Comments on: Myrtle Gardens, 1969

By: colin mcindoe

colin mcindoe — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 08:13:38 +0000

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

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:38:51 +0000

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.

By: Gerry Cordon

Gerry Cordon — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:36:16 +0000

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/