Liverpool Lives

By Writing on the Wall

This is the story of the first fifty years of my life. Many people wonder what life was really like back then, so here it is, from childhood, to my service in the navy, my career in butchery and electronics, through marriage, children, love and loss, with some tears but also many laughs along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writing on the Wall
• Release date: Jun 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992832353

Book preview

Liverpool Memories

Contents

––––––––

Prologue  

1 Family Origins, distant childhood memories 1925 - 1934  

2 Formative years, coming of a terrible war 1935 - 1944/45    

3 Eventful family changes 1945 - 1948   

4 Civvy Street, Wedding, Honeymoon & Scouse life 1948/49 - 1950 

5 Married life, children and business changes 1950 - 1954      

6 Challenges, Changes, fears, fun and laughter 1955 - 1965  

7 Time marching on! The herald of a new generation 1955 - 1965  

Post Script 

PROLOGUE

This, my story, is an attempt to try and put together as much and as many of my life’s memories, good and bad, hoping that it conveys to future readers and generations how life in Liverpool and the Merseyside area was for a ‘normal’ small family, between the years of 1925 and 1975, as seen through my eyes.

I am now aged 88 years and I wish to dedicate this work to my dear daughter Gwendoline, and tender my grateful thanks to her with love.

Thomas Drever Kendrick

August 2013

CHAPTER ONE

1925 – 1934

OUR FAMILY ORIGINS AND MY DISTANT CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

The first home that I can remember was a tiny semi-detached two bed roomed house, 57 Chester Road, Tuebrook, Liverpool. My earliest memory being of playing with our dog, a black one called Nettle, and climbing in and out of his kennel, in the backyard. There was a farm at the end of the road where we got our milk, and the other end of the road joined Tuebrook, right opposite the local Bridewell close to the gates of Newsham Park.

My father was Thomas Drever Kendrick, a butcher by trade, managing a shop (a new one) for Mr D Higgins & Sons Ltd, shipping butchers of Liverpool. My mother was Alice Maud Mary Kendrick (nee Lunt), a greengrocery shop manageress for Waterworth Bros Ltd of Liverpool. Mum and Dad were married on 9th June 1924 at Holy Trinity Church, Walton Breck, Liverpool. They had their honeymoon in Llandudno, North Wales, travelling there by train.

My dad was a keen amateur carpenter, making all kinds of wooden household gadgets, cupboards, shelves etc., and when I was expected, so I am told, he proceeded to make a lovely substantial drop-side cot ready for my arrival, which was late evening on 29th March 1925. I was born in the annexe of Liverpool Maternity Hospital, which was then in Brownlow Hill, Liverpool close to the university. My parents had planned a home birth, but unfortunately my mother developed severe kidney problems and at the last minute was admitted to hospital. I was told that my father carried my expectant mother down our very narrow staircase to assist the ambulance crew.

As regards my parental backgrounds, my dad’s parents, Thomas Drever Kendrick and Amelia (nee Hodginson), lived in Ludwig Road, Anfield, Liverpool. Dad had one sister, called Elsie, known later by all affectionately as Aunty Elsie.

My mother’s parents, John William Lunt and Isabella (nee Benson Graham), lived in Pringle Street, Tuebrook, Liverpool. Mum had two sisters called Isabella and Elizabeth and as far as I can remember one brother (who at the time of writing – I have been unable to find any information about). Her father was a foreman/ manager in The Liverpool Corporation.

To assist my readers in the appreciation of the importance and size of The Port of Liverpool and the city, I’d like to include a few details of my memories of the port, the town, The River Mersey, and all the humdrum comings and goings of such a port, as I proceed with each chapter of this life’s story. Suffice it to say now, that there were then in the 1920/1930s ferry services to Birkenhead, Wallasey, Rock Ferry, New Brighton, The Isle of Man, Ireland - both North and South, and to North Wales. The service to Eastham Locks for the Manchester Ship Canal was always subject to tidal conditions and generally was only once a day at high tide.

Then there were passenger services to most parts of the world, including USA, South Africa, India, the Far East and South America, to name a few, and also a huge merchant fleet service to virtually everywhere in the world.

In our house at 57 Chester Road we didn’t have any electricity, at that time, only gas lights and a little gas cooker. We did have a cold water tap in the kitchen sink and an outside toilet with a water flush and a creaking door.

In 1927 my mother announced that were going to have a little baby come to live with us, and in due course mother gave birth to my brother, John Roy Kendrick. He was a small baby and was not considered at that time to be very strong, and for a time he was very thin and not well. My mother had a very good friend in a near neighbour who lived around the corner in July Road, Tuebrook. Her name was Molly. We called her Aunty Molly and she used to take both Roy and I out for walks with the pram for shopping and to Newsham Park to see the duck pond, the boats and the birds in the aviary. Aunt Molly’s name was Mrs Squires and her husband’s name was George. He had taken part in the 1914/1918 Great War, coming home badly wounded with serious back injuries. But he was able to work as a tram driver on Liverpool Trams. By a strange stroke of fate, readers will note that I mention Mr & Mrs Squires once again in a later chapter many years further on.

The Liverpool City Main Tramway Services operated mainly from the Liverpool Pier Head, outwards through the various suburbs of the city to what in those days were the surrounding villages of Garston, Walton, Wavertree, Woolton, Knotty Ash, Old Swan, West Derby and Prescot, to name a few. In due course as the years went by and the boundaries gradually altered outwards, these became included in the City of Liverpool.

In the 1930s into the 1940s there was still a lot of horse drawn transport in use. Names I remember using horse drawn vehicles include L Marr & Son – Cooperative Society (coal, bread, milk etc.), many local coal dealers – W Faulkner, Arthur Dodd (Ken Dodd’s father), A N Atkins (Fruit and Vegetables) Waterworth’s (Fruit and Vegetables), and also many removal firms and Funeral/Undertakers too. The Liverpool Corporation Bin Department still used horse drawn bin carts as well as many other horse drawn trucks of various types. But the steam roller and steam traction engine were well in evidence for very heavy jobs, and steam wagons were in regular use between the docks and out to the British Insulated Calendar Cables (BICC) works at Prescot. I used to watch these steam wagons on the East Prescot Road, carrying huge ingots of copper out to the Prescot Cable Works. There were special water hydrants on route for the steam wagons; one at the top of Prescot Street – in the city and another in Old Swan outside the Midland Bank (now known as the HSBC bank).

To return again to the river and the port, I clearly remember the sound of the one o’clock gun which was fired at the Morpeth Dock, Birkenhead, in the middle of each working day. A custom from the old sailing ship days that acted as a time keeping device for dock workers, stevedores and shippers. It was discontinued when the war broke out in 1939 and after the end of war started again for a few years, but finally finished altogether in the early 1960s.

My dad always went to work on his bike and as a family, if we travelled any distance, it was always by tram. In 1929 it was an excitement for us when we moved house to Thomas Lane, Knotty Ash, to a brand new three bed roomed semi-detached home with inside toilet, modern kitchen, and front, back and side gardens. I vaguely remember the moving day. We had a large horse drawn removal van, and I was allowed to sit on the front seat with the driver, with our canary in his cage next to me. Our new home seemed so large to me, and we were right out in the country then with a farm on the opposite side of the road to us, and plenty of fields with cows, horses and sheep. A lot of houses near us were not yet completed, so I had a most happy time being friends with all the workmen doing the house building.

In the fullness of time I was enrolled at the Knotty Ash Church Infants School in the village opposite St Johns Church. When I think back now, what a primitive little place it was, but we had a good time there, Miss Hill being the then head mistress. The Arthur Dodd Coal Yard was just local, behind the infant school and the Dodd children too became scholars with me; Billy (William) Dodd the eldest, Ken (Kenneth) Dodd his brother and June Dodd their sister, and when Roy my brother became old enough he too attended the infant’s school. I have happy memories of many tea-times spent in the Dodd household at Mrs Dodd’s request, and of course with my mother’s permission.

Early in 1931 mum told us she was going to have baby and in due course my sister, Alice Joyce Kendrick, was born on May 7th 1931, with much excitement and family celebrations over the new baby being a girl. During these early days in the 1930s there seemed to be such a lot of family happenings, as well as me spending more and more spare time helping at the shop were my dad worked and helping in the garden. With my little grandma’s family being so large, she was one of seven sisters and one brother (he emigrated to Australia), we always seemed to be taken out at weekends to parties at numerous other family homes. I remember being taken by ferry over to Wallasey to go to Aunt Hannah’s and Uncle Earns. They had a Bakers Shop and lived above it, with a great big living room, ideal for big parties.

We always stayed over on the Sunday night, sleeping four in a bed, and I can still remember waking very early on the Monday morning to the lovely smell of baking bread. I would creep downstairs with the noise of the bakery mixing going on, peep through the bake house door, where I could see Uncle Earn and his helper getting fresh baked produce ready for the shop. He of course saw me (he was a lovely man and very fond of children), came across to me and asked me how many of us where there upstairs. I said four. Whereupon he got four fresh warm scones off the rack for me, opened a huge tin of raspberry jam, sliced the scones through with a big knife spreading loads of jam inside, dropped them into a brown paper bag and putting them in my hands saying Here yar Drever, take em upstairs be very quiet and DON’T TELL YOUR AUNTY HANNAH - all in merriment of course. Lovely scones, lovely times and a lovely memory.

About this time too, my little grandma and granddad and Aunty Elsie moved into our old home at 57 Chester Road, we used to go to Sunday night parties there too (everybody had to go home with a jar of Auntie Elsie’s chutney) another one of the standing family jokes.

There were also parties at another of little Grandma’s sisters house , Aunty Nell (Aunty Ellen) and Uncle Jacks at 27 Colwyn Road, Stanley, Liverpool, which we reached by a journey on the 6a tram, dropping us off at what was then the Crosville Bus garage on Edge Lane. Her husband was Uncle Jack, a blind man who too loved company and children, and we loved him. They had a daughter called Maimie and the parties there were very memorable for me too.

As we move towards the mid-1930s, the farm opposite our house in Thomas Lane became empty and was demolished, and the lovely pear and apple trees were felled, much to my disgust as I had been allowed to help with harvesting their fruit each year.

The spare land on the corner of Thingwall Hall Drive and Thomas Lane became shops, seven in all, and new houses began to be built, so we lost our lovely fields of winter snow – where we used to go tobogganing and had snowball fights. A small bungalow on Thomas Lane, almost opposite Thingwall Avenue, which had been jutting out into Thomas Lane causing a narrowing was evacuated and then that too was demolished, enabling the road to be widened.

It was just before this, and outside this bungalow, that my brother Roy had a little road accident, but happily apart from shock and some bruising he wasn’t badly hurt. About this time plans were drawn up by Liverpool Corporation to resurface Thomas Lane, with The Penmaenmawr and Trinidad Lake Asphalt Company patented surface, and for overhead sodium street lighting to be installed. I took a keen interest in watching this being done; we had tar-boilers, steam rollers traction engines and night watchmen too! But no sooner was this finished when we heard news that tramlines may be put down for a new tram route numbered 40, and this is precisely what happened, in spite of a huge planning opposition, and the lovely new modern, drained roadway was torn up once again.

Our immediate next door neighbours at 2 Thingwall Avenue were Mr and Mrs Marks, together with Mrs Mark’s mother, and their young daughter Doreen. As Doreen was a similar age to my sister Joyce they made good friends together and stayed very firm friends throughout their lives. Mr Marks was an employee in the General Post Office Company in the Liverpool Offices. They were excellent neighbours and we all got along happily together throughout the years.

My mother began to trust me more for shopping trips, both locally and into town, and I was doing a lot more helping at my dad’s butcher shop where I used to be given a sixpence piece (6d) for pocket money each Saturday. If I wasn’t needed at the shop I would get on the 6A tram at Broadgreen Station and get a four rides for one penny child ticket, and travel to the Liverpool Pier Head to watch the ferries, the boats, the liners and the comings and goings of the port.

I used to see the RMS Franconia leaving weekly for America, also The Georgic, The Baltic, and The Ascania, and once I saw the Mauretania moored mid-river waiting for the high tide. Many times too I had witnessed the launching of vessels from the Cammel Laird Ship Builders Yard in Birkenhead – almost opposite the Liverpool Pier Head. This was always a grand sight to see, much ado all around the river, hooting and horns going and so marvellous to watch the little tugs taking the new vessel in tow and pulling it into the fitting out basin.

Sometimes too on a Saturday I can remember meeting a corporation workman coming down on his bicycle to a little tin roofed shed in the Pier Head Gardens. I very nosily asked him what the shed was for and he willingly explained how once every day his job was to cycle to the Pier Head at high tide time, start up the little paraffin engine in the shed, open the sluice gates for the city sewers and then to close them again in one hour’s time. I will not labour this memory any further! I regularly too, saw The Lady of Mann, The Manxman, The King Orry and the North Wales Steamers St Tudno and St Seiriol, and the River Ferry boats, Upton, Woodside, Rockferry, Marlowe, Storeton, Burton, Royal Daffodil, Hinderton, Leasowe, Moreton and the Royal Iris.

The landing stage was connected by a floating roadway to the mainland dock road, and at luggage ferry times I would watch the horse drawn carts, the motor lorries and the very few motor cars going down this roadway to the landing stage. Sometimes cattle were carried too! Off course in the fullness of time this was all phased out because the Queensway Mersey Road Tunnel was under construction, which would soon take the carriage of the goods by road from one side of the river to the other.

The Port of Liverpool docks were accessed by a dock road extending from The Liver Building, in the Bootle direction as far as the Gladstone Graving Dock and from The Liver Building in the Widnes direction as far as The Dingle. There was also alongside, and in some instances above this dock road, an overhead Electric Railway, known as The Dockers Umbrella and similar in type to the one in New York. This ran from Gladstone Dock right through to Dingle, with stations for each dock served along the route. This enabled workers and passengers to make reasonably easy access to liners and merchant vessels in the dock. Underneath this railway there was a mineral railway line to access the various docks with goods coming and going by steam train. As this line was not fenced in but running in an open roadway, a red flag man always had to walk in front of the train in order to comply with the Railways Act. This particular piece of legislation still survives to this day wherever a railway track is not fenced off.

Knotty Ash village in those days still had a local post office and shop, a village store that sold almost any type of food, a smithy, two local pubs, and yes even a small brewery and slaughterhouse. There was also a railway goods yard, quite a large one, a little railway station, styled as Knotty Ash and Stanley, and a very nice open piece of parkland called Springfield Park. There was too, an artesian well (borehole) in the low lying land near to the goods yard, which supplied the water for the little brewery, and also water into the local brook, flowing through the village after which the then new road, named Brookfield Avenue took its name. I used to drink from this brook as a boy, as I did from a small fresh water spring that was in the field alongside Thomas Lane before the road was made up. We had a parish church, St John the Evangelist, the vicar was Canon Powell, and we also had a small Wesleyan Chapel. Canon Powell was quite considerably attached to the village school, paying numerous visits for prayers, occasions such as Empire Days, School functions and Annual Sports Days. Later on both Roy and I became involved in confirmation classes.

The village church in those days was virtually the centre of village life, but I do clearly remember the difference on a Sunday service if the vicar and the curate were going to be absent and the service was conducted by our favourite lay reader, officially titled in the church booklet as the Ruri – Deaconal Lay Reader, but my goodness was he well liked! The congregation was more than doubled when he conducted the service and I too always enjoyed his preaching. He didn’t live in the parish but came on his bicycle from Moscow Drive, Green Lane, Stoneycroft. His name was Mr Pollard, and I now know that his manner of preaching the gospel altered for me my entire life’s beliefs and followings. Although I was confirmed Church of England and married Church of England, from the 1940s onwards I began to favour Wesleyan Methodism and still do to this day.

Family holidays were always a bit difficult for our family because of Dad not being able to be away from our shop for long. However I do well remember a couple of short holidays that Mum and Dad managed to arrange for us. One was to Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula to a boarding house at No 49 Ferndale Road. The bottom end of the road joined the little promenade so it was easy for us to get to the sands and the seaside each day. We travelled there by underground electric train from Liverpool to Birkenhead Park Station, where we then changed trains on to a little steam train that ran to all stations to West Kirby. I mention this particularly because the station before Hoylake was called Meols, and by this station was a lovely big duck pond. Dad used to travel back to work each day and return to us each evening. We were all having a super holiday there until I managed to get a really nasty cut finger, on a clockwork metal tug boat, which Dad had bought for me, so I was a wounded soldier for the rest of the holiday.

Back at home Dad always rode his bicycle to work and on his way home he would pass Knotty Ash Railway Station, and sometimes during the summer months there would be an advertising hoarding, outside the station, advertising Sunday and or Bank Holiday excursion trains to Ainsdale Beach, and Southport. So one weekend Dad announced after breakfast that we would all be going to the seaside at Ainsdale, where we would have a picnic, play on the beach and paddle etc. This was a really fun day out that was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Whilst there, my Mum and Dad noticed that there was also a small boating/fishing lake, with some wooden summer holiday chalets around it. They had obviously made enquiries concerning these chalets and soon we were promised a short summer holiday stay in one of them. We duly travelled there by the usual train from Knotty Ash Station. We had, I think, two other family members staying with us (friends of Mum and Dad), as well as Mum, Dad, myself, Roy and Joyce.

But the main memory for me was during one early afternoon. I was paddling in the lake with Roy and another boy when a girl came over to me to ask if I could swim out to a coloured piece of material that was floating on the surface about 20 feet out. I said of course