Birkenhead In The 1950s

A Memory of Birkenhead.

Birkenhead in the 1950s – it bears no resemblance to how it is today – it doesn't even look the same. Most of the places I remember are gone. The streets where I grew up have gone – the geography of the place has changed – I could not even pinpoint where my old house was. The church where I was confirmed and married has gone but the memories of Mr Davies, the Vicar, still remain. My secondary school is still there – but no longer operates as a school. Birkenhead Park has changed – what happened to the band stand, the Blind Garden, the long green houses in the Top Park. The rocks are still there though. Its funny how they don’t look so steep anymore. Exmouth Street shops thrived. Joneses the fish shop, O’Kells where just about everybody bought something, from stockings to baby clothes. I well remember a portly “Mr O’Kell” sitting in his little booth collecting the money with his wife quietly overseeing the staff. Rogers the Bike Shop with its smell of rubber tyres. Stan the Butcher. The Lord Exmouth Pub. Mrs Franks lucky dip shop. Lunts cake shop. The Echo Milk Bar with its cups of frothy coffee. Marriots Scrap Yard – a wonder to behold – we used to love going in there and looking around, though we never bought anything. The Pawn Shop. Then there was Hardings Coaches with its little miniature charbanc that would tour the streets to advertise their trips. The many cinemas – all gone now. The Gaumont, scene of my first date with the man I later married and where many years before I was taken to see Davy Crocket “in person”. The Ritz where sometimes the queues were endless. The Essoldo. The Empire. The Plaza. We kids played out. From dawn to dusk most days. I don’t think our mums worried. We played out, got dirty, plenty of fresh air and went to bed tired. We played kick the can, rounders, two balls, catch the girl kiss the girl, hide and seek. On 1st May our mums dressed us up in old curtains and we paraded the streets as May Queens. We rode bikes – sometimes going quite far afield. We had a youth club – St Matthews Youth Club in Bentink Street. The Brownies operated from there as well. Then there was the community spirit. The neighbours all looked out for one another. They organised trips for themselves and outings for us kids. We went “en masse” during the summer, on the train to Hoylake. The mums all sat in a circle with the deck chairs, flasks, ciggies and packed lunches. Us kids played on the sand, swam in the baths, went cockling, collected empty pop bottles and took them back to the little kiosk for the “money back”. We begged our mums for pennies to go on the boating lake – but they said it was either the boating lake or the baths. So we paid to go on the boating lake and bunked into the baths. Nobody had much money. We mostly had jam on our butties and sometimes just stuffing! Us kids drank water and the mums got boiling water from the kiosk for their tea. Babies were born at home, usually in the front room. Babies were left outside houses and shops in their prams. Nobody went to a nursery. We started school at five and until then stayed with our mums or grannies. No telly. I remember one of our neighbours getting their first telly from Radio Rentals just before the Queen’s coronation, and all the mums and kids in the street piled into their house to watch. We had a street party. I had a special white dress made edged with red white and blue. Our front window was decorated with streamers and flags and the whole street looked great. We had a big gang of kids in our road. We went everywhere together. When we were old enough to have bikes we cycled for miles. Once we got as far as Chester. My mum could not believe it. We must have been about 11 or 12. We would roam Bidston Hill and hide in the heather. The boys played footie in Birkenhead Park and the girls would hang about until it was over. We went to Arrowe Park – where I once lost a library book and was terrified to tell my Dad because he would have to pay a fine. We had little corner shops. Nelly Eggies, Richmonds, Ainsworths, the Dairy. For really special occasions there was Stubbs Bakery in Grange Road West. The smell alone could drive you crazy. Hursts Bakery in Claughton Road had the best bread in Birkenhead. The epicentre of the town was Grange Road. Everybody went to Grange Road. Saturday was the day for Grange Road. We could spend our pocket money in Woolworth's. My mum would have a cup of tea in Oliveri’s then we would walk down Grange Road, looking longingly in the posh Allinsons shop windows, then walking up past the Dolls Hospital with all its little broken dolls in the window – and on to the market. The old market that is. The atmosphere, the smells, the characters – I remember them so well. The country stalls where we would buy our eggs. The devine smell in the country stalls of cooked hams, fruit and veg. Eli who stood in the corner selling all kinds of everything pulled from cardboard boxes – shouting to his customers who would sometimes stand for hours to see what came out of those boxes. Then there was the man from Africa who sold chamis leathers. Nothing else, just chamois leathers. No supermarkets then. My mum did her shopping in the local Co-op – I can still remember her divvie number – 81943. I can see her now – walking up Bentink Street with a heavy bag of shopping that would last us for the week. You just went to the counter in the Co-op and told the man in the white coat what you wanted. He knew everyone by name. He served sugar in blue bags and cut pats of butter from a block. When money was tight at the end of the week you could buy six cracked eggs from the dairy in Conway Street and on really good days you could get some pennies for a strange concoction of soft drink from Bob Martins that sometimes made your wee turn a strange colour. Stationery and school stuff could be bought from The Wesley Press – but only if you were particularly flush otherwise it came from Woollies. Its all gone now but the memories remain. We had freedom, we had fun, we had mums who didn't go out to work, there was a sense of community though that’s not what it was called then – it was just called “being neighbourly”. Some folks may say that kids of today have got it all. Well they haven't. We did.
JM.