Inside Number 9

9 Madryn Street

Liverpool 8

A look inside the birthplace of Ringo Starr....

9 Madryn Street in 1981

Situated off High Park Street in Liverpool 8 are the 'Welsh Streets', an area of around 450 dilapidated Victorian terraced houses constructed by Welsh builders in the late 19th century for immigrants seeking work and housing from Wales. They were named after the towns, villages and valleys from where the workers originated. 

Among them is Madryn Street, where Ringo Starr was born in July 1940.

For years there have been plans to demolish the 'Welsh Streets' and regenerate the area.

The fight to save the houses from demolition began in 2004. It's been a long, slow process.

When Beatles fans realised that plans to regenerate the area included the destruction of Ringo's birthplace they accused the council of cultural vandalism bordering on the criminal. It's not the only time the council have had to face this accusation as bit by bit, time and again, parts of Liverpool's heritage is sold off and destroyed in the name of progress.

While a 2010 article in the Telegraph likening the demolition proposals as the equivalent of knocking down William Shakespeare's home was probably going a tiny bit overboard, it's fair to say that Madryn Street has become a vital part of any fan's pilgrimage to the Beatles' home city and attracts thousands of visitors each year. Every time I've been in the area I've witnessed taxis full of tourists arriving to take photographs. Those involved in Liverpool's taxi tourist industry make multiple visits to this neglected area of the city on a daily basis.

At one point, in acknowledgement of the historical interest in number 9 and in an attempt to appease sentimental Beatles fans the council reportedly drew up plans to dismantle the house brick by brick and rebuild it at Liverpool’s Museum of Life on the Pier Head.

That option was quite resolutely dismissed by Beatles’ fans who regard such a suggestion as a gross insult to one of Liverpool’s most famous sons.

The Telegraph was quoting Phillip Coppell, Beatles' tour guide who said: If the council in Stratford wanted to knock down Shakespeare's birthplace and move it to the NEC there would be outrage. The only difference between the two is that Shakespeare has a four hundred year head-start on the Beatles.”

And of course Shakespeare didn't have any hit records. 

Asked to comment, Ringo expressed dismay at plans to knock down his childhood home and said he was opposed to the plan to relocate it to the museum.

If you want to see where I come from, it's no good putting me in the Wirral. It only works, as far as I can see, if it's there (in Madryn Street)(2007)

If you want to see Ringo's birthplace, you really need to see it in the place where he was born.

While the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney are now owned by the National Trust their spokesman claimed in 2012 that Ringo’s birthplace did not merit saving for the nation because the former Beatles drummer only lived there for three months.

He actually lived there for over 4 years but hey what’s a few months?

In 2010 English Heritage refused to grant Starr’s birthplace listed building status on the grounds that the drummer only lived there for a very short time, it had no associations with the Beatles’ success and was not architecturally or historically significant enough.

However, Jonathan Brown, from SAVE Britain’s Heritage, said: To paraphrase John Lennon talking about Ringo, this isn’t the best house in the world. It’s not even the best house in Liverpool, but it does draw thousands of tourists from all around the world, and you’ve got to wonder how little they must think Liverpool values The Beatles to let these houses be run down in this way.

Brown was actually mis-quoting the comedian Jasper Carrot. You’ve got to wonder how little Brown thinks of John Lennon by attributing comments to him in this way, but I take his point.

In June 2012 Liverpool City Council agreed to release 32 of the pre- 1919 houses from demolition, including Ringo’s but intended to clear 287 with a further 100 to follow in the long term. They argued that the majority of the houses were beyond repair.

Opinion among local residents was divided. Whilst some were tired of living in sight of the boarded up, abandoned Welsh Streets and longed for the regeneration plans to get underway others feared their community would be torn apart and said the homes were perfect for young people and families stepping on to the property ladder.

Nina Edge, of the Welsh Streets residents group, said they were looking forward to seeing the detail of the plans but expressed concern that the surviving terrace will look at odds surrounded by new homes: Half the people wanted the houses to stay and half wanted demolition so we argued that a significant number of houses should remain as a "Victorian quarter" while the rest of the land is redeveloped.

What we have today is the council doing the bare minimum to save face because Ringo's house has caught the public's imagination.

I wonder if these 16 houses will sit comfortably in their new surroundings and I fear it will look ridiculous.

The plans ultimately fell through in January 2015. Following a public enquiry came the shock announcement that the Secretary of State for Communities had decided to block the planning application to replace the existing properties with new homes. With few alternate options, refurbishment was subsequently deemed viable with Liverpool Council agreeing a partnership with Placefirst who had experience in renewing derelict properties.

A pilot scheme in 2017 involved the refurbishment of houses in Voelas Street to demonstrate how the houses could be remodelled and to determine public opinion and uptake. Upon launching the scheme to prospective tenants, all properties were taken within the first weekend, and the residents moved in around September 2017. A year on the developers can't get them finished quickly enough, such is the demand. 

The renovations involve remodelling some floorplans and in some cases knocking through to adjacent homes to create larger houses, whilst retaining some of the original houses in order to cater for various residential requirements.

We’ve retained all the lovely period features, like high ceilings and big windows. But we’ve made the downstairs open and free-flowing, with doors opening out onto rear terraces – perfect for relaxing and dining outdoors. Every home has spacious reception rooms with many having en suite bathrooms, and some a downstairs loo too.

We’ve also cleverly converted the old rear alleyways into shared gardens running the entire length of the street. A great place for children to play safely, and for neighbours to make friends. (Placefirst brochure)

A photo taken during one of my visits, circa 2013. Ringo's birthplace is closest to camera.

The renovation has now reached Madryn Street. The following photographs were all taken today, 11 October 2018.

Madryn Street today, again with number 9 closest to camera.

The view towards the still 'tinned up' front door from the foot of the stairs.

A view taken in the small porch area by the front door looking straight up past the fuse box. Note the hole in the ceiling.

Looking up the stairs.

When young Richy Starkey lived here the house had three bedrooms but no bathroom.

Looking towards the front room from the back.

The front room looking out onto Madryn Street, with the hall on the left. The photo below gives you more of an idea of the size of the front room.

Moving upstairs......

One of the front bedrooms. Note the plasterboard wall is destroyed revealing the stairs' banisters.

Two views of the second bedroom.

Now you might be thinking, where are the photos of the third bedroom? Where's the bathroom that was added after Ringo and his Mother moved out? Where's the kitchen?

Well, to create the self contained play areas and spacious terraces it was necessary to demolish the existing alleyways behind the houses - known in Liverpool as a 'back jigger' or 'back entry'. The photo below shows the alleyway behind the houses facing Ringo's on Madryn Street. This is their original width.....

...while the photo below shows just how much additional room has been created by removing the back extensions on the houses and demolishing the alley walls. None of the house's on Richy's side presently have a back to them.

Eventually the rear of the Madryn Street houses will look like the above. After rendering the groundwork will be landscaped.

As No. 9 Madryn Street is still tinned up, access had to be gained via the open back.

There were no such problems entering No. 10. This was the home of Annie Maguire and her  family where young Richy often went when he needed babysitting. Annie's daughter Marie even taught him how to read here.

Number 9 Madryn Street looks set to be a tourist Bed and Breakfast.

You may have heard about it here first!

Thanks to toc1966

In the house where I was born......

Madryn Street,

Dingle,

Liverpool 8

We've always been ordinary, poor, working-class on both sides of the family. My mother's mother really was very poor. She had fourteen kids. There's rumour that my great-grandmother was fairly well off - she had chromium railings round her house. Well, they were very shiny anyway. Perhaps I just made that up. You know what it's like: you dream things, or your mother tells you things, so you come to believe you actually saw them.

My real name is Parkin, not Starkey. My grandad was named Johnny Parkin. When my grandfather's mother remarried, which was pretty shocking in those days, she married a Starkey, so my grandfather changed his name to Starkey, too. (I went to have my family tree done in the Sixties, but I could only trace back two generations - and they couldn't find me! I had to go to my family to find out, and even they hadn't wanted to say anything in case the press found out.)

Ringo Starr, The Beatles by Hunter Davies (1968)

Johnny Parkin was born in the Dingle, Liverpool in July 1890, exactly 50 years before his famous grandson Richy Starkey (Ringo Starr).  His father, also John Parkin, died in 1903. At some point between 1903 and 1910 Johnny's widowed mother, Mary Ann Parkin, started living with a married man named Henry Starkey.

The fate of Starkey's actual wife is not known, nor is the reason why they were unable to divorce. Contrary to what Ringo's family may have led him to believe, his great grandmother's change of name did not occur when she remarried. When young Johnny and his mother moved in with her new man, they simply changed their surname to Starkey to avoid any scandalous gossip, and that was that. It was an illusion the family would always try and maintain.

Johnny "Starkey" married Annie Bower in 1910 and had at least four children between 1911 and 1927. The second child, born on 1 October 1913 was Richard "Richy" Starkey, Ringo's dad.

Richard became a confectioner, baking sweets and cakes; I think that's how my parents met. He worked making cakes, so we always had sugar through the war.

Ringo Starr, Anthology

An aerial view of the Dingle and South Docks, circa 1930s. The bridge carrying the Liverpool Overhead Railway (L.O.R) into the Dingle tunnel can be seen top right and more clearly in the photograph below. The final half mile of track was underground, terminating at Dingle Station.

Ringo's mum, Elsie Gleave was born 19 October 1914 at her parent's home at 4 Hurry Street, Dingle, built directly above the railway tunnel. According to Ringo "Me mother's mother really was very poor. She had fourteen kids". He may have been exaggerating about the number of children or perhaps he meant pregnancies. Elsie was the first of eight children that we can positively identify, three of whom would die in infancy and it may be that there were additional unrecorded deaths in an area where infant mortality was still high. Leaving school at the age of 14 she found work in a bakery which is where she met Richard Starkey.

Richy and Elsie married on 24 October 1936 at St Silas Church on the corner of High Park Street and St Silas Street.

Madryn Street towards High Park Street, 2014

With nowhere else to live, they moved in with Richy's family at 59 Madryn Street, an end of terrace house in one of Liverpool's seven "Welsh" streets, so named after castles or land estates in Wales.  Long threatened with demolition, I have photographed all of them and will cover them in a separate post.    

No. 59 Madryn Street.

The Second War World started on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.  Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later.  Remarkably the fathers of all four Beatles were excused active service, for various reasons. Richy Starkey's cake-making was considered a "reserve occupation". Towards the end of the first month of war Elsie discovered that she was pregnant. They now needed a house of their own and didn't have to look very far. 

No. 9 Madryn Street, just up the road from Richy's parents became available to rent and they took it, paying a landlord 14s 10d a week.  Despite the close proximity to the docks, and therefore every chance of being the unlucky recipient of wayward Luftwaffe bombs they decided to stay in the Dingle. Perhaps the familiarity of the area where they had both grown up made them feel safer, perhaps, like many, they had nowhere else to go.

A week later than expected, Richard "Richy" Starkey was born on Sunday 7 July 1940, upstairs in 9 Madryn Street. 

There was a light at the end of a tunnel that I had to get to, and I came out like that, and then I was born. There was lots of cheering. In fact my mother used to say that because I was born, the Second World War started. I don't know what that meant, really; I never understood it, but that's what she used to say. I suppose it was the only way they could celebrate, and it could be true - you never can tell.

Ringo Starr, Anthology

No doubt Elsie always struggled to separate memories of her son's birth from those initial days of the blitz, which started four weeks later. She was still in bed, recovering from the birth, when she heard the first air raid sirens.

Ringo was christened Richard Starkey on 28 July 1940 at St. Silas, where his parents had married four years earlier.  The church was bombed on 19 October 1940 (see the aftermath above) and did not re-open until 6 December 1942. Ringo went to Sunday School here from the age of four. It remained in use until closing in 1952 and was demolished two years later. 

I don't remember the war and all the bombs, although they did actually break Liverpool up a lot. Our neighbourhood was really bombed. We had to hide a lot, I've been told since; we used to hide in the coal cellar (it was more like a cupboard). I remember big gaps in the streets where houses had stood. We used to play on the rubble when I was older, and in the air-raid shelters.

Ringo Starr, Anthology

Around 3000 brick bomb shelters were built in the middle of the streets around Liverpool.  Those sheltering within were protected from flying glass, splinters and shrapnel but not from a direct hit as evidenced in the photo above. 

On 17 August 1940, after two days of bombing runs over the Mersey in Birkenhead and Wallasey, the Germans began their attack on Liverpool, targeting the docks. Brunswick , North Coburg and South Queens Docks were all hit as was Caryl street in the Dingle. The Starkeys, like many decided to chance their luck by remaining in their own home during the air raid, taking cover beneath the stairs in the coal hole with two of their neighbours with whom they'd been chatting when the sirens started. Elsie later recalled that it was only when the infant Richy began screaming that she realised she had him over her  shoulder, feet first, such was her panic to get him to safety. Upon turning him the right way around he slept through the raid!

The Starkeys survived the Blitz but their marriage did not. They split up around the middle of 1943. Young Richy remained with his mother whilst his dad moved back in with his parents, twenty five doors down at 59 Madryn Street.

Richard Starkey -Ringo's dad

When I was three he decided that was enough of that, and he left us. I was an only child, so from then it was just me and my mother, until she remarried when I was thirteen. I have no real memories of my dad. I only saw him probably five times after he left (Liverpool), and I never really got on with him because I'd been brainwashed by my mother about what a pig he was. I felt angry that he left. And I felt really angry later on, going through therapy in rehab, when I came to look at myself and get to know my feelings, instead of blocking them all out. For me, I felt I'd dealt with it when I was little. I didn't understand that really I had been blocking my anger out. You get on with it, that's how we were brought up. We were the last generation to be told, 'Just get on with it.' You didn't let your feelings out much. Ringo Starr, Anthology

Elsie remained on good terms with her former in-laws, Ringo's paternal grandparents Johnny and Annie Starkey, and they looked after him while she took any job on offer as the little maintenance she received was not enough to live on. For the time being, little Richy had contact with his dad who was still working at the bakery where he'd met Elsie.

Mum didn't do too much for a while. She was in a bit of pain after my dad left, and she ended up doing any down-home job she could get to feed and clothe me. She did everything: she was a barmaid, she scrubbed steps, worked in a food shop. My very first memory is of being pushed in a pram. I was out with my mother, my grandma and my grandad. I don't know where we were, but it must have been countrified in some way, because we were chased by a goat. Everybody was so frightened, including me. People were screaming and running because an animal was chasing us. I can't imagine it was in Toxteth or Dingle!

Ringo Starr, Anthology 

Ringo's father moved out of his parents house and left Liverpool just as the war was drawing to a close. When his maintenance payments to Elsie stopped she was unable to afford the Madryn Street rent on her £3 a week wage.

We lived at first in a huge, palatial house with three bedrooms. I don't remember the inside of our house in Madryn Street - I know we never had a garden - but a lot of my pals grew up on the same street and I went into their houses (and of course his grand parents home at no. 59). It was too big and we couldn't afford it now my dad had stopped supporting my mother. We were working-class, and in Liverpool when your dad left you suddenly became lower working-class. So we moved to a smaller, two-bedroom place. (They were both rented - houses always were.)

Madryn Street looking towards the Empress Pub on High Park Street. Admiral Grove is to the right of the pub.

10 Admiral Grove (left) with the rear of the Empress Pub on the right.

The move was from one street to the next, from Madryn Street to Admiral Grove - people around us didn't move very far. We went on a van and they didn't even put the back up, because it was only 300 yards. I remember sitting on the back of the van. It's such a heavy memory as a kid; you get used to being where you are. 

Ringo Starr, Anthology

10 Admiral Grove was a two up two down terrace house in a "play street" to the side of the Empress Pub on High Park Street where Elsie sometimes worked as a barmaid. Despite being condemned as derelict ten years before Ringo and Elsie moved in, they lived in the house for another twenty years until The Beatles moved down to London at the end of 1963.