Hi all
This may have been discussed before, and if so I apologize. But I was wondering what might be the origin of the rather odd but colorful name Old Swan. Does anybody know?
Chris
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Hi all
This may have been discussed before, and if so I apologize. But I was wondering what might be the origin of the rather odd but colorful name Old Swan. Does anybody know?
Chris
I live in Old Swan and haven't a clue..............Martin will know.....so I'll await with interest.
Hi Chris, this has, been discussed somewhere on here before,and I vaguely remember the name "Old Swan" was derived from one,of several inn's, in the area, which may have had similar names,but I'm not sure if this was definitive?
Home of MU Ron Atkinson and WAS named after the public house
Mart features heavily on the first page of google relating to Old Swan.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...meta=&aq=f&oq=
He's like our lord :)
What a coincidence, I just hung up the phone with my mother who is from Old Swan and I told her that some lovely people on here had found pics of EH Jones, Paints Ltd. where my father worked all his life. I was asking on here about the cinema on their street too, my mother said it was the Regent but she met my father in the Curzon round the corner!
Any of you got a pic of St. Oswald's? I was baptised there.
Shall we wait for the coming of Martin?
Hi Roni,
had a quick look,and found these,including a couple of St. Oswald st. itself!
photo's courtesy of L.R.O. and St. Oswalds?
Quite right about the inns.
There were three of them, the 'Lower', 'Middle' and 'Upper Swan'. The 'Middle Swan' was the oldest and was located where the current Red House pub is. Old Swan was one of the last coaching stops before the city on the Liverpool-Prescot Turnpike.
Incidentally on my copy of an early 1800 tithe map the area is called 'Old Swans' - the plural referring to all the inns.
Thanks Steve. All I remember is it had a wishing well in the garden of the church but have not been that church since I was a kid. Very pretty, again, thank you.
I've arrived :PDT_Aliboronz_24:
I'm in the process of putting together a website on Old Swan, pics etc, so will let you know when it's ready.
Already had considerable help from Ged, Spike, Philip G, Sirob, Eric James to name a few.
Here's a little bit from the site, from a book by Colin Gould.
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The neighbourhood of Old Swan derives it?s name from the first pub situated in the area.
It was once common practice for inns to take as their sign the crest of the local aristocratic family, in this case the Waltons, whose coat of arms was three white swans on a blue shield.
So, inevitably the first pub was called the three swans.
Shortly afterwards came two more Swan Inns, so the locals referred to them as the Old Swan, the Middle Swan and the Lower Swan. More recently the Old Swan Vaults and the Old Swan Hotel have been called the Red House and the White House.
The Original coaching inn stood where the Red House is today.
Todays Red House was built in 1892.
The block of shops once known as Hoult?s Corner, stood in the middle of St. Oswald?s street, they were built on arches above Acresfield Quarry owned by Richard and Paul Barker.
Hoult's Corner Shops were built in the 1840?s, on arches above Acresfield Quarry.
The Quarry was dug out by Huyton Builders Richard and Paul Barker, two of the first people to see the potential of Old Swan.
They erected Knotty Ash Church was built in 1835, West Derby Parish Church and Old Swan Police Station in 1850 and the Old Swan water tower, which once stood near to the tram shed in Green Lane.
The Quarry was left as a large cellar beneath the shops and Joseph Jones?s brewery of Knotty Ash used them for a number of years.
This was situated alongside the Lord Nelson pub on Prescot road.
Hoult's Corner shops were demolished in 1939 and some of the shops transferred to the new shops below the newly built flats St. Oswald?s House.
These flats have since been demolished and a new Tesco's supermarket stands in their place.
St. Oswald?s Church was opened in 1842, built from a design by Welby Pugin. The land it was built on was a gift from Mr Edward Chaloner of Oak Hill House.
The church was partly rebuilt between 1951 and 1957 from a design by Adrian Gilbert Scott.
Cannon Maddocks was the first parish priest and is remembered by a local street named after him.
During the building of St. Oswald?s Primary School in the 1970?s they found the remains of over 3,500 bodies, some buried 16 deep in places. The bodies were exhumed , cremated and reinterred at Anfield Cemetery.
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As I say, hopefully get this going in a couple of weeks.
Trouble is, everytime I get close, I get more pics and info ! ! :PDT_Xtremez_42:
Martin
So basically, the name derives from an erection in the main area.
Hi Steve. I don't know if I remember the wishing well or just was told it had a wishing well. I remember passing it on my way to Baden Road (Grandparent's house where my mother grew up) I am definitely connecting that church with a wishing well. I certainly don't remember being baptized!:PDT_Piratz_26:
Cabbage Hall is named after a mansion house that stood on the site in the 1800s. On the 1835 Bennison map of Liverpool it is shown as having John Broadbent living there. Previously the solicitor 'Mr Moss' lived there.
The house and grounds were located from the corner where the current pub is right the way up to just opposite Holy Trinity Church. If you go along St Ambrose Grove there is an old red standstone house that looks slightly out of place... I believe that is the original entrance lodge for the grounds.
How about little bongs?
Yikes, I don't remember tenements at all. We got the bus, we went to the bottom of Park Road, by the Cinema and got a bus there to Prescot Road (I think) and walked to Baden Road.
I liked it there. Had a whole set of friends there as well as my own neighbourhood. There was a bombed site 'bricky' and we used to collect match boxes and go there and bury the worms (there was grass growing among the bricks) in the matchboxes, bury them, make little crosses for the graves and say a prayer! I always remember this as 'sweet' but now wonder why there were so many dead worms? Did the boys kill them and girls bury them? It all seems so macabre now I have thought of that.:PDT_Xtremez_12:
I don't know how true this is...
'Knotty Ash is also rumored to be mentioned in the nursery rhyme The Owl and the Pussycat, in the line "to the land where the bong tree grows". The bong tree is rumored to be the knotted Ash tree which once stood by an ancient row of cottages called the little bongs'
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Knotty_Ash
Arabella McIntyre-Brown's book Liverpool: The First 1000 years suggests that 'no-one knows the origin of the name Little Bongs' - I would dispute this as the book is a rather poor excuse for a local history book, it's riddled with errors and indeed on the same page says that Aigburth is the Druid name for a grove of Oak trees.*
Derek Whale also says the name is lost in the midst of time but suggests that it just means 'Little Cottages', I am inclined to agree with this.
I've also discovered an area in Manchester which used to be called 'Caley Bangs' im thinking that 'Bangs' and 'Bongs' are cognates (words that have the same origin) but what they mean I don't know. :D I've got some great minds working on this at the moment :D ! ! !
*Aigburth does indeed refer to Oak tress but means 'Hill of the Oak Trees' - not 'grove' and what is even worse is that there is no such thing as a 'Druid' name. The druids died out in the 2nd century AD and probably spoke Brythonic language - the name Aigburth is a hybrid of Old Norse [Aig] and Old English (Anglo Saxon) [-burgh] and is from a later period. It's quite a shoddy piece of work really.
The church scene in the 51st State was filmed in St. Oswald's.
Thank you JMLE and Fortinian.
Ken Pye in his Discover Liverpool book and dvd also mentions this which could be a re-hash but am I right in thinking though that if the bong tree is rumoured to be the knotted Ash which once stood by an ancient row of cottages that were already called the little bongs then that doesn't tell us which came first?
A DeLorean going over 88 miles per hour and all the mysteries could be solved :rolleyes:
Mart
I passed it today.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...x/P6220001.jpg
Hi Roni,I'm surprised you dont remember St. Oswald Gardens,so,about what period did you live there,as I guess the flats went up in the 30's? Here's a couple of pic's,before,and after they were built!(I've been told by a guy in the pet shop,in Prescott rd,that there's been a shortage of worms,in the Swan,for many years!:unibrow:) Steve.
courtesy of L.R.O.
Anyone got any photos of the original Blackhorse Inn which was on the opposite side of Blackhorse Lane from the present large pub? Here's the newer pub:
http://www.pub-explorer.com/merseysi...rseoldswan.htm