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When we live in a house, we're just passing through. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:07 | |
People have occupied it before us, | 0:00:07 | 0:00:09 | |
others will take our place when we leave. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
100 human dramas played out in every room. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:16 | |
Every house in Britain has a story to tell, but in this series, I'm | 0:00:19 | 0:00:24 | |
going to uncover the secret life of just one - | 0:00:24 | 0:00:26 | |
a single townhouse here in Liverpool... | 0:00:26 | 0:00:30 | |
UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
..a city that rivalled New York in the late 19th century, | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
yet 100 years later was one of the poorest places in Europe. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:43 | |
In many ways, 62 Falkner Street is an ordinary house. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:49 | |
But as I'm going to show you, | 0:00:49 | 0:00:51 | |
in reality it's an amazing treasure trove. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
He leaves them not just £100 but all also number 62 Falkner Street. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:59 | |
In March 1885, again in this house, | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
he grabbed her by the throat and assaulted her. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
The life that you can see recorded in these old documents is | 0:01:05 | 0:01:09 | |
extraordinary. Delving into the archives, | 0:01:09 | 0:01:12 | |
I'll use the personal histories of the residents of this house to | 0:01:12 | 0:01:15 | |
reveal the story of Britain over almost 200 years... | 0:01:15 | 0:01:19 | |
..a period of seismic social change, | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
from the early years of Victoria's reign, | 0:01:24 | 0:01:28 | |
right through to the present day. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:30 | |
In this episode, the swinging '60s engulf Liverpool... | 0:01:32 | 0:01:36 | |
..a famous neighbour arrives... | 0:01:36 | 0:01:39 | |
The door burst open and the arrival of John Lennon, see. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:42 | |
The residents witness riots, destruction, | 0:01:43 | 0:01:47 | |
and the coming of an epidemic. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:49 | |
And the very existence of our house hangs by a thread. | 0:01:49 | 0:01:54 | |
And if the house is vacant, then it was at serious risk of | 0:01:54 | 0:01:58 | |
being demolished. | 0:01:58 | 0:02:00 | |
I'm going on the ultimate detective hunt, to discover lives that haven't | 0:02:00 | 0:02:04 | |
been recorded in the history books, | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
but which can tell us a new version of our nation's past - | 0:02:07 | 0:02:11 | |
a new history of Britain hidden within the walls of a single house. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
Welcome to number 62 Falkner Street. | 0:02:36 | 0:02:40 | |
This Georgian-style townhouse was built as a gentleman's residence | 0:02:40 | 0:02:44 | |
in one of the Empire's great trading hubs - Liverpool. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:48 | |
The area in which it sits, | 0:02:50 | 0:02:52 | |
Liverpool 8, has gone from being a middle-class enclave to a mixed | 0:02:52 | 0:02:56 | |
neighbourhood where people of different races, | 0:02:56 | 0:02:59 | |
classes and religions live cheek by jowl. | 0:02:59 | 0:03:02 | |
The house, too, has slid down the social scale. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:08 | |
It's gone from smart, single dwelling house, to boarding house, | 0:03:09 | 0:03:14 | |
to a series of cheap rented rooms. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:17 | |
Its first resident - a Liverpool | 0:03:17 | 0:03:20 | |
customs clerk, had moved in back in 1841, | 0:03:20 | 0:03:23 | |
and since then, more than 50 people had called this house their home. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:28 | |
I want to find out what happened to the house from the post-war years | 0:03:31 | 0:03:35 | |
until today. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
As well as sifting through electoral rolls, directories | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
and newspapers, | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
for the first time, I'll meet some of the people | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
who actually lived there. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:47 | |
My search begins in the year 1945. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:53 | |
The house has new occupants. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:55 | |
The family living here are called the Stotts. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
There's Reynold, who's 48 - he's an electrician. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
His wife, Ada, who's 45 and a shorthand typist. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:09 | |
And their daughter, Audrey. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:11 | |
Frustratingly, we've been able to find very little evidence with which | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
to build up a picture of this, family. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:18 | |
and we can't find any trace of any living relatives. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:21 | |
But we've spoken to people who knew them at the time, and we do strongly | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
believe that they were the owners of 62 Falkner Street. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:28 | |
The family moved in in 1945, | 0:04:31 | 0:04:33 | |
when Liverpool was picking up the pieces after the war. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:37 | |
German bombs had left the city's docks in ruins, | 0:04:39 | 0:04:42 | |
and 6,000 homes either destroyed or beyond repair. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:45 | |
With a wave of service personnel returning from the war, | 0:04:48 | 0:04:52 | |
the pressures on housing were intense. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:54 | |
Many young adults had no choice but to share with parents | 0:04:54 | 0:04:58 | |
or grandparents. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:00 | |
Rental accommodation was in short supply. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:04 | |
So it's no surprise that the Stotts decided to rent out rooms in | 0:05:04 | 0:05:07 | |
their large house. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:09 | |
The electoral roll reveals the names of their tenants. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:15 | |
They are John and Beryl Quayle. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:19 | |
And they move in in 1947, which is also the year that they get married. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:23 | |
And 62 Falkner Street is their first home as a married couple. | 0:05:23 | 0:05:27 | |
The Quayles were a typical young couple setting up their | 0:05:29 | 0:05:33 | |
first home together. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:34 | |
John was a returning serviceman. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:38 | |
He'd spent the war with the RAF's Fleet Air Arm, | 0:05:38 | 0:05:42 | |
repairing aircraft on a jungle airstrip in Sri Lanka. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:46 | |
He'd come to Liverpool to get a job as a motor mechanic. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:50 | |
His new wife, Beryl, was from the local area. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:54 | |
She worked as a dress fitter in a ladies' fashion house in the centre | 0:05:54 | 0:05:57 | |
of Liverpool. | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
We know the couple rented the two attic rooms at the top of the house, | 0:06:01 | 0:06:05 | |
originally used as children's bedrooms or servants' quarters. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
So this is the top floor. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:15 | |
-Yeah. -This will have been your parents' flat. -Huh! | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
Wow! Beautiful, big old house. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:22 | |
We have a wealth of information about John and Beryl's life here, | 0:06:23 | 0:06:27 | |
thanks to their son, Bill Quayle. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
Never been inside the building. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:32 | |
I knew about it, anecdotal, from my parents, and they loved it here. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
They were very, very happy here. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:38 | |
-And this is where it all began? -Oh, yeah. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:40 | |
The Quayles moved in straight after their honeymoon. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:45 | |
Beryl was just 20, John 22. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
The accommodation was far from grand, but it was a big step up. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:53 | |
This was the first time Beryl had lived away from her family home. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:59 | |
It was brilliant for them, | 0:07:00 | 0:07:02 | |
particularly for mother, cos she grew up with seven siblings in a | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
semidetached house with three bedrooms, | 0:07:05 | 0:07:07 | |
so she was used to sharing a room with four sisters. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:10 | |
So this would be palatial for her, cos she had her own room. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
Her and my dad for the bedroom, and then the front room is like, | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
"Wow, we can actually stretch out in here and do what we want." | 0:07:16 | 0:07:19 | |
For her, it was paradise. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
-So this was a really special place in your parents' life? -Yeah. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
-It was their first home together. -Yep. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:26 | |
But not an easy place to live, I imagine? | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
Well... Um, there was no water up here. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
So they had to get a bucket of water and bring it up the stairs to use | 0:07:32 | 0:07:36 | |
for washing and stuff. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:39 | |
Cos they used to have a washstand in the bedroom. | 0:07:39 | 0:07:41 | |
And they used to have a Primus stove in the living area, | 0:07:41 | 0:07:45 | |
so they could actually make a cup of tea and do the cooking. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
But they had to bring all the water all the way up the stairs, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
and to go to the toilet, all the way down to the ground floor. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:53 | |
How did your parents get together? | 0:07:58 | 0:08:00 | |
The story I got told was the fact | 0:08:00 | 0:08:03 | |
that my mother was persuaded to go to a dance organised by the Army. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:08 | |
It was a TA dance. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:10 | |
1940s JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
And my father was also persuaded to go, as well. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
So they both went to the dance, and that's where they met. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
They spent the whole evening dancing together. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:26 | |
And they went on from there. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
It's a universal story - | 0:08:31 | 0:08:34 | |
a young couple meet, fall in love, marry, and set up home. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
But what was different for the Quayles was that they were doing it | 0:08:39 | 0:08:43 | |
amidst crippling austerity. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:45 | |
The war effort had left the country with next to nothing - | 0:08:47 | 0:08:50 | |
it was bombed-out, exhausted and drab. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:53 | |
It's queue for everything. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:56 | |
In fact, it's far worse now than it was during the war. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
One of the Quayles' biggest | 0:09:05 | 0:09:07 | |
challenges was furnishing their new home. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:09 | |
I think the thing that's interesting about John and Beryl | 0:09:11 | 0:09:14 | |
setting up home in 1947 is that furniture was in very short supply, | 0:09:14 | 0:09:19 | |
and it's restricted through the rationing system. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
The couple's choices were very limited. | 0:09:25 | 0:09:28 | |
The production and supply of new furniture was tightly controlled by | 0:09:28 | 0:09:32 | |
the Government under its utility scheme. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
Even if it's utility furniture for priority customers only on the | 0:09:37 | 0:09:40 | |
points system, we can all take it as a hint that peace production | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
is on the way. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:45 | |
The idea that peace and plenty would return together just wasn't true. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
Beryl and John didn't go to a furniture showroom to choose the | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
furniture, because the furniture showrooms weren't allowed to have | 0:09:54 | 0:09:58 | |
any furniture on display. | 0:09:58 | 0:10:00 | |
They would have chosen, probably, from this utility furniture catalogue. | 0:10:00 | 0:10:05 | |
The local District Assistance Board would issue you 60 units | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
to spend on furniture. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:11 | |
Now you could only have these 60 units if you were bombed-out | 0:10:11 | 0:10:16 | |
or newly married. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:17 | |
And even then, there were restrictions placed on the kinds of | 0:10:17 | 0:10:21 | |
things that you could buy. So if you wanted a sofa bed, | 0:10:21 | 0:10:24 | |
you could only have a sofa bed if you lived in a bedsit. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
You couldn't have one if you lived in a house or a flat. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
So they were even able to control what the public were able to buy. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:36 | |
Despite the day-to-day hardships, | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
John and Beryl loved their rented rooms in Falkner Street. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:45 | |
But they didn't intend to be carrying pails of water upstairs | 0:10:45 | 0:10:48 | |
and cooking on a Primus stove forever. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:52 | |
They knew they wanted to start a family, | 0:10:52 | 0:10:54 | |
but as far as bringing kids up, this was not an ideal place. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
So they knew they were going to be using this as a stepping stone | 0:10:57 | 0:11:00 | |
to save up to be able to afford the deposit on a terraced house, | 0:11:00 | 0:11:05 | |
because they wanted their own place. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:08 | |
As you get a bit of money, you try and get yourself something with a bit of greenery. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:12 | |
Like many post-war couples, the Quayles wanted an escape | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
from the grime and the bomb damage of the city centre. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:21 | |
Their aim was to buy a house in the suburbs. | 0:11:21 | 0:11:23 | |
And their route out of Falkner Street was through hard work and careful saving. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:29 | |
Beryl kept her job in retail, | 0:11:29 | 0:11:31 | |
John worked his way up from mechanic to bus driver. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:34 | |
And the man who has spent a lot of his life in uniform, | 0:11:36 | 0:11:38 | |
he looks quite at ease in his bus driver's uniform. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
Yeah, he used to iron his own shirts every morning. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:44 | |
Yeah. He wore a uniform most of his life. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:47 | |
After saving for seven years, | 0:11:50 | 0:11:52 | |
the Quayles had enough for a deposit on their first house. | 0:11:52 | 0:11:56 | |
In 1954, they moved in. | 0:11:56 | 0:11:58 | |
Their new home had a separate kitchen, | 0:12:02 | 0:12:04 | |
a proper bathroom and a spacious living room. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
It must have seemed unimaginably luxurious after life in Falkner Street. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:16 | |
It's difficult for us to entirely remember, even though | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
it's only 50, 60 years ago, | 0:12:19 | 0:12:21 | |
but back then, millions of people regarded houses like this as relics. | 0:12:21 | 0:12:26 | |
Of an age that they wanted to escape from, not commemorate. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:30 | |
A year after they moved in, Beryl gave birth to her son, Bill, | 0:12:32 | 0:12:36 | |
the child she had always wanted. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
By fleeing the inner city, the Quayles were typical of the age. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:48 | |
The buses that John drove connected Liverpool to a whole series | 0:12:50 | 0:12:54 | |
of newly built settlements. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:56 | |
Housing developments were springing up in outlying towns | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
like Speke, Kirkby and Halewood. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:02 | |
New industrial estates provided jobs for their residents. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:07 | |
According to a post-war survey, | 0:13:07 | 0:13:09 | |
52% of women wanted to live in a suburb or small town. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:15 | |
This is the Daily Mail Book Of Britain's Post-War Homes, | 0:13:15 | 0:13:18 | |
based on the ideas and opinions of four-and-a-half million women. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:23 | |
And there's a lovely quote here, it says, | 0:13:23 | 0:13:25 | |
"Today, the women of the city are crying aloud, 'give us space, | 0:13:25 | 0:13:29 | |
" 'space in which to breathe, space in which to bring up our children, | 0:13:29 | 0:13:33 | |
" 'space in which to live, move and have our being.' " | 0:13:33 | 0:13:36 | |
After John and Beryl Quayle's departure, the house was rented out | 0:13:39 | 0:13:43 | |
to a succession of different people. | 0:13:43 | 0:13:45 | |
The landlords changed too. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:51 | |
When the Stott family left after 15 years in the house, | 0:13:51 | 0:13:55 | |
62 Falkner Street was sold to a local investment company. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:59 | |
Then came the '60s. | 0:14:08 | 0:14:09 | |
There was an explosion of painting, music, poetry and counterculture | 0:14:15 | 0:14:20 | |
from the coffee shops, pubs and art studios of Liverpool. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
How can we account for this great outburst of creativity | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
in this city at that moment? | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
Well, for a start, there were lots of young people in the population, | 0:14:34 | 0:14:38 | |
thanks to the post-war baby boom. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:40 | |
And Liverpool being a port town, had always had strong connections to the | 0:14:40 | 0:14:44 | |
wider world and it absorbed lots of cultural influences. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:48 | |
But more than that, Liverpool has always had a very strong sense of | 0:14:48 | 0:14:53 | |
its own identity. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:55 | |
A creative, nonconformist streak | 0:14:55 | 0:14:57 | |
that's often found expression in the arts. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:01 | |
Not far from the house lives June Furlong. | 0:15:06 | 0:15:10 | |
She has vivid memories of the neighbourhood at the time. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:13 | |
If you walked that way, you get into all the art establishments. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:19 | |
You walked that way, you get into the Liverpool University. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:23 | |
And then you walked that way, and you got to the Rialto. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
So it was all going on. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
There were social clubs that were quite nice along there. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
You just go up here and turn left - Falkner Square... | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
..and that Embassy Club... | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
In the daytime, it was a sort of eating club, you know, | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
dining club and all that. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:42 | |
At night, it was changed completely. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:44 | |
I'd go with a big group of artists | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
because you could get a drink after hours. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:49 | |
And the Gladray Club in Upper Parliament Street, oh, God. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:57 | |
I mean, the things you'd see there, we'd only go in for a drink. | 0:15:57 | 0:16:01 | |
That was all swinging. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:06 | |
It was a very good scene, really, in the '60s. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
The nearby social clubs reflected the make-up of the neighbourhood. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:14 | |
Decades of immigration had led to a fantastic diversity | 0:16:14 | 0:16:19 | |
in the population. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:20 | |
So there was the Nigerian Club, | 0:16:22 | 0:16:24 | |
the Somali, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
the West Indian, | 0:16:26 | 0:16:28 | |
the Polish and Mediterranean clubs, | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
along with many others. | 0:16:31 | 0:16:32 | |
They played the latest imported records - | 0:16:34 | 0:16:37 | |
R&B, ska, jazz and calypso. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:39 | |
In the hipster area of Falkner Street, | 0:16:44 | 0:16:46 | |
there were some famous neighbours. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
John Lennon moved with his new wife, Cynthia, to number 36. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:53 | |
June got to know Lennon when she was working as a life model | 0:16:54 | 0:16:58 | |
at the art school. | 0:16:58 | 0:16:59 | |
I remember sitting in the room where I had sat all my life, | 0:16:59 | 0:17:04 | |
the door opened, burst open, and the arrival of John Lennon, you see. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:08 | |
And he looked at me and said, "My name is John Lennon, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:11 | |
"I'm enrolled to do a fine art degree here, | 0:17:11 | 0:17:14 | |
"and I'll be drawing you. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
"Is that all right?" I said, "Well, that's all right, you know, | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
"get yourself an easel, get a chair and sit down." | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
He was very entertaining, but he used the place | 0:17:23 | 0:17:26 | |
like a big cocktail party, you know. | 0:17:26 | 0:17:28 | |
I mean, if I had kept all those letters that John Lennon, | 0:17:28 | 0:17:32 | |
who came here regularly looking for me to go to parties, | 0:17:32 | 0:17:35 | |
if I'd kept all those notes from him, | 0:17:35 | 0:17:37 | |
I'd be in blooming South Kensington now, I wouldn't be sitting here. | 0:17:37 | 0:17:41 | |
The street was at the centre of the city's social, | 0:17:43 | 0:17:46 | |
cultural and intellectual scene. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:48 | |
But the '60s didn't swing for everyone. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:52 | |
In 1962, a family moved into the house. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:57 | |
-Robert. -Hi, David. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:01 | |
-Hi, nice to meet you. -And you. -And this is... | 0:18:01 | 0:18:04 | |
-This is where you were born? -I was born in that very house, yeah. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:07 | |
Robert Mercer Jr was born soon after his family moved into the house. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:14 | |
He spent the first seven years of his life here. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:18 | |
His father, Robert, did casual jobs, | 0:18:20 | 0:18:22 | |
his mother, Dorothy, was a former nurse. | 0:18:22 | 0:18:24 | |
He had three siblings, Trevor, Sandra and Jackie. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:30 | |
And what about the community that lived here? What sort of people had come to Falkner Street | 0:18:30 | 0:18:34 | |
-and the streets around? -Well, there was a mix, really. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:36 | |
I mean, next door and around the corner in Bedford Street was a | 0:18:36 | 0:18:40 | |
friend of my mother's - Alice and her husband. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:42 | |
They were from Jamaica. He was a docker. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
It was a nice community, you know, no problems. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:48 | |
It was really nice. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:50 | |
A nice mix of the different people. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
Different ages, as well. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
-Shall we go and see... -Certainly, yeah, let's go in. -..what it looks like now? -Yeah. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
Wow! It looks a lot smaller. | 0:19:00 | 0:19:02 | |
-The house looks smaller? -Yeah, well, I was seven when I left, wasn't I. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:05 | |
So, bound to be. | 0:19:05 | 0:19:07 | |
Hey, look at that, original, still. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:10 | |
Still the same original staircase that was fitted here. | 0:19:10 | 0:19:12 | |
The family rented two rooms and a landing on the first floor. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:17 | |
This is where we slept, in here. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:22 | |
The year after they moved in, Dorothy had a fifth child, | 0:19:22 | 0:19:25 | |
and soon seven family members shared this space. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:29 | |
-This was a bedroom? -Yeah, with a difference. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
It had a partition wall in. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:35 | |
Up, along and then down, with a doorway about here. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:40 | |
Mum and Dad slept in a bed there, and all five kids slept in there. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:46 | |
-Five siblings? -Yeah. So they could watch telly as well as us. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:51 | |
-The television... -The television was about there, yeah. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
Where's the bathroom? | 0:19:54 | 0:19:55 | |
Well, no bathroom. It's just a corridor, | 0:19:55 | 0:19:57 | |
at the end of the corridor was a toilet. | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
-Where did you wash? -Well, we'd wash in the sink. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:01 | |
We were only little kids, so we would fit in the sink. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
The Mercers' situation was mirrored all over the neighbourhood. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:15 | |
Families crammed into decaying, | 0:20:15 | 0:20:17 | |
old houses with nothing but the most basic facilities. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:21 | |
70% of the city's old housing was regarded as substandard. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:26 | |
A massive slum clearance programme saw houses demolished and residents | 0:20:29 | 0:20:33 | |
moved to new high-rise and overspill estates. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:37 | |
But the speed of rebuilding utterly failed to keep pace with demolition. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:44 | |
18,000 households remained on the list for council housing. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:48 | |
And huge gaps began to appear in the once-elegant terraces | 0:20:48 | 0:20:52 | |
around Falkner Street. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
I would sit on the field, we used to have bonfires. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:00 | |
-When you say field, you mean an area that was bombed? -Bombed-out. | 0:21:00 | 0:21:03 | |
-It's hardly countryside! -You mean a bomb site! | 0:21:03 | 0:21:06 | |
Yeah, a bomb site, yeah. Opposite, there was a little | 0:21:06 | 0:21:08 | |
corner shop, stood on its own. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
Tobacconist/sweet shop, you used to go in there for sweets. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:13 | |
Stood on its own cos everything else around you was bombed-out? | 0:21:13 | 0:21:16 | |
Everything else, yeah. Stairs going up into the shop. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:18 | |
Certain things stick in your mind, don't they? | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
I've got this picture, which is from the late '60s, | 0:21:21 | 0:21:23 | |
taken in Liverpool. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
Do you recognise these sort of conditions? | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
Yeah. The oven there, the stove on the landing, just outside there. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:32 | |
-Because there is no kitchen? -Yeah. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:34 | |
Exactly like that. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:36 | |
We'd get tinned potatoes, meats, peas, | 0:21:36 | 0:21:39 | |
put them all in the pan and make, like, a stew. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
And it's tinned food because I'm not seeing a fridge. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:44 | |
No, never had a fridge. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:46 | |
So... | 0:21:47 | 0:21:48 | |
It was just them times, wasn't it, you know? | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
Even though it wasn't the best conditions, was it fun being here as a kid? | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
Oh, yeah. It's home, isn't it? | 0:21:54 | 0:21:56 | |
If you didn't live here and then come here you'd think, "What a slum that is," | 0:21:56 | 0:21:59 | |
type thing, wouldn't you? No, it was fantastic. We loved it. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:02 | |
In 1969, after seven years in the house, | 0:22:05 | 0:22:08 | |
the family moved out to a new home, | 0:22:08 | 0:22:10 | |
16 miles away in Runcorn. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:12 | |
After years of casual work, | 0:22:18 | 0:22:20 | |
Robert's father had got a new job at a chemical works. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
The year that the Mercers left, | 0:22:28 | 0:22:30 | |
a photographer was travelling around Britain. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:33 | |
He'd been sent by the housing charity Shelter to all the most deprived parts of the country | 0:22:33 | 0:22:38 | |
to take photographs of the conditions there. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:41 | |
And perhaps, inevitably, | 0:22:41 | 0:22:42 | |
that journey took him to Liverpool 8 and to Falkner Street, | 0:22:42 | 0:22:46 | |
where he took a couple photographs, including this tragic image | 0:22:46 | 0:22:50 | |
of a young girl and her baby sister. | 0:22:50 | 0:22:53 | |
It looks like they got dressed up to have their photograph taken, | 0:22:53 | 0:22:56 | |
and yet they're standing in appalling conditions. | 0:22:56 | 0:23:00 | |
Broken windows, damp running down the walls. | 0:23:00 | 0:23:03 | |
These are the conditions of Falkner Street at the end of the 1960s | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
and the beginning of the 1970s. | 0:23:07 | 0:23:09 | |
This could be a Warsaw in 1944, but it isn't. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:18 | |
It's my own city, Liverpool, in 1972. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:21 | |
By the '70s, slum clearance schemes had moved 160,000 people | 0:23:21 | 0:23:26 | |
out of central Liverpool. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:29 | |
Entire streets were now abandoned. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:31 | |
This coincided with a downturn in the local economy. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:36 | |
There were multiple factory closures, huge sectors of the docks, | 0:23:37 | 0:23:41 | |
once the lifeblood of the city, were shut down. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
In Liverpool 8, the neighbourhood around Falkner Street, | 0:23:45 | 0:23:48 | |
unemployment was rife. | 0:23:48 | 0:23:50 | |
There's no jobs anyway. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:54 | |
There is only them scheme jobs, and they're not... | 0:23:54 | 0:23:56 | |
Are you resigned to the fact that you'll never get a job? | 0:23:58 | 0:24:00 | |
-Yeah. -Really? | 0:24:00 | 0:24:02 | |
62 Falkner Street in the midst of this blighted, | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
forgotten neighbourhood was sold again. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:10 | |
Another company, Rankmore Properties, bought it in 1971 | 0:24:10 | 0:24:15 | |
for £620. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:17 | |
Around two thirds of what it had cost back in the 1840s. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:22 | |
As far as tenants go, there don't appear to have been any. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
On the electoral roll from the years 1970 to 1977, | 0:24:28 | 0:24:32 | |
there is no listing for number 62. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
And if the house is vacant in those years in Liverpool, | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
then it was at serious risk of being demolished. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:42 | |
But there was hope for number 62. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
Attitudes towards old Georgian and Victorian houses were beginning to | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
change, because many of the new estates that had been built to replace the | 0:24:50 | 0:24:55 | |
so-called slums had turned out even worse. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:59 | |
They had been built in haste. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:00 | |
They were unpleasant to live in. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:02 | |
Their residents felt isolated. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
Have you any criticisms about the new sort of life you're living here? | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
You come out onto the landing to come to the shops, | 0:25:08 | 0:25:10 | |
you never speak to anyone. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:12 | |
You know, I never see my neighbours at all. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
A few years ago, the architects and planners thought they'd got the | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
answer to all the problems of urban deprivation. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
They roared their bulldozers up and down working-class streets, | 0:25:21 | 0:25:25 | |
destroying the traditional communities. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:27 | |
And now, while those architects are no doubt sitting at home planning their next project, | 0:25:28 | 0:25:33 | |
people have to remain in what's left of their last experiment. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:36 | |
It's not surprising some of the people get pretty angry about it, | 0:25:36 | 0:25:40 | |
not surprising to find messages scrawled up on the wall, | 0:25:40 | 0:25:42 | |
messages like, "Get us kids out of here". | 0:25:42 | 0:25:45 | |
What did this all mean for 62 Falkner Street? | 0:25:50 | 0:25:53 | |
I've unearthed a trail of evidence revealing what happened to it next. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:58 | |
Two events took place in the 1970s that were to save | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
number 62 Falkner Street. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:04 | |
The first took place in 1975, | 0:26:04 | 0:26:06 | |
when an inspector from the Department of the Environment walked down the | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
street and decided that all of the houses were of such architectural | 0:26:10 | 0:26:14 | |
significance that they had to be saved, | 0:26:14 | 0:26:16 | |
that they had to become listed buildings, Grade II. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:19 | |
And here's the listing for number 62. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:23 | |
There's not much here, | 0:26:23 | 0:26:24 | |
a brief description of the basement window band, | 0:26:24 | 0:26:28 | |
wedge lintels, the Doric doorcases, | 0:26:28 | 0:26:31 | |
but what this listing meant was escape from the wrecking ball. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
The house was now protected in law for future generations. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:41 | |
Anyone altering or extending it without permission | 0:26:41 | 0:26:44 | |
could incur a fine, even a prison sentence. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:48 | |
The second event took place in 1976. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:53 | |
I have uncovered a planning application, | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
a proposal to turn 62 Falkner Street | 0:26:56 | 0:26:58 | |
from a single dwelling house into three flats. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:02 | |
It's been lodged by a social housing organisation called the | 0:27:02 | 0:27:06 | |
Liverpool Housing Trust. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:08 | |
During the '70s, the trust bought up hundreds of old empty houses in | 0:27:11 | 0:27:15 | |
Liverpool 8 and refurbished them for rental to low-income tenants. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
And 62 Falkner Street was one such house, | 0:27:21 | 0:27:24 | |
which they bought for just £400. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:27 | |
I've tracked down their former director. | 0:27:29 | 0:27:32 | |
What happened was a recognition that actually investing money in existing | 0:27:33 | 0:27:38 | |
housing could save it, | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
and so Liverpool Housing Trust ended up buying | 0:27:41 | 0:27:45 | |
about 150 of these large properties, which made about 400 flats, | 0:27:45 | 0:27:51 | |
and, all told, the whole area was systematically tackled | 0:27:51 | 0:27:56 | |
over a period of about ten years. | 0:27:56 | 0:27:58 | |
These are the plans that were produced by the Liverpool Housing Trust | 0:28:01 | 0:28:04 | |
for the conversion of 62 Falkner Street. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:08 | |
Each floor is to become a self-contained, one-bedroom flat, | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
with its own bathroom and its own kitchen. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:14 | |
The basement, where the kitchen and scullery used to be, | 0:28:18 | 0:28:21 | |
was sealed up and used for storage. | 0:28:21 | 0:28:23 | |
The ground floor, originally the dining room and morning room, | 0:28:25 | 0:28:28 | |
became Flat 1. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:30 | |
The first floor, designed as a drawing room and master bedroom, | 0:28:35 | 0:28:38 | |
became Flat 2. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:40 | |
And the small attic bedrooms became Flat 3. | 0:28:45 | 0:28:48 | |
Now what's of course lost in all of this are the original features, | 0:28:52 | 0:28:56 | |
the ceiling rose, the cornicing, the panelled doors, | 0:28:56 | 0:29:00 | |
all the things that really mattered to the first Victorian owners | 0:29:00 | 0:29:04 | |
of this house are, I'm sad to say, | 0:29:04 | 0:29:06 | |
stripped out, put in a skip and thrown away. | 0:29:06 | 0:29:10 | |
Of course, now we value period features and houses, | 0:29:20 | 0:29:24 | |
so we might think of it as cultural vandalism, | 0:29:24 | 0:29:27 | |
but I think if we see it through the lens of the time, | 0:29:27 | 0:29:30 | |
it was about looking forwards. | 0:29:30 | 0:29:33 | |
And of course, lots of the kinds of furniture that people were now using | 0:29:33 | 0:29:37 | |
were a bit incompatible with these older houses. | 0:29:37 | 0:29:40 | |
What we wanted to do is put in these lovely, tall, fitted units, | 0:29:45 | 0:29:50 | |
and then the focal point of the room really changed, as well. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:55 | |
The family would no longer sit around the fireplace, | 0:29:59 | 0:30:02 | |
they would be much more likely to all crowd around the television as | 0:30:02 | 0:30:06 | |
the focal point. So maybe there was no longer the need for this kind of | 0:30:06 | 0:30:11 | |
decorative focus in the room. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:13 | |
By 1979, the conversion was complete. | 0:30:24 | 0:30:27 | |
The most radical transformation in the house's 130-year history. | 0:30:28 | 0:30:33 | |
The first tenants moved in. | 0:30:34 | 0:30:36 | |
An elderly railway engineer lived in Flat 1 on the ground floor. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:42 | |
A single woman, remembered only as Miss French, | 0:30:44 | 0:30:47 | |
lived in Flat 2 on the first floor. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:49 | |
And on the top floor lived Brian Nicholson, | 0:30:52 | 0:30:54 | |
who worked as a printer for the local paper. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
We tracked Brian down, and his ex-partner, Gale Ewart, | 0:30:59 | 0:31:03 | |
who still live locally. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:05 | |
So what first brought you to Falkner Street? | 0:31:05 | 0:31:08 | |
I was lucky enough to get a flat, the offer of a flat, | 0:31:08 | 0:31:12 | |
from Liverpool Housing Trust, which was 62 Falkner Street. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:16 | |
So I moved in. That would probably be '79, somewhere around there, | 0:31:16 | 0:31:20 | |
so I would be about 28 at the time. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:22 | |
It was a nice place. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:24 | |
And then, sometime later, you moved in with me, didn't you? | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
Yeah, I moved in in about 1980, when I was 19. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
I lived about half a mile away in the centre of Toxteth. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
I eventually moved into that flat from home. | 0:31:34 | 0:31:37 | |
So this period in your life was the beginning of your time together as a | 0:31:37 | 0:31:40 | |
-couple. -Mm-hm. -We lived our lives, and then I got pregnant, | 0:31:40 | 0:31:44 | |
and we had a daughter there, which was fabulous, wasn't it? | 0:31:44 | 0:31:47 | |
In 1981, Brian and Gale brought their baby daughter, Kerry, home | 0:31:49 | 0:31:53 | |
to their tiny one-bedroom flat. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
So this is Brian and I at the time, with our daughter in the bath. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:04 | |
And so this is her with our gorgeous fireplace. | 0:32:04 | 0:32:07 | |
It's amazing to see the inside of the house from that period. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:10 | |
-It was a nice flat. It was a happy place. -Yeah. | 0:32:12 | 0:32:15 | |
A new chapter in Brian and Gale's life was just beginning. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:20 | |
But outside their front door, | 0:32:23 | 0:32:24 | |
the area still faced desperate social problems. | 0:32:24 | 0:32:28 | |
One commentator said that a pall of defeat hung more heavily over the | 0:32:29 | 0:32:33 | |
neighbourhood than any place he'd ever visited. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:37 | |
Unemployment was running at nearly 40%, | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
and the local black community faced discrimination and harassment. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:45 | |
In July 1981, a few minutes' walk from Falkner Street, | 0:32:48 | 0:32:52 | |
the arrest of one young black man led to a scuffle | 0:32:52 | 0:32:55 | |
between police and the public. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:58 | |
This sparked a sequence of events that became known | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
as the Toxteth Riots. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:05 | |
# Babylon's burning | 0:33:07 | 0:33:09 | |
# You're burning the street | 0:33:10 | 0:33:12 | |
# You're burning your houses... # | 0:33:13 | 0:33:15 | |
'More than 100 white and coloured youths fought a pitched battle | 0:33:15 | 0:33:18 | |
'against the police. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:20 | |
'Ammunition was all around in derelict sites and empty houses. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:24 | |
'Police faced a hail of stones, bottles, iron bars and petrol bombs.' | 0:33:24 | 0:33:30 | |
What can you remember of that? | 0:33:30 | 0:33:31 | |
-Do you remember we were sitting in The Clock pub? -Yeah. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:37 | |
We were sitting in the pub, and we were looking out, | 0:33:37 | 0:33:39 | |
and there was a line of policemen with shields one side, | 0:33:39 | 0:33:42 | |
and a gang of young men the other side, sort of attacking them. | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
The police lines were shoved further and further back. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
I can recall at one point bricks and things coming back over the police | 0:33:49 | 0:33:53 | |
line, they were actually throwing bricks back at the people who were throwing them at them. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:56 | |
A very strange night. | 0:33:56 | 0:33:58 | |
# ..with anxiety | 0:33:58 | 0:34:00 | |
# Babylon's burning | 0:34:00 | 0:34:02 | |
# Babylon's burning... # | 0:34:02 | 0:34:04 | |
The next morning, when you woke up, what did Toxteth look like? | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
It was the smell you noticed first before you actually came out, | 0:34:08 | 0:34:10 | |
you could actually smell burnt rubber, you know, that strange smell. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:14 | |
And there were cars and things dotted around. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
The tarmac was just all burnt on Parliament Street, | 0:34:17 | 0:34:21 | |
and the buses had stopped running that way. | 0:34:21 | 0:34:23 | |
It was a main road through. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
I remember the milk floats. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:27 | |
A dairy was broken into, and you know the electric milk floats, | 0:34:27 | 0:34:30 | |
they were actually driven at the police. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:32 | |
There were tensions the whole time, you know, my whole life as a child, | 0:34:32 | 0:34:35 | |
so I understood, we both understood why the riots at the time happened, | 0:34:35 | 0:34:40 | |
because of the way people were treated, and the way | 0:34:40 | 0:34:44 | |
society had sort of left local people behind. | 0:34:44 | 0:34:48 | |
It was not a good time to be young and black, I don't think, | 0:34:48 | 0:34:52 | |
in the early '80s. | 0:34:52 | 0:34:54 | |
So we understood, and we were sort of very aware of what was happening. | 0:34:54 | 0:34:59 | |
After the first four days of rioting, | 0:35:02 | 0:35:04 | |
much of the main battle ground on Upper Parliament Street | 0:35:04 | 0:35:07 | |
was in ruins. | 0:35:07 | 0:35:09 | |
150 buildings had been burnt down. | 0:35:12 | 0:35:15 | |
Shops looted. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:19 | |
And injuries sustained, on both sides. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:24 | |
The causes of this mass uprising would be debated for months to come. | 0:35:28 | 0:35:33 | |
Members of the community were in no doubt about why it had happened. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:37 | |
Jimi Jagne was just 17 at the time. | 0:35:39 | 0:35:41 | |
What were the difficulties facing people living around here and in | 0:35:43 | 0:35:46 | |
Liverpool 8 in the years leading up to the riots? | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
There was no desire by the authorities | 0:35:49 | 0:35:51 | |
to assist people in breaking out of the community | 0:35:51 | 0:35:54 | |
and, in fact, on a social level, | 0:35:54 | 0:35:56 | |
whenever young black people tried to venture outside, | 0:35:56 | 0:36:00 | |
the racism that they'd encounter in surrounding districts was such that, | 0:36:00 | 0:36:04 | |
you know, you yearn for home, sweet home. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
So you'd find yourself pushed back to Liverpool 8 because the | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
-welcome outside wasn't exactly warm? -It was not good at all. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:13 | |
The biggest problem was the relationship between | 0:36:16 | 0:36:19 | |
the black community and the police. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:21 | |
The police in this city were practically masters of their own universe. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:27 | |
They were a very powerful police force. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:33 | |
They felt untouchable. We knew that they had a problem with us as black youths, | 0:36:33 | 0:36:36 | |
because they saw us basically as troublemakers. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:38 | |
How had things got that bad between the police and the black community? | 0:36:41 | 0:36:45 | |
It had always been bad for as long as I remember, | 0:36:45 | 0:36:47 | |
but growing up as a kid during the '70s, | 0:36:47 | 0:36:50 | |
it was obvious that there was a difficult situation with the police around here. | 0:36:50 | 0:36:54 | |
Their presence was felt all the time, | 0:36:54 | 0:36:56 | |
they'd be driving around in vehicles, | 0:36:56 | 0:36:58 | |
and you'd always hear stories of kids and teenagers and older people | 0:36:58 | 0:37:03 | |
being stopped on the streets by the police. | 0:37:03 | 0:37:05 | |
The Merseyside Police force had these problems, | 0:37:07 | 0:37:09 | |
now not all officers saw black people as criminals, | 0:37:09 | 0:37:12 | |
and not all the people who were living in L8 were black, | 0:37:12 | 0:37:15 | |
so this was a mixed community, wasn't it? | 0:37:15 | 0:37:17 | |
That's right, it was a very mixed community. | 0:37:17 | 0:37:20 | |
In terms of race, we were living really comfortably here, | 0:37:20 | 0:37:23 | |
everybody seemed to understand what the issues were for the next person, | 0:37:23 | 0:37:27 | |
and in fact those same issues more than likely impacted on yourself, | 0:37:27 | 0:37:31 | |
if not someone else in your family. | 0:37:31 | 0:37:32 | |
So there was no reason, really, | 0:37:32 | 0:37:34 | |
why there had to be any troubles here between people of different races. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:40 | |
We got along just great. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:42 | |
The disturbances of that summer, not just in Liverpool 8 | 0:37:43 | 0:37:47 | |
but in Brixton, Moss Side and elsewhere, | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
were the result of years of simmering frustration and anger. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:54 | |
What we had was a system that seemed to rail against us so completely | 0:37:56 | 0:38:00 | |
that we had no outlets. There was no way that we could express ourselves, | 0:38:00 | 0:38:04 | |
outside of this particular situation. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:06 | |
There were no guarantees that all that we were going to fix or remedy | 0:38:06 | 0:38:10 | |
our problem, but you had to die trying. | 0:38:10 | 0:38:13 | |
Looking back now, 35 years later, | 0:38:13 | 0:38:15 | |
what was the significance of those events? | 0:38:15 | 0:38:18 | |
Although this neighbourhood suffered for so many years as a consequence | 0:38:18 | 0:38:21 | |
of those riots, it was a pivotal point in race relations in this country. | 0:38:21 | 0:38:25 | |
It was brought to the attention of the whole country that we had problems here. | 0:38:25 | 0:38:28 | |
The riots of 1981 were a low point in the relationship between the | 0:38:32 | 0:38:36 | |
police and the Liverpool black community. | 0:38:36 | 0:38:39 | |
But they also marked perhaps the lowest point in the decline of | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
Liverpool as a city, because in the aftermath of the riots, | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
a programme of urban regeneration and renewal was put in place. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:51 | |
There was no overnight transformation in Liverpool 8. | 0:38:54 | 0:38:58 | |
Social problems persist to the present day, | 0:38:58 | 0:39:01 | |
but the recovery had begun. | 0:39:01 | 0:39:03 | |
Money flowed into Liverpool to tackle infrastructure, | 0:39:04 | 0:39:07 | |
housing and employment. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:09 | |
More than 850 acres of dockland, | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
most of which had been closed for years, | 0:39:15 | 0:39:17 | |
was restored and reopened. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:20 | |
The city's famous Albert Dock began to trade again, | 0:39:20 | 0:39:23 | |
though the money came now from tourism, not shipping. | 0:39:23 | 0:39:27 | |
62 Falkner Street continued its existence as social housing. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:35 | |
The tenants during the late '80s describe it as a happy place. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:42 | |
Life followed familiar routines. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:45 | |
Visits from family, nights at the pub. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:48 | |
In the early '90s, I moved to Liverpool to study history at the university. | 0:39:55 | 0:40:00 | |
At that time, the area around Falkner Street was run-down, | 0:40:00 | 0:40:04 | |
but it was regarded as exciting, diverse and Bohemian. | 0:40:04 | 0:40:07 | |
So the next wave of people who were drawn to the area came not just | 0:40:09 | 0:40:12 | |
because of the cheap rents, but because of its vibrant culture. | 0:40:12 | 0:40:16 | |
And they weren't labourers and bus drivers, they were sculptors, | 0:40:16 | 0:40:19 | |
musicians and poets. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:21 | |
Among these new tenants was Jeff Young, who moved in in 1992. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:31 | |
Of all the people I've traced, | 0:40:31 | 0:40:33 | |
he was the easiest to find because he's an acclaimed playwright | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
and screenwriter. | 0:40:37 | 0:40:38 | |
What drew you to living in this part of Liverpool? | 0:40:39 | 0:40:42 | |
I just always wanted to live in Liverpool 8, | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
from when I was a kid. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:46 | |
I was drawn to it romantically, physically, architecturally. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:50 | |
The life on the streets, the whole West Indian feel to it, you know. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:53 | |
But many people outside of Liverpool would have thought that's where the | 0:40:53 | 0:40:56 | |
-riots were. -Yeah, to me, the riots kind of fed into that atmosphere, | 0:40:56 | 0:41:01 | |
you know. You could feel the energy of the riots was still there. | 0:41:01 | 0:41:05 | |
A romantic, poetic, kind of Bohemian beatnik thing, | 0:41:05 | 0:41:09 | |
a little bit edgy, you know, after dark. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
You know, but that's exciting, you know. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:15 | |
So this is you back in the '90s? | 0:41:15 | 0:41:17 | |
This is me probably in the mid-'90s, slightly wild. | 0:41:17 | 0:41:22 | |
Wild-eyed, glassy-eyed, I think. | 0:41:22 | 0:41:26 | |
And which flat did you live in? | 0:41:26 | 0:41:27 | |
I lived in flat two, on the first floor. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
I've been looking trying to find some photographs. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:31 | |
These were both in the living room. | 0:41:31 | 0:41:33 | |
-That's me and my... -You and your cats? | 0:41:33 | 0:41:35 | |
Cats and my dad. My reluctant father in the photo. | 0:41:35 | 0:41:38 | |
Then, if you looked at the front of the house, it was intact as a | 0:41:39 | 0:41:43 | |
Georgian facade, as a Georgian building. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:45 | |
Inside, it was like living in cardboard boxes, you know? | 0:41:45 | 0:41:48 | |
The, kind of, dividing walls were paper-thin, | 0:41:48 | 0:41:51 | |
and it was almost like the identikit structure that they slotted into the | 0:41:51 | 0:41:54 | |
inside of the buildings, you know? | 0:41:54 | 0:41:56 | |
As a freelance writer, the flat was Jeff's office, | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
the neighbourhood was where he found his inspiration. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
So yeah, I was working as a writer. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:08 | |
I was working as a stand-up poet, | 0:42:08 | 0:42:10 | |
and then I got into theatre pretty quickly. | 0:42:10 | 0:42:12 | |
But it was the hanging-outness of it. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:15 | |
You'd get up late, you'd get some breakfast together, and then when it | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
seemed like a sensible enough time, you go to the pub. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
You know, and you'd meet other people in the pub. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:23 | |
And you'd be sitting with a painter, or a musician and you'd talk. | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
And so, that was it. That was the height of the dream for me. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:29 | |
I was a deadbeat. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:31 | |
Can you remember the other sort of people who were living in the flats | 0:42:31 | 0:42:34 | |
-in Falkner Street? -Yeah, you know, it's fluid, it changed all the time. | 0:42:34 | 0:42:38 | |
Upstairs was a musician and his daughter. | 0:42:38 | 0:42:42 | |
And downstairs was a guy who ran a tapas joint | 0:42:42 | 0:42:46 | |
up in the business quarter. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:49 | |
And he would play the organ in the evenings. | 0:42:49 | 0:42:51 | |
So quite often we would hear the music coming up from the... | 0:42:51 | 0:42:55 | |
Through the cardboard floors, you know. | 0:42:55 | 0:42:57 | |
He was very separate, he was very self-contained. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:03 | |
You would hardly ever see him. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:05 | |
But... I didn't get to know him. | 0:43:05 | 0:43:07 | |
I start a search for the mystery musical neighbour | 0:43:11 | 0:43:14 | |
from the ground-floor flat. | 0:43:14 | 0:43:16 | |
The electoral roll reveals his name, Mark Merino. | 0:43:19 | 0:43:22 | |
A native of Merseyside, of dual English and Spanish Basque heritage. | 0:43:22 | 0:43:26 | |
Although it's listed in an old phone directory from 1993, | 0:43:28 | 0:43:32 | |
Mark's restaurant no longer exists. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:34 | |
But then, I track down Mark's younger sister, Miranda, | 0:43:36 | 0:43:39 | |
who agrees to meet me. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:42 | |
My brother spent a bit of time living down in London | 0:43:42 | 0:43:45 | |
in the early '80s, and then he moved back up to Liverpool - | 0:43:45 | 0:43:49 | |
Falkner Street... and started the tapas bar. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:53 | |
Oh, it was just fabulous, the food, the atmosphere. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:01 | |
All the chefs were Basque. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:03 | |
Mark made a lot of effort. | 0:44:03 | 0:44:05 | |
You know, he would be up early in the mornings to go to the fish market, you know. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:09 | |
And he drove all the way to Valencia in Spain | 0:44:09 | 0:44:13 | |
to get the jamon serrano on the bone, you know, | 0:44:13 | 0:44:16 | |
because that is proper, proper, proper food. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:20 | |
And he'd put on flamenco evenings or piano evenings, | 0:44:20 | 0:44:27 | |
great musicians would come and play. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:29 | |
He was extreme and extravagant... | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
..but all in really good ways. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:37 | |
Mark's restaurant operated out of this building in central Liverpool. | 0:44:41 | 0:44:45 | |
His old friend Kath Charters used to visit back in the '90s. | 0:44:45 | 0:44:49 | |
So what was this place like when it was Mark's tapas bar? | 0:44:53 | 0:44:57 | |
Oh, it was really, really amazing because it was kind of a beautiful | 0:44:57 | 0:45:01 | |
spot in amongst a lot of not-quite-so-beautiful spots. | 0:45:01 | 0:45:05 | |
And it was, as well as being the first tapas bar, | 0:45:09 | 0:45:11 | |
it was part of the gay scene in Liverpool. | 0:45:11 | 0:45:13 | |
It was part of the gay scene in Liverpool, | 0:45:13 | 0:45:15 | |
I mean, all the piano players were gay, all the staff were gay, | 0:45:15 | 0:45:19 | |
and it was a place where people could go and be fed beautifully, | 0:45:19 | 0:45:23 | |
maybe have a little bit of quiet time, also have a little bit of fun time. | 0:45:23 | 0:45:26 | |
It was enjoyable and it was creative. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:29 | |
And what was the gay scene like in Liverpool in those days? | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
It was very joyous and very raucous. | 0:45:32 | 0:45:34 | |
I mean, there's always been and still is a camaraderie | 0:45:34 | 0:45:39 | |
in the gay community in Liverpool | 0:45:39 | 0:45:41 | |
that I don't personally experience anywhere else. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
But in 1993, while the restaurant thrived, | 0:45:47 | 0:45:50 | |
Liverpool's gay community was in the grip of the HIV epidemic. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:55 | |
From just a handful of cases a decade earlier, | 0:45:56 | 0:45:59 | |
there were now around 150 new diagnoses every year. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:04 | |
Many of the people in Liverpool most affected by the virus lived within a | 0:46:05 | 0:46:09 | |
short distance of the house. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:11 | |
What was the impact of HIV on the gay community here in Liverpool? | 0:46:14 | 0:46:18 | |
It was very devastating, as it was in lots of places. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:22 | |
I mean, where I lived and where Mark lived, | 0:46:22 | 0:46:25 | |
there was maybe, like, five to seven streets around that area | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
where numbers of gay men lived, and you would just kind of begin | 0:46:28 | 0:46:33 | |
to be aware that you weren't seeing that person on the street any more. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:37 | |
There were just people, young men, dying all the time. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:41 | |
We were literally attending a funeral every couple of weeks, | 0:46:41 | 0:46:45 | |
if not weekly. And there was that sense of desperation at the time | 0:46:45 | 0:46:49 | |
that people were not going to recover from this. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
Kath worked for a local HIV charity supporting people | 0:46:56 | 0:47:00 | |
living with the virus. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:02 | |
We had a very big therapeutic | 0:47:04 | 0:47:07 | |
team at that time. | 0:47:07 | 0:47:09 | |
And the people used to go and assist people with their shopping. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:13 | |
Maybe assist people cleaning, decorating the house. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:17 | |
Those kind of tasks that people may no longer be able to do. | 0:47:17 | 0:47:21 | |
But equally, that family members might be afraid to do. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:24 | |
Because people, even relatives, didn't want to go near their... | 0:47:24 | 0:47:29 | |
-Anyone who had HIV. -Yeah, and there was that whole thing... | 0:47:29 | 0:47:32 | |
-And touch them. -Yeah, or you might share cups with them, and that kind of thing. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:36 | |
This was thought to be a route of transmission, in those days, | 0:47:36 | 0:47:40 | |
by, you know, the outside world really. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:42 | |
In 1994, Kath came to 62 Falkner Street to support a new client. | 0:47:47 | 0:47:52 | |
Mark himself had contracted HIV. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:56 | |
Mark was someone you had known from this bar, from his restaurant. | 0:47:58 | 0:48:02 | |
-Yeah. -Then you got to know him in a different way, through your work. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:05 | |
Then I got to know him in a different way, yeah. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:08 | |
I was going out with one of the woman here in the bar. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:11 | |
I know the people who were actually associated with the bar would go | 0:48:11 | 0:48:15 | |
around to Mark's house when he was getting ill and we would cook and | 0:48:15 | 0:48:18 | |
talk to him and, you know, kind of be with him. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:20 | |
Mark got increasingly frail and he wanted to eat particular things | 0:48:23 | 0:48:28 | |
cos his big thing was to feed himself and food was his medicine. | 0:48:28 | 0:48:34 | |
So, we really spent a lot of time with him at home. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:38 | |
He didn't particularly want to be in hospital, | 0:48:40 | 0:48:42 | |
had a bit of an aversion to hospitals. He wanted to be at home. | 0:48:42 | 0:48:45 | |
So he was determined to spend his... What time he had left in Falkner Street? | 0:48:45 | 0:48:49 | |
Yeah, he wanted to be there. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:51 | |
-So you would sit in front of those big sash windows and... -Yeah, yeah. | 0:48:51 | 0:48:54 | |
-And eat and talk? -Yeah, we talked a lot. | 0:48:54 | 0:48:58 | |
At that time, in the early '90s, HIV treatments were largely ineffective. | 0:49:00 | 0:49:06 | |
The majority of people diagnosed went on to develop AIDS-related illnesses. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:11 | |
Mark's health went into rapid decline. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:14 | |
He was living in Falkner Street and he was just getting progressively | 0:49:16 | 0:49:20 | |
more ill. His stints in hospital would be longer, | 0:49:20 | 0:49:24 | |
and then the time out in between | 0:49:24 | 0:49:26 | |
when he went back into hospital would be less and less. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:31 | |
He started deteriorating quite rapidly. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:34 | |
The end was very, very unpleasant and very painful for him. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:42 | |
And for the observers as well. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:46 | |
It was tragic. | 0:49:47 | 0:49:49 | |
We didn't waste time in being morbid. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:56 | |
We made every single moment | 0:49:58 | 0:50:02 | |
that we could spend together... | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
..as wonderful as possible. | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
Because it was going to have to last me a long time, those memories. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:13 | |
Yeah. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:17 | |
Mark died in November 1994. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
He was 36. | 0:50:23 | 0:50:25 | |
Mark was not the first resident of 62 Falkner Street | 0:50:36 | 0:50:40 | |
to have had his life cut short by an epidemic disease. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:45 | |
But somehow, when such a death happens in the Victorian Age it | 0:50:45 | 0:50:49 | |
comes as no surprise to us. | 0:50:49 | 0:50:51 | |
And that's perhaps what was so shocking and disorienting about | 0:50:52 | 0:50:56 | |
AIDS and HIV, was that it took place at a time and to a generation | 0:50:56 | 0:51:02 | |
who had got used to the idea that medicine would always have an answer. | 0:51:02 | 0:51:07 | |
We had grown accustomed to the idea that it was other people, | 0:51:07 | 0:51:12 | |
at other times in the past, | 0:51:12 | 0:51:13 | |
who lived under the shadow of epidemic disease and not us. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:18 | |
And it makes it very real to me | 0:51:18 | 0:51:21 | |
to think that when I was a student living in this city, | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
my bus between university and home went down the bottom | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
of the street, that Mark was in this room facing the reality | 0:51:26 | 0:51:32 | |
of what HIV and AIDS meant. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:34 | |
I watched it on the news, I worried about the reports, | 0:51:34 | 0:51:37 | |
for him it was all too real. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:40 | |
In the new millennium, 62 Falkner Street was home | 0:51:47 | 0:51:50 | |
to a new crop of tenants. | 0:51:50 | 0:51:53 | |
The house was now one of 16,000 properties owned | 0:51:55 | 0:51:58 | |
by the Liverpool Housing Trust. | 0:51:58 | 0:52:00 | |
But when their funding began to dwindle, | 0:52:01 | 0:52:04 | |
the trust took the decision to sell off their most valuable houses. | 0:52:04 | 0:52:08 | |
After 25 years as rented flats, | 0:52:10 | 0:52:13 | |
plans were drawn up to convert 62 Falkner Street | 0:52:13 | 0:52:16 | |
back into a single dwelling. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:18 | |
The basement became two bedrooms and a bathroom. | 0:52:21 | 0:52:24 | |
The ground floor became a family kitchen and reception room. | 0:52:27 | 0:52:31 | |
The first floor, a play room and second sitting room. | 0:52:34 | 0:52:37 | |
And the top floor, three bedrooms. | 0:52:40 | 0:52:42 | |
The Falkner Street of today is unrecognisable from the place it was | 0:52:45 | 0:52:49 | |
in previous decades. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:51 | |
Liverpool's Georgian and Victorian terraces are now amongst the most | 0:52:52 | 0:52:56 | |
desirable properties in the city. | 0:52:56 | 0:52:58 | |
Liverpool historian John Belchem lives in such a house himself. | 0:53:00 | 0:53:04 | |
Falkner Street, or at least the parts of it that survive, look today | 0:53:04 | 0:53:09 | |
as beautiful as they must've done when it was first built. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:11 | |
This has been, has it not, an amazing story of regeneration? | 0:53:11 | 0:53:15 | |
It is a very successful story of regeneration | 0:53:15 | 0:53:18 | |
and an area of regeneration to a city centre. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:21 | |
Yes, as tastes have changed and people have come to appreciate | 0:53:21 | 0:53:24 | |
Georgian, early-Victorian architecture, a lot of care has gone | 0:53:24 | 0:53:28 | |
into restoring them and making people realise that | 0:53:28 | 0:53:31 | |
the architectural aesthetics of this really do | 0:53:31 | 0:53:33 | |
make a lovely area in which to live. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:36 | |
It's hard to imagine that these beautiful houses were ever seen as | 0:53:36 | 0:53:40 | |
-not having enormous value, but they were. -Indeed so, | 0:53:40 | 0:53:43 | |
because they were sort of in the wrong place at the wrong time, as it were. | 0:53:43 | 0:53:47 | |
But in a strange way it has come back full circle, | 0:53:47 | 0:53:49 | |
because that's what it was built to be. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:52 | |
Precisely, this was built to be exclusive. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:54 | |
I mean, it looks as if we might be going back that way. | 0:53:54 | 0:53:56 | |
So it is becoming more monocultural, and I think that is the downside | 0:53:56 | 0:54:01 | |
of what otherwise is a wonderful process. | 0:54:01 | 0:54:04 | |
So the sorts of people who can buy a house on Falkner Street today, | 0:54:04 | 0:54:07 | |
they are the modern equivalents of the Victorian merchants for whom | 0:54:07 | 0:54:11 | |
-these houses were first built. -That is absolutely true. | 0:54:11 | 0:54:14 | |
Today, number 62 Falkner Street is home to Gaynor. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:21 | |
She lives here with her two children. | 0:54:23 | 0:54:26 | |
-Hello. -Hello. -How are you doing? | 0:54:27 | 0:54:30 | |
-All right, thank you. Come in. -Nice to see you again. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:32 | |
So, tell me, how long have you lived here? | 0:54:32 | 0:54:34 | |
About seven-and-a-half years now. | 0:54:34 | 0:54:37 | |
We lived a little bit further out of Liverpool city centre but we | 0:54:37 | 0:54:40 | |
wanted to move into the city. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:42 | |
Just the character of the area, the space of the house, | 0:54:42 | 0:54:46 | |
so we could have friends and be hospitable and have lots of people around. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:51 | |
How much do know about the history of this house? | 0:54:51 | 0:54:54 | |
I don't really know much. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:56 | |
I know that the houses will have been very grand | 0:54:56 | 0:55:02 | |
when they were built. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:04 | |
And I know little bits because of what neighbours have said. | 0:55:04 | 0:55:06 | |
Erm... | 0:55:06 | 0:55:08 | |
But I don't really know. | 0:55:08 | 0:55:09 | |
So, shall we meet some of your forebears who have called this house their home? | 0:55:09 | 0:55:14 | |
-Yes, please. -OK. | 0:55:14 | 0:55:16 | |
This house is almost 180 years old. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:22 | |
And the first resident moved in in November 1840, | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
and his name was Richard Glenton. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:28 | |
And this is a copy of the lease. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:31 | |
Oh, my goodness. | 0:55:31 | 0:55:33 | |
-So this is the first owner to live here. -Gosh. | 0:55:33 | 0:55:37 | |
That is interesting. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:39 | |
132 people have lived in this house | 0:55:42 | 0:55:45 | |
from the year 1840 until now. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:48 | |
There may be more, who never appeared in the records. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:52 | |
Customs clerk Richard Glenton walked through this front door | 0:55:54 | 0:55:57 | |
when the house was brand-new. | 0:55:57 | 0:55:59 | |
Then came James and Ann Orr, former servants who made a fortune. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:05 | |
Wilfred Steele, | 0:56:07 | 0:56:09 | |
the cotton broker who deserted his family for a new life in America. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:13 | |
Widowed Elizabeth Bowes rented rooms to Danish immigrant Edward Lublin. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:20 | |
Ann Robinson, | 0:56:24 | 0:56:25 | |
the wife of the drowned watchmaker Alfred, gazed out of these windows. | 0:56:25 | 0:56:29 | |
The Snewing children slept in these rooms at the turn of the 20th century. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:39 | |
In the 1940s, Jack Greenall would have climbed these stairs | 0:56:40 | 0:56:44 | |
after a hard day at the docks. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:46 | |
And John and Beryl Quayle would have collected coal for their fire from | 0:56:48 | 0:56:52 | |
this basement. | 0:56:52 | 0:56:54 | |
Does this make you feel like you are part of a story? | 0:56:54 | 0:56:57 | |
Because you are one of these people that we have traced? | 0:56:57 | 0:57:00 | |
You are the latest chapter. | 0:57:00 | 0:57:02 | |
The history has been put here right in front of me. | 0:57:03 | 0:57:06 | |
And it is not until you hear stories like these folk here | 0:57:06 | 0:57:10 | |
that you realise that actually the variety of people that lived in the | 0:57:10 | 0:57:13 | |
house because of the changing times. | 0:57:13 | 0:57:17 | |
And actually it makes you think about the situations that they found | 0:57:17 | 0:57:20 | |
themselves in and how they went about their life, | 0:57:20 | 0:57:22 | |
and how they conducted themselves. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:25 | |
And what they thought was important. | 0:57:25 | 0:57:27 | |
You can empathize with the situations that they were in. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:31 | |
And that's, that's quite special. | 0:57:31 | 0:57:34 | |
It's the end of my time at 62 Falkner Street | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
uncovering the extraordinary life of this house | 0:57:40 | 0:57:43 | |
and the people who called it home. | 0:57:43 | 0:57:46 | |
Just like us, the residents of 62 Falkner Street lived in uncertain times. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:53 | |
They had no idea what events lay ahead of them and their lives were | 0:57:53 | 0:57:58 | |
gloriously messy and unpredictable. | 0:57:58 | 0:58:02 | |
But if you stand back and you look at this long chain of people spanning two centuries, | 0:58:02 | 0:58:07 | |
they are far more than just a random collection of individual stories. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:12 | |
The life of each resident is a chapter in a bigger historical story. | 0:58:12 | 0:58:18 | |
One that links the history of this house to Liverpool, | 0:58:18 | 0:58:22 | |
to Britain and the wider world. | 0:58:22 | 0:58:24 | |
And all of this told from behind one front door. | 0:58:24 | 0:58:27 |