Crosby

[knowhowe]

S n i g g e r y Woods. 1943 by Ted McIlvenna

I remember S n i g g e r y Woods where adventure beckoned with wooden thumb. To me and you and everyone.
To cross the bridge over the brook, it was so exciting to dare to take a closer look.
There to find so magically, this place of nature's mystery,
Cheetah the chimp, Tarzan and Jane, would swing through the trees and play your game.
Mowgli and friends from the Jungle Book. They all played with me and you.
Peter Pan,Wendy lost boys too, Old Captain Hook and all his Crew.
I remember them all in days so true.
Now its just sad for S n i g g e r y Woods, that beautiful magic now has gone.
No mystical place for the young to roam. Not for children on their own!
But S n i g g e r y is still S n i g g e r y, its just old and tired and lost its trust, to vandalism and human lust.
Some still love you S n i g g e r y Woods, to those you gave all that's good. Remember us young and never grown!
And S n i g g e r y good friend, You are never alone!

[gregs dad]

Took this yesterday as my grandson and I were kicking a tennis ball on the beach from Hall Road, all the way to Crosby.

[Kev]

Lovely

[quincyg]

dinky little abandoned cottage just off Liverpool Rd

[knowhowe]

Where is the cottage more precisely? It's not down the side of the old Regent by any chance, on the lane leading into Coronation Park? Used to be immaculate when i was a kid.

[quincyg]

Where is the cottage more precisely? It's not down the side of the old Regent by any chance, on the lane leading into Coronation Park? Used to be immaculate when i was a kid.

aye that's the one. shame it's been let go. haven't seen a pic in any of my local history books of what it used to look like.

[knowhowe]

More memories of Crosby/Waterloo.
The bottom of South Road: Shops selling beach balls, buckets & spades and candy floss- the last reminders of when the place had tried to become a seaside resort, and before the coming of the horrible concrete marina affair.
The beach further along, where we later went at lunchtimes when I was at Waterloo Grammar school, was a wonderful area of sand dunes and concrete 'dragon's teeth' wartime defences until it was all swept away for the Seaforth Docks.
The shabby-genteel houses along Marine Terrace. Capt Smith lived here and would have retired here if he hadn't had his mishap with the Titanic. Lovely Mandy who I once went out with but blew it, she lived here too. I thought her house was very flash and her single mother very glam.
The model shop at the bottom of South Road. I bought my Airfix kits there sometimes- and Monogram ones very occasionally if a relative had been particularly generous. Mostly, though, I purchased these, as well as Britain's Ltd plastic figures (that you could take apart!) from Myerscough's in Crown Buildings, Crosby Village.
Down there too were shops I'd be sent on errands- Crow's, for example, the old fashioned grocer's with its big red coffee grinder and bacon slicer in the window. Bobby Moore's on Moor Lane, which was the only shop in the area that opened on a Sunday afternoon. They had tanner-in-the-slot dispensing machines long before I remember seeing them anywhere else- and a chip machine! Never seen anywhere else before or since.
There was a row of ancient thatched cottages there and the old police station- looking very similar to to one in Lark Lane, which is still with us- where I was marched off to by my dad when I was caught trying to 'borrow' a neighbour's moped. Got a right bollocking from the sargeant but eventually let off to face the music at home...
Behind our house in Moorgate Avenue was Musker Street, then a relic of the area's agricultural past. The houses there still had pig stys in the yards and outdoor privies. There were chickens and pigeon coops in many of the long front gardens. At the end of the row was an old, larger house inhabited by an ancient crone who we referred to as 'the witch' and who terrified us. Nontheless, her extensive garden- long gone to rack and ruin- was a favourite playground of ours, all the time keeping an eye out in case the witch got you. We must have been a terrible torment to her.
i was often sent over to one of the cottages behind to buy potatoes for another aged biddy, Mrs Lycett. Her son always seemed to standing in his vest at the kitchen sink behind her, shaving and singing. He had an excellent voice and was always singing, you could hear it all around from our house.
Ken's barber shop on Liverpool Road, round the corner from Endbutt Lane. ver warm in there of a winter evening, big tank of tropical fish, Diddy David Hamilton on the Light programme, me sitting on a plank with a cloth around me and a basin on my head...
Sweet shops: closest was Fisher's on the corner of Moorgate and Endbutt Lane. Used to buy loosies there too later. The posh one on the corner of Enbutt Lane and Liverpool Road, opposite the Regent Cinema. This was run by a lady with an American accent, which we thought very flash. Woodsie's on Brownmoor Lane. Used to buy my 'Mars Attacks' cards from there. Our headmaster banned them so they were avidly collected and swapped of course. Had the set once- wish I still did! This was the nearest to our school in Forefield Lane, from which you had to walk through an area of woodland to get to it. I wish I could remember what it was called. it had an excellent pond right next to the sweet shop where we caught tiddlers and from where we brought home frogspawn. All gone and built over now, of course.
More anon...

[knowhowe]

Re that old cottage. I last photographed it 20-odd years ago and have the neg somewhere still. Will stick it on here when I can. The place was still in good nick then.
We used to pass it often as kids heading for the park, the Regent or Crosby Baths. The old lady living there was always telling us off for being noisy. The cottage was very tidy then and had a fine rose garden out the front. The lane in front- which the A-Z tells me is called Claremont Road, though I didn't know it at the time- wasn't tarmacked then, as it appears now to be in your picture, just a rough surface full of potholes that was waterlogged in the winter and dusty in the summer.
I imagine the cottage was originally built for a gardener/porter/whatever at the girl's school behind. Its back door gives access to the grounds beyond the high wall it's built against.
Haven't been for a mooch around there in years, must get the camera there soon..

[knowhowe]

Coronation Park, Crosby 1983

[Ged]

No.13 Beach Lawn and the one time home of White Star shipping line founder - Thomas Henry Ismay.




The detailing in the stained glass window and the head carving.



The blue plaque





Beach Lawn looking North to its end.




Beach lawn looking north from Bulcher Street.




Beach Lawn looking South from the Ismay House.




Adelaide Terrace is the continuation of Beach Lawn and these candy striped houses in subtle pastel shades always somehow remind me of a nougat bar or a block of Neapolitan ice cream.




Marine Crescent is where you turn into when going right at the very bottom of South Road. These rows have individually styles houses, some with cast iron balconies with glass canopies.




Another style, very symetrical this one.




Marine Crescent leads to Adelaide Terrace and in turn Beach Lawn. This is some of the rest of the row.




Crosby Marina from the bottom of South Road.




Crosby Radar and one of the windmills from the Crescent.




Beach Lawn park and Crosby sand dunes beyond.




The Victorian canopied stairwell leading down to Waterloo railway line on South Road.




Heading back towards the city and Waterloo war memorial and lamps on the junction of Crosby road North and Great George's Road.




Sandwiched between 1930s and 1960s housing is the grand Riverslie residential care home not far from Seaforth Docks on Crosby Road South.





.

[lindylou]

Thanks Ged. Nice pics.

[knowhowe]

Hear hear. Very evocative for me as I used to knock around there a lot as a kid. The houses look to be in better nick now than they were back then.
I knew about Capt Smith living along there but Ismay was a new one on me. Fascinating.

I found this interesting website, full of Crosby memories-

http://crosbymemories.merseyblogs.co.uk/

[quincyg]

those houses are lovely with the sun shining on them aren't they? I was that way meself today and took a similar one of the radar station and windmill. took it before it disappears.

boss photos young man

[julieoapw]

Good photos. Apparently Cunard ships used to either sound their horns or dip their flags (can't remember which) when they passed the boss' house.

[shoequeen13]

great photies! there is a lovely little yellow cottage close by the entrance to the marina i think its in bath street. i love the pastel shades of those houses i could just eat them! how lucky those ppl are to live there.what a view... btw whereabout is the ismay house waterloo or blundellsands?