A view from Everton c1960

From Everton Park 2015
I spent yesterday afternoon enjoying the newly reopened Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. The transformation is stunning, with fabulous new galleries making the most of their setting in Whitworth Park. The park is small but in a heavily populated area on the fringe of the university campus and Rusholme, it is an essential green lung. The new gallery enhances the space and reinforces the need for more creative uses of our cities.
Coincidentally, Professor Charlie Duff, a leading light in Baltimore’s regeneration, contacted me about the changes in landscape in post-War Liverpool. He visited a few years back and I took him to St George’s Church where I illustrated our visit with a series of photographs taken in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Looking over Everton Park, the changes were staggering. The rows of terraces were replaced by tower blocks in the 1960s, which in turn were demolished to create the park we have today. Charlie wanted to illustrate his talk to students at John Hopkins University with this sequence of changes, so I revisited the park and was delighted to see how far the trees had matured and how the landscape had taken shape. North Liverpool has had a poor hand dealt regarding open spaces and I hope that Everton Park is just a start towards the further greening of Liverpool.

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