solidarity. It hosts community lunches, the OFSTED registered After-school club, and the weekly DCLM Food Bank, part of the Central Liverpool Food Bank. Run by a diverse community of volunteers, the foodbank does a lot more than just providing food. It promotes a friendly environment that also refers people to other support services.

My husband and I bought this house 39 years ago. This was the only place where a couple like us was left alone you know, a mixed couple. My kids could play on the street and no one would bother them. But they could not go up on Smithdown Road, that was a different story. So we learned our borders you know. But we also created our own, so to speak.

This is a typical street off Lodge Lane (others were entirely demolished from the 1960s onwards). It was erected from scratch between the 1870 and 1890 and connected Lodge Lane to the Toxteth Park Cemetery. Mostly composed of residential terraced houses for the working classes, Boswell Street also appears to have accommodated a post office and a brewery in 1950s, as well as an ice cream factory in 1960s.

’’

This is my street, and it always will be. The houses here are almost all the same, but they are all different because of the different people. When I arrived in England everything was different and I was scared. But then I went to the house in Vandyke Street, my sister was here, my children were born here. My husband died here. Now I know everybody. So now I am no longer scared, at least not when I am here.

’’

Similarly to Boswell, Vandyke Street was built between the 1870s and 1890s connecting Lodge Lane to the Toxteth Cemetery. The street was predominantly filled with small terraced houses. On the rear of the street, accessible via multiple lanes from Vandyke and Aspen, a building complex known as the Mossbank contained a large, rectangular yard where cows were kept until the 1960s.

’’

Lodge Lane Public Baths

I used to attend the baths all the time with all of my cousins, straight after school. Once a lad pushed my little cousin into the water, she never went to the baths again. Good times. . . .

Opened in 1878, the Lodge Lane Public Baths were the seventh complex of buildings dedicated to public hygiene built in Liverpool. Momentum for providing people with these facilities grew after the cholera outbreak of 1832 when Kitty Wilkinson, an Irish immigrant to Liverpool, opened her own kitchen for neighbours to access the only boiler in the area. Inspired by the benefits of those actions, the city opened the first Liverpool baths in 1842. The Lodge Lane baths included 2 pools (one deeper than the other), training facilities, a wash house, and dedicated hygiene and slipper baths for men and women (with Sunday afternoons reserved for women of Muslim faith since the 1980s). >>>

There were also grown-ups there. The baths were connected to the wash-house, lots of women went every day with bags and bags of washing on their prams. The baths also had rooms where you could go and wash yourself because lots of people did not have a bath at home, I did not have one.

In 1913, the baths obtained a cinematographic license and remained a beloved movie theatre for decades. Residents recall participating in dancing galas, polo matches, boxing, and even public lectures with subjects ranging from “Shakespeare’s Heroines” to “10,000 miles on Horseback from Buenos Ayres to New York.” The baths survived the Second World War and continued to thrive amidst the massive transformations (and population displacements) of the postwar. Alterations and modernisations were carried out in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s. Public funding cuts in the 1980s led authorities to close the baths, which were demolished in 1996.

I love the Manchester store because they have all I want. Like the African food and fresh vegetables that you cannot find elsewhere. And they are much cheaper than other places I used to go before. The shop came relatively recently, I saw a flyer and I went, and when I entered, I saw all the products that I had not seen in British shops before. It’s convenient and I feel at home.

This grocery store is the go-to place to find any sort of produce, from fresh vegetables and fruit, to custom meat and varieties of rice from all over the world. Named ‘Food Retailer of the Year’ by the BBC Food and Farming Awards in 2015, the grocery opened in 2011 and occupies a building from the 2000s. The land of the superstore was once occupied by a Methodist Church known as the Wesleyan Chapel (one of several Methodists Churches in the area, which hosted various non-conformist spiritual places since the 1600s). Completed in 1884, the Italianate styled Church continued its services before closing in 1964 and being demolished in 1966.

My aunties used to go to the Pivvy, I was just a little girl and I remember them every night when they came home from work they’d be getting ready. Just to go to the bingo, the make up and everything. And some didn’t drink, so it was not to go for a drink. . . .

Built for 25,000 pounds in 1908, the Pavillon (“the pivvy” to locals) was designed by Joseph John Alley (1840-1912), the known author of several theatres across North-West England. The theatre could sit over 2,000 people distributed in three levels. Performances included plays and variety programmes with singers, magicians, acrobats, comedians, as well as wild animals, such as lions. The building underwent refurbishments in 1933 and 1960, before being permanently converted into a Bingo hall in 1961 (with tables and seats occupying the lowest hall). >>>

. . .

When I grew up, I started going myself, quite a lot actually. When it closed down it was sad. Very sad. They should have left it where it was and keep the people of Lodge Lane happy.

As the Mecca Bingo Hall in the 1960s, in addition to wrestling and boxing matches, the building hosted several musical bands including The Beatles—advertised, in those early days, as a ‘Merseyside joy’ and ‘Liverpool’s own beat group’. The Pavillion was seriously damaged by a fire in 1986, and some of its interior features were never recovered. Part of the building was subsequently extended at the rear. With most of the original building deteriorated and unused, the extension continued to serve as a bingo hall until it was permanently closed in March 2020. There are plans to convert the theatre into a mixed commercial and residential building.

Tiber Street School

My cousin moved to Liverpool and sent her daughter to the Tiber after separating from her husband. Then one day he showed up and took the child away. When the teachers realised that, it was police helicopters all above the area. The child was returned after a few hours. After the school closed all kids were sent elsewhere, we lost a real community asset. Everybody was upset when it got demolished. Nobody was told it was going down. . . .

The Tiber Street School was opened in October 1904 by Councillor J. F. Leslie and, by November of that year, it already enrolled more than a thousand pupils. Students’ ethnicities reflected the changing population of Toxteth over the years. There are testimonies of pupils with Irish, Black, Italian, Philippino, Chinese, and Jewish backgrounds playing together as early as in the 1930s. In 1944, the school enrolled some of the children that had been evacuated from London. The institution split into a primary and a secondary school in 1945, with the latter being relocated into what became Arundel Comprehensive. >>>

I like what they did with the little square in front of where the school used to be. The benches and tables they put, you can have a chat, a gossip. You can sit down if you are tired from shopping. I wish there were more places like that. Like where the baths were, they should put places to sit instead of that empty field, people just go to put dump there.

. . . . . .

Scoring ten out of ten in inspections throughout the 1980s, the school continued to be an important landmark for generations. When the civil war broke out in Somalia, and Liverpool became a safe home to thousands of refugees, Tiber enrolled most of the children of resettled families. In 1994, the school was deemed no longer suitable for its educational purpose. As a part of a merging process with Granby School, Kingsley Community Primary School was created, and Tiber closed in 1994. >>>

But the street has changed. There is a very small African Caribbean community. We have all been moved. This is now Middle Eastern and Easter European. We got Bala B’s, which is the only African Caribbean restaurant left on Lodge, there used to be three more. It’s very sad, because before I moved here from Princess Road, this used to be known as an AfroCaribbean hub, after the riots especially. Now ther’s very few of us. But I don’t want to move. I could not move again..

’’

The building was demolished in 1999. In 2005, the fiveacre grounds were allocated for community use and The Tiber Project group began consultations to re-designate the site. Tiber Square, a public space designed by local young people, opened in 2015 as a result of these consultations.

I always used to go to the library because they had a children section. Going there was very like going from home to home. I’d sit for hours reading books and it was a lovely atmosphere. Very warm. We knew we could not speak but we did, they tried to keep us silent, we never were.

A much beloved landmark, the Edge Hill library closed to the public in the 1990s (with occasional events still taking places). Before that, the library was a significant community hub, best expressed in the numerous spaces it contained – it had a reading room for adults, a community room, and a separate library with programs and entertainment for children.

Falkner Square

The pub has always been part of my life, 51 years since I moved on the street. It’s got very happy memories of street parties and happy times…still today you see neighbours standing outside and you can have a chat. It’s still a happy place, but the street has changed. There’s not as many families as there were when I first came. Now it’s young couples, professionals, they are the only people who can afford to buy. Because we are in a bad situation with the landlords, they sold the houses, and we never had an opportunity to buy the houses…but I got great, happy memories of the street.

Peter Kavanagh’s Pub is a grade II heritage-listed building. It is named after its first landlord, known as an eccentric man who ran the pub for 53 years, from 1897 to 1950. In 1929, Kavanagh commissioned unique interior murals to a Scottish artist, Eric Robinson, who represented scenes from texts by Dickens and Hogarth. Peter Kavanagh wanted himself represented in the decorative wooden panels that are still visible. He also designed some of the mosaic floors as well as the fixed tables and builtin ashtrays. The pub was extended in 1964, adding bathrooms, and then in 1977, when it incorporated the adjacent Grapes Pub. The pub, still a vibrant meeting point for residents, won the Liverpool CAMRA Pub of the Year award in 2019.

I never used to go to that part of the square, that was for rich families and I did not know any kid down there. So that building was kind of a visual stop you see, something you know but you don’t get close to. When we played, we from the estates would not go over that part of the square, it did not feel right. I’d pass by the building to go the Jamaica house later on, but never liked that side of the square.

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This is a large town house at the southern corner of Falkner Square and Sundon Street. The building, which is now used for residential purposes, owes its name to the fact that it briefly served as an exhibition space—between September 1994 and July 1996.

The space hosted exhibitions and performances by international as well as local artists. The Gallery was opened by its owner Yousef (Joe) Farrag, an active member and organizer of several community projects in L8.

I always remember The Embassy growing up, it’s always been there. All the Americans used to go there when they came from the base, the Air Force people mostly, whether my dad also went there I am not sure, can’t ask him now.

But it’s always been there, we still call it The Embassy even if it’s been flats for years, we still see it as the Embassy club. You’d never feel a stranger, as being non-white, you felt more secure in the local clubs, we would go to some place into town, but the local ones were better.

This was one of the over forty social clubs that populated Liverpool 8 from the immediate postwar to the 1980s. Located at the corner of Falkner Square and Huskisson Street, the Embassy Club was opened by Roy Stephens, originally from Jamaica, who came to Liverpool in the 1940s. Like many clubs in Liverpool 8, the Embassy responded to persistent racism in the city centre by offering Black and other diverse people a safe, vibrant space to meet, play, and enjoy. The Embassy occupied the ground floor and basement of the large town house on Falkner Square. The entrance comprised a large room, accessible from Huskisson Street, and the dancing floor was located downstairs.

St Margaret’s School

I went to St. Margaret and it was the happiest place of my life, I absolutely loved it. It was amazing. And then I ended up working there as one of the dinner ladies. I had lots of friends, teachers were lovely.

It was an old fashion school, but it provided a structure you know, some people did not have that at home.

This was a much beloved hub for many generations of Toxtethers. The school opened in 1887 and was built on the site of a short-lived roller-skating ring built in the 1870s. Right behind the St. Margaret Church, an active Anglican Parish, the school was accessible from a secondary street off Prince’s Road. The school initially enrolled pupils form the age of 5 to 16, but it was converted into a primary school in the mid-1960s and students over the age of 11 were sent elsewhere. Annexed to the school was the St. Margaret’s Lecture Hall, located in a slightly older and lower building. The school comprised several outdoor spaces including tennis courts, playgrounds, and training spaces for different ages. The school closed in 2010, following a decade of protests from residents. The capacity of the school was around 175 pupils, but roughly 90 were attending at the time of its closure. Some parts of the building were converted into flats, while most of it remains abandoned.

This is where I was born, on the corner of Sandon and Falkner Street, and this is where all my first memories are. And although it changed, there are still a lot of things I grew up with. I was ten when I left because our house got put down, I went to Sidney Gardens, I lived there until was 20. Then I came back to Falkner Place, then I came here to these new houses on Sandon when they were built the in 1980. . . .

Like other roads in the area, Sandon Street was built between the late 1840s and early 1850s. It connected Falkner Street and Parliament Street, passing through the new Falkner Square. While buildings on Falkner Street combined commercial and residential functions, most buildings on Sandon Street were town houses, initially built as middleclass, single-family homes and partitioned into tenant rooms in the 1920s and throughout the 1960s (with one room being occupied by one or more families). >>>

Facing where I live now, in those buildings, you had Mrs. Debos, then it was Mrs. Lewis with 7 children, then Mrs. Parle, with at least 8 kids, and next there was a chiropodist who treated feet. And those houses are still here, but only one is still a full house and not flats. People have changed, in the only house that has remained, it’s normally doctors who rent every year, and the other one we don’t really know who lives there, I think they rent rooms, they come and go.

Just like the adjacent Falkner Street, Sandon Street was highly impacted by clearance programmes from the late 1950s onwards. Entire lots were swept away, residents displaced, and the streets were reduced in section or closed off. New residential blocks were erected in the 1970s from Sandon to Crown Streets. Some new constructions were demolished and rebuilt within 15 years, making it hard to recognise the original street layout today. Some blocks have now been marked for demolition, with private developers demanding permissions to build student accommodations.

That was a lovely place to go dancing. I went there every week, multiple times. When I arrived in Liverpool it was one of the first places my friend brought me to, I felt at home. Then it got bad, not many people were organising things and it closed. I know now they are trying to bring it back, but I don’t go there much, I am too old for all that!

This community space was one of the most crowded in the area, hosting dancing parties, the carnival, family events, and including cricket, football, and baseball teams. The Merseyside Caribbean Council was founded in 1970 by Jimmy Wynter, a Jamaican man nominated Justice of Peace in 1966. The Council involved 24 members of different West Indian communities. Plans for a Caribbean Centre were first put forward in 1972, but only approved after an Urban Aid Grant was awarded in 1974 (following a rejection in 1973, and a following petition campaign). The Caribbean Centre was completed in 1976, built on a cleared lot at the corner of Parliament and Mulgrave Streets. It was officially opened by the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Reverend David Sheppard, on 7th October 1977.

The Centre closed in 2013 due to lack of funds. When plans emerged for a developer to acquire the lot and build flats in 2015, members of the community organised protests and sit-ins. Those protests led residents to form the Liverpool African Caribbean Grassroots Initiative (LACRI). Money was raised and volunteers of all ages took part in the renovation of the building, which now hosts occasional events.

I went there for two years, when I was 11. Our School, St. Margaret, was changed into a primary school. And it was a little shock at first because we had gone to St. Margaret’s since we were five and now we had to walk a different street to go to St. Saviour. But a lot of people from our area were moved there, so it was not too bad. . . .

St. Saviour was an Anglican Church that also ran a school a couple of blocks east. Located at the corner of Upper Canning and Crown Streets, the Church of England School appears to have been founded in 1856, although it was only identified in the building in the 1880s. It enrolled over 700 pupils including infants, juniors, and seniors. Converted into a Primary only school in 1967, the building was demolished soon after. A new building was erected in its place and continued to serve as a school with the same name until the late 1990s, when the building was demolished and replaced by a mix of apartment buildings, the St. Stephen Church, and a probation service building (with the last two now marked for demolition). >>>

Then when we were 13 we were moved to a brand new school because St. Saviour too was changed into only being a primary. Then they put the building down some years later. The new school was Paddington, that was the first time we had ever been into a brand new school, I remember the new classrooms. We had not been in many new buildings before you see.

The St. Saviour Church stood at the epicentre of frenetic clearances and reconstructions throughout the 1960 up until the 1990s. Marked for demolition like much of its surroundings, the church was razed in 1972. Council apartment blocks were built over the large emptied land, but demolished 15 years later due to its extremely poor quality (and following residents’ protests). In 1994, the new Women’s Hospital was built in its place merging the old Women’s on Catherine Street and two Victorian maternity hospitals on Oxford Street and Mill Road, respectively.

I remember when the Jamaica opened we were excited. My boyfriend at the time organised parties there and I used to go at least three times a week. It was a nice space. Like you felt safe, also as a Black woman you know, you could not go to many clubs into town, well into the 1990s, they simply did not let us in. So we stayed in L8. The Jamaica was a little different than other L8 clubs, more young people went there, probably less white people than in other clubs. Then it all changed, lots of clubs shut down. I got pregnant and had to leave for a while with the baby. When I came back clubs were not there anymore.

The Jamaica House was another thriving social club in the area and a vital community hub. Officially opened in 1981, the House was owned by a woman of mixed white scouse and Nigerian heritage and her Nigerian husband. The basement and ground floor welcomed parties and gatherings (with a bar, a snooker table, a small stage, and a dancing floor) while the three upper rooms could occasionally be rented out. Locals report that, after the woman owner died in the 1990s, the club lost some of its vibrancy. Converted into a hotel in October 1996, the house was occasionally used by social services to distribute food and services to precariously housed people. The premises are now vacant after the hotel permanently closed in the 2000s.

REFERENCES

Books, Articles, and Reports

Belchem, J. (2015). Before the Windrush: Race Relations in TwentiethCentury Liverpool. Liverpool University Press.

Belchem, J., & Biggs, B. (2011). Introduction. In J. Belchem, & B. Biggs, Liverpool City of Radicals. Liverpool University Press.

Ben-Tovim, G. (n.d.). Race, Politics, and Urban Regeneration: Lessons from Liverpool. In Regenerating the Cities: The UK Crisis and the US Experience (pp. 129-141). Scott Foresman.

Brown, J. N. (2009). Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail Geographies of Race in Black Liverpool. Princeton University Press.

Butler, A. (2020). Toxic Toxteth: Understanding press stigmatization of Toxteth during the 1981 uprising. Journalism, 21(4), 541–556.

Caslin, S. (2018). Save the Womanhood! : Vice Urban Immorality and Social Control in Liverpool C. 1900-1976. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Clay, D. (2020). 1919-2019: A Liverpool Black History, 100 Years. Beaten Track Publishing.

Cornlius, J. (1982). Liverpool 8. Liverpool: John Murray.

Costello, R. H. (2001). Black Liverpool: The Early History of Britain’s Oldest Black Community 1730-1918. Liverpool: Picton.

Frost, D. (1999). Work and Community Among West African Migrant Workers Since the Nineteenth Century. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Frost, D., & Catney, G. (2020). Belonging and the intergenerational transmission of place identity: Reflections on a British inner-city neighbourhood. Urban Studies, 57(14).

Frost, D., & North, P. (2013). Militant Liverpool: A City on the Edge. Liverpool University Press.

Frost, D., & North, P. (2013). Militant Liverpool: A City on the Edge. University of Liverpool Press.

Frost, D., & Philips, R. (2011). Liverpool ‘81: Remembering the Riots. Liverpool University Press.

Frost, D., Catney, G., & Vaughn, L. (2021). ‘We are not separatist because so many of us are mixed’: resisting negative stereotypes of neighbourhood ethnic residential concentration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Grdner, K., & Graham Jones, S. (2021). A Radical Practice in Liverpool: The rise and Fall of Princes Park Health Centre. Liverpool: Writing on the Wall. Hatherley, O. (2010). A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. London: Verso Books.

Hayter, K. (2017). Toxteth Tales: Growin’up in LIVERPOOL 8. Palatine Books. Howell, P., Beckingham, D., & Moore, F. (2008). Managed zones for sex workers in Liverpool: contemporary proposals, Victorian parallels. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(2), 233-250.

Hughes, R. (2015). The Bollards of Liverpool 8. A Sense of Place. Retrieved 2022, from https://asenseofplace.com/2015/04/25/the-bollards-ofliverpool-8-2/

Kuumba Imami (2021) Passing the Baton: The Story of L8 a Better Place 20182021 Liverpool, Kuumba Imami

Marne, P. (2001). Whose public space was it anyway? Class, gender and ethnicity in the creation of the Sefton and Stanley Parks, Liverpool: 1858–1872. Social & Cultural Geography, 2(4), 421-443.

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Small, S. (1996). Racialised Relations in Liverpool: A Contemporary Anomaly. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 17(4), 511-537.

Sykes, O., Brown, J., Cocks, M., Shawa, D., & Coucha, C. (2013). A City Profile of Liverpool. Cities, 299-318.

Thompson, M. (2015). Between boundaries: From commoning and guerrilla gardening to community land trust development in Liverpool. Antipode, 47(4), 1021-1042.

Thompson, M. (2020). Reconstructing Public Housing: Liverpool’s Hidden History of Collective Alternatives. University of Liverpool Press.

Uduku, O., Ben-Tovim, & g. (1997). Social Infrastructure In Granby/Toxteth A Contemporary Socio-cultural and Historical Study of the Built Environment and Community in “L8”. Liverpool: University of Liverpool.

Uka, U. U. (2016) Igbo Community in Liverpool. Liverpool: Copycraft International Limited

Vathi, Z., & Burrell, K. (2020). The making and unmaking of an urban diaspora: The role of the physical environment and materialities in belongingness, displacement and mobilisation in Toxteth, Liverpool. Urban Studies, 1-20.

Vathi, Z., & Burrell, K. (2021). The making and unmaking of an urban diaspora: The role of the physical environment and materialities in belongingness, displacement and mobilisation in Toxteth, Liverpool. Urban Studies, 58(6), 1211-1228.

Web and Video sources

Angiesliverpool https://www.instagram.com/angiesliverpool/?hl=en Granby Four Street Community and Land Trust https://www.granby4streetsclt.co.uk/ Historic Liverpool https://historic-liverpool.co.uk/ L8 UNSEEN http://www.l8unseen.com/ Laurence Westgaph’s Liverpool Slavery Tour https://openeye.org.uk/whatson/watch-liverpool-slavery-virtual-tour/ Liverpool then and Now https://www.facebook.com/LiverpoolThenAndNow/

Toxteth, Liverpool, UK - Black Community & Racism – 1989 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahUVjcCgyb8

Toxteth, Liverpool 1983 : Jamaica House / Sierra Leone Clubs & racist door policy in the city centre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jmuHcQooQ4

Toxteth, Liverpool, UK - 1986 : On Granby Street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEU0GxlOLeg

Voices From The Ghetto - Toxteth - Liverpool : Panorama 1985 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi43LHswUlQ Liverpool Tensions in Toxteth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G311hNvs0P0

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest thanks go to the women who opened their homes and hearts sharing their story with me. Your strength was a refuge in a time of struggle.

The students who helped with this project were far more than assistants. In particular, Hana Koubková, Evan Cheng, Luke Fawcett, and Kudzai Matsvai shaped the research and its outcomes.

Colleagues at the University of Liverpool provided crucial help. Professor Iain Jackson and Dr. Katerina Antonopoulou advised on the research process. Alex Dusterloh and Lucretia Ray as well as workshop technicians Stephen Bretland and Matthew Howarth generously shared their expertise to organise the exhibition. I am grateful to Dr. Frances Darlington-Pollock who won the RIBA grant with me.