Condemned.

[daveh]

From time to time I try to photograph things before they disappear. These are in Liverpool, Edge Lane and thereabouts.

[nikonbob]

Even though I am familiar with this type of housing I can never quite get over having no front yard and stepping out your front door almost directly onto the sidewalk. What type of housing, if any, will they be replaced with? I understand the house that Ringo Starr grew up in is also on a condemned block. It always amazes me the number of things that I have photos of locally that don't exist any more and they seem to be disappearing at a faster rate than ever lately.

Bob

[jess77]

We don't have any homes like this around here so they do seem strange to see. It also seems strange to see a street in the UK without anybody on it. Now, granted, I have never been to the UK, but I always picture it in my mind as being a busy, bustling place, particular in housing areas like this. There is quite a contrast between the homes that are still being lived in and those that are not. I wonder why they are that way? One would think that whatever is wrong with the boarded up homes would also be wrong with the ones the people are living in, or the closed ones would be repaired so that people could live in them again.

The architecture and color is quite beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

[daveh]

Bob,

I do have some photos of the new houses somewhere, but I won't find them in a hurry. The best way to see old and new together is to go to google maps and search for 'Gladstone Rd, Edge Hill, Liverpool'. Then do a walk around. One side of the road has old, the other new. I must go down there again soon to see what remains.

Dave.

[daveh]

Jess. thanks.

The houses are all being pulled down in this area. It was a Labour Government think to pull down old houses and rebuild with new - almost whether the residents wanted it or not. I do have a few photos taken a couple of years earlier. At that time there was a woman just returning to her house. She said to me "I've lived here for 35 years. I don't want to move. Why are they pulling them down?". The very next day there was an article in the Daily Telegraph about the same thing (in another area of Liverpool).

It is funny you should mention the lack of people (perhaps the lack of cars is even more startling). I just thought the same thing myself as I was posting them.

Dave.

[Doug T.]

Dave,
How old were the homes that are being demolished?
Back in the late 60's we had this urban renewal plan where they tried to spruce up the cities by tearing down old buildings.
Now that everyone here is buying and RESTORING old bldgs. there aren't many to be had.
It's a shame.
Doug

[daveh]

Doug,

Most of that sort of housing is mid to late Victorian - which approximates to the second half of the nineteenth century - or Edwardian - early twentieth century.

Dave.

[PeterW]

Dave,

The empty boarded-up houses in your pictures look to be a cut above the cheaper terraced rows of very cheaply-built houses that were thrown up in a hurry by factory owners in the mid 19th century who wanted cheap housing to rent to the masses of ex-agricultural workers that were flooding into the cities to work in the new factories of the industrial revolution.

And even they were much better than the dreadful two-up, two-down back-to back terraces built in some expanding industrial cities.

Many peoples' idea of the Victorian era as being a golden age of elegant living and solid family values is gained from old photographs and engravings of middle and upper-class ladies and gentlemen having tea on the lawn or strolling in the park.

So it was for the fortunate minority, but for the majority, the masses of working people, it could be a time of grinding poverty. They worked, often 12 hours a a day, in dangerous working conditions of unshielded machines, for a pittance a week. Most of the houses they lived in and brought up their large familes were demolished in slum clearance rehousing schemes of council-owned estates in the 1920s and early 1930s.

The people originally living in those better houses in and around Edge Lane were probably "upper working class", skilled tradesmen who could command a higher wage and afford to rent better housing.

We had plenty of houses like that in the south. Though quite solidly built, they would come nowhere near meeting current building regulations. If you get a chance while they are being pulled down, look inside them.

You'll find tiny rooms, staircases that were deathtraps - very steep and with treads so narrow front to back you could just about get your toes and the balls of your feet (or your heels coming down) on them. No hot water system, just a cold water tap over a stone kitchen sink. The only heating in the house except for tiny fireplaces was a kitchen range that also served as the cooker. No indoor sanitation, the toilet was usually in an extension at the back ... I could go on.

Liverpool council probably decided it would be cheaper to demolish them and build new than spend money trying to bring them up to somewhere near modern standards.

Sorry to ride one of my hobby horses, Victorian social history.

I'm glad you're documenting these houses by photographs before they all disappear and we're left with only what great grandma is supposed to have said about them.

Rant over

PeterW

[daveh]

Peter,

My great aunt and uncle lived in a house similar to the smaller of the terraced houses that are shown here. The stairs are indeed narrow and steep. The most noticeable thing of the front of the houses was that each doorstep was usually immaculate. It was common to them being washed and polished.

The larger houses are on on the main thoroughfare of Edge Lane itself: the smaller ones are further back. This pattern repeats itself in most areas of Liverpool that I can think of.

Liverpool was of course a very wealthy city built as it was on the money from slavery and shipping. There appeared to be much less poor housing built in that era then many of the big cities. Many of these terraces would have been new build, others would have replaced earlier 'slums'. Liverpool did have a few Victorian tenement blocks that I can remember. One was in Scotland Road. Certainly this area had poorer housing that those in my photos www.gentgoddard.co.uk/index.php/james-gent. Some of the south Liverpool terraces seem to be less substantial.

Scotland Road used to be the heart of Liverpool, with a pub on every corner. All it is now is the road out from the Mersey tunnels. Many of the pubs had gone by the time I thought of photographing them. I missed a great opportunity.

Dave.

[colray]

It looks like a film set.. not real suburbs. anyway excellent photography

[daveh]

Other than the painted hoarding in photo 7 they have all gone now. There are some streets to come down, but those pictured here are no more. They are ex-houses, to parrot-phrase Monty Python.

I did take some photos last week which I have been intending to add - and also some from a couple of years earlier.