Myrtle Gardens, 1969
Boys’ Orphanage, Myrtle Street, 1885
Girls’ Orphanage, Myrtle Street, 1885
The site of Myrtle Gardens has an interesting history as these three previously unpublished photographs show. In 1800, the original Botanic Gardens were sited there before being removed to Edge Lane in 1836. Myrtle Street was a pleasant rural lane but was soon absorbed into the rapidly expanding town. A female ophanage school was commenced in 1843 and opened in November of that year. The boys’ orphanage school was completed in 1854 (at the same time as the Church of Holy Innocents on the same site). The architect was John Cunningham (architect of the Sailors’ Home) and the buildings are in a simple, unpretentious style in keeping with their purpose.
In 1934, the multi-storey Myrtle Garden flats were built on the site (subsequently sold in the 1990s to a private developer for refurbishment into modern apartments and renamed Minster Court). There were, until recently, reminders of the original Botanic Gardens in the street names: Grove, Olive, Almond, Laurel, Mulberry, Peach and Vine Streets. To help with locating the site. here is a 1930s map:
Colin – much of the property round here was owned by the University in 1968, run-down with repairs neglected, leading to the formation of Abercromby Residents Association to fight for rehousing. In December 1968 I wrote an article for the student newspaper on the situation (see: http://senatehouseoccupation.wordpress.com/1968/12/10/shocking-conditions-in-university-housing-2/) and on 15 May 1969 over 1000 students and tenants protested at the official opening by Princess Alexandra of the University Senate House, built right next to the slums (http://senatehouseoccupation.wordpress.com/1969/05/15/the-princess-alexandra-protest/). The protest got national coverage. See also: http://senatehouseoccupation.wordpress.com/documents/slum-housing-and-the-princess-alexandra-demonstration/
Hi Gerry, Good to hear from you after so many years. Of course much of Georgian Liverpool was slum property. Private property ownership in Liverpool was historically low – and landlordism flourished. Very sad that so much was demolished – but they were very different times.
I don’t make a habit of speaking to strangers without introduction but feel compelled to say how ennervising your eclectic anthologies photographs and reminiscences are.
You succeed wonderfully in evoking the geist of Liverpool and surrounding areas in the time of my childhood. I enjoy your dilettante approach to random serendipity.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o’er hills and vales
when all at once I met this lad
a scouser who had dirty nails.”
- Pantosphinx
c 1962
Entitled ‘Brief Encounter Dinglewise’ by Jug
from (highly fallible) memory
of a schoolkid at Waterloo Grammar School.
Apropos of what?
FIIK