Here is a photograph of the building on the right of the previous blog. Before the road was widened, Dale Street projected a block further down (towards the Tunnel) to a junction with Byrom Street. I thought that identifying everything in the photograph would be plain sailing but, unfortunately, after hours of checking through various Gore’s and Kelly’s, I am still short of answers. Blackburn Assurance, the building on the far left replaced a block of slum property including Chorley Court (see earlier post) in the 1930s. The pub on the corner of Fontenoy Street was the Red Lion – although my last mention of it is in 1927. The pub seems to have been converted to offices, including the famous solicitors’ partnership of Silverman & Livermore, whose names will be familiar to all students of Liverpool’s criminal history. The Liverpool Co-operative Society have an entrance in the centre of the block, although the main facade was along Byrom Street (they owned Unity House, which can be seen with two posters of Winston Churchill – was this in recognition of his death in 1965?). By this date, however, the Co-op was no longer trading. In fact, it is not listed in the 1964 Kelly’s (it is in the 1962 edition), which suggestes the block was being cleared out before demolition. The lamp standard on the left is another of Herbert Rowse’s designs for the Tunnel approaches.
I’ve been searching for a picture of the block opposite the Blackburn Assurance building. My mother worked in the building housing the Woodbines sign from 1961 – 1969. It was a ceramics/tiles shop called Davidsons and the windows below housed offices she’d clean. One of the clerks sat next to Paul McCartney at school!
The shop obscured by the Land Rover was a newsagents where office workers would pass in the mornings and drop their money onto the stack of papers outside before the shop opened. Came in handy when at 5yrs old, I’d want to buy some sweets from the same shop when it opened ;o)
Just opposite the corner facing Blackburn Assurance was a cafe where we’d buy orange juice and cheese and onion rolls to eat in St John’s Gardens when my mother was on her lunch break.
Thanks so much for the write up and images!
Colin Lynch (Canada)
Re:- the Dale Street picture.
The building between Silverman and Livermore Solicitors, and the Co-op in Byron Street,
was 163 Dale Street, and was the business premised of the United Typewriter Company
The owner a Mr. Batterbury, moved into those premises from Hacking Hey, just after the war.
To my knowledge, they were still there in 1964. THen at some point between 1964 and 1968
they moved to Islington, just above Rushworth’s.