Lodge Lane is going through a slow but noticeable revival. I have taken to buying my fruit and vegetables from the prospering International Stores – which lives up to its name serving a mainly immigrant community with foods from across the globe. Definitely worth a visit if you want an alternative to Tesco or Asda.
Today’s photograph, courtesy of Colin Weekes, is of Anakin’s Potato Stores, on the corner of Eden Street and Lodge Lane. In 1910, George William Anakin owned a small chain of shops in the area (Earle Road, Smithdown Road and Dudley Road). A Charles Anakin (brother or son? owned a similar small chain around West Derby Road). Eden Street was on the left hand side travelling from Ullet Road towards Smithdown Road (between Windsor View and Solway Street). The shop has a peeling sign on its other window advertising the shop as a fruit market. It must have been a hefty task to move all the baskets in and out of the shop every day but the three staff are all smiling for the camera.
I was reading a book written by Kurt Hutton, a German photographer who fled the Nazis and established himself in Britain as one of the great photojournalists on Picture Post magazine. He wrote that ‘a street is never of great interest to me if it does not show people who live in it. They are the essential thing. Perhaps for an architectural journal the case is different; but even here, to me the point seems to be that the street has been built, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the human beings who inhabit it.’ I couldn’t agree more – today’s photograph would be far less interesting without the three shop girls.
No doubt, in a hundred years time, people will look at photographs of the International Stores, with its food piled high outside, in a similar fascinated way.

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