UNSEEN AND UNPUBLISHED - LONGVIEW FARM ESTATE - 1930s

As a kid, I often wondered where the buses I saw headed for idylic sounding faraway places like Lydiate, Thornton, Lyme Cross and Longview were actually going. My dad didn't drive so when we went on buses and trains, the places seemed to take ages to get to and where in another part of the world, not just another part of town. I remember the first 2 were Ribble destinations, the journey commencing at Skelhorne Street bus station and the other 2 were Corpy buses, the 9C and the 10D.

Although we don't seem to have many Huyton posters on Yo, I thought i'd post up these I got out of the Longview Farm Estate. Like Dovecot Place, and Broadway, and Speke et al, they hail from the art deco 1930s period when so many districts were born out of what was once farmland. Through the entrance on the first photo can be found Lyme Cross Road Square which is on the bottom photo.


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cheers ged, the last one looks lovely :)

These estates were great when first built, hardly any cars on the roads etc

Nice pics Ged,

Mart

How it looks now. (I'm presuming this is the same place as in in the photos ?)

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&so...,15.82,,0,2.44

It is Lindy. I went up there on Saturday as we were playing not a couple of miles away off Bluebell Lane and how disappointing to see the way they've changed it.

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NO, is that the same place? It went from a lovely building to a big shack. Makes me shudder.

Great pics Ged.

As you know I worked up there for a few years. I was in that area a lot. It has its problems, but many wonderful people live there. I met some great people when I was there.

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NO, is that the same place? It went from a lovely building to a big shack.

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Terrible isn't it....reminds me of the gates to Auschwitz.

Some of these architects are only fit to build lego homes...come to think of it thats prolly what they use to model their rubbish.

Not far off it....

I was amazed to see they've done away with the top floor. The row of shops on Dovecot Place too, the upper floor seems to have seen better days and not much TLC was afforded the rears either which just look plain and have bins.

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Originally Posted by GeorgePorgie

Terrible isn't it....reminds me of the gates to Auschwitz.

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Actually, you are right George - it does look like it ! :eek:

Hi George

I suppose you are not far wrong in pointing out the similarity between 1940's concentration camp architecture to the shopping center architecture... after all they come from a similar period reasonably close in time to each other. Looking through the passageway at the housing though it looks as if there they were perhaps looking for more of a cottagy, village feel... is that right?

Chris

Actually,Chris this estate was a camp for captured Nazi internees.

Second World War

During the Second World War, Huyton suffered bombing from the Luftwaffe. Some Huytonians were killed or injured but the scale of destruction was nowhere close to that experienced by Liverpool, Bootle and Birkenhead. Unlike Liverpool, schoolchildren were not evacuated from Huyton but schools and homes were provided with air-raid shelters.
Huyton was also host to three wartime camps: an internment camp, a prisoner of war camp and a base for American servicemen (G.I.s).
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...interncamp.jpg http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.17...gnify-clip.png



The internment camp, one of the biggest in the country, was created to accommodate those 'enemy aliens' deemed a potential threat to national security. Churchill's demand to 'collar the lot' meant that around 27,000 people ended up being interned in the UK. Unfortunately, many internees were refugees from the Nazis, including socialists such as Kurt Hager and a large number of artists attacked for their 'degeneracy' in an infamous Nazi art exhibition in 1937 (see Degenerate art). Huyton internees included artists Martin Bloch, Hugo Dachinger, and Walter Nessler,[4] dancer Kurt Jooss, musicians, and composer Hans Gál.[5] More than 40 per cent of Huyton's internees were over 50 years old.
The camp, first occupied in May, 1940, was formed around several streets of new, empty council houses and flats and then made secure with high barbed wire fencing. Twelve internees were allocated to each house, but overcrowding resulted in many sleeping in tents. Initially the camp was only meant to hold the internees until they could be shipped to the Isle of Man. However, largely in response to the torpedoing of the transport ship 'The Arandora Star', with the loss of nearly 700 people, the deportations ended. Most of the internees were released long before the camp closed in 1942. The camp was sited in and around what became known as the 'Bluebell Estate' and many of the streets were given names of the great battles of the Second World War.
The prisoner of war camp only closed in 1948. Many of its inmates 'went native', stayed in Britain and married local women. Among those in the Huyton camp was Bert Trautmann who later went on to be the 1950s goalkeeper for Manchester City.
From 1944, American servicemen were temporarily stationed in Huyton. Older Huytonians still recall the tensions between black and white G.I.s which resulted in a night known as ‘the shoot out at the Eagle and Child’ (local public house).[6]

I have a few shots of the area immediately behind the shops. This is Lyme Cross Road in 1937. It was laid out neatly with the idea being a self contained area, rather like what Speke won awards for. It's a pity that when I went up there on Saturday, half of the 16 or so shop units were closed down.


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