Sir
Thomas White Gardens,
St.
Domingo Road,
Everton,
Liverpool
5
The
McCartneys in Everton
(1945-1947)
St. Domingo Road, Everton at the time the McCartneys lived here. The chimneys of "Tommy Whites" are visible on the top left of the hill. (L.R.O)
Taken
almost from the same position as the previous photo but dating from the 1960s
after the trams were taken out of service.
After leaving R.O.F. Kirkby, Jim McCartney’s next job took him back to Liverpool, to Everton where he’d grown up. Unable to return to the Cotton Exchange because of the war, he found work in the Cleansing Department of the Liverpool Corporation as an inspector of refuse collectors, making sure the dustmen did their jobs properly. It was a far cry from the cotton trade and likely not a role Jim enjoyed, but with a wife and two young sons to support, it would have to do for now.
Mary had spent the past two years at home caring for Paul and Michael, and after returning to Walton Hospital to give birth to both boys, she realised how much she missed her old profession. Likely due to tight finances, Mary also found work with the Liverpool Corporation, as a municipal midwife. The job let her work from home and came with a rented flat at 75 Sir Thomas White Gardens, a huge tenement block on St. Domingo Road.
It was a tiring but fulfilling role for Mary, who had to be on call at all hours. The boys would watch their mum leave the ground floor flat in her crisp blue and white uniform, a respected figure in the neighborhood, while poor Jim carried on with his dreary rounds, checking up on dustmen and waiting for the day he could return to his trade. He might not have been an actual dustman or worn their hat and ‘cor blimey trousers,’ but here they were, living in a council flat. When both parents were out working, one of Jim’s sisters would step in to look after Paul and Mike.
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Map showing the position of
St. Edward's Roman Catholic College
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The tenements were just five years old when the McCartney family moved in. Between 1938 and 1940, 348 flats were built on the former site of St. Edward's College, which had been founded as a boarding school in 1848 in a grand mansion called St. Domingo House, named after the Isle of San Domingo where George Campbell, a privateer and later Mayor of Liverpool (1763–64), had prospered.
Liverpool’s Catholic population grew rapidly during the Great Irish Famine (1845–52), and it’s thought that only about 5% of their children were receiving any education when the College was established.
Around the same time, Alexander Goss (1814–72), coadjutor bishop of Liverpool, saw the need for a cathedral to serve his growing congregation and selected the grounds of St. Edward’s College. In 1853, he commissioned Edward Welby Pugin (1833–1875) to design the new cathedral.
.jpg)
Our Lady
Immaculate which stood at 69A St. Domingo Road, Everton, L5 4LH
The Lady Chapel of the pro-cathedral was opened by Bishop Goss on 7 December 1856, but with greater focus on building new churches and educating Catholic children, funds were redirected and construction stopped. The Lady Chapel – later renamed Our Lady Immaculate – became the parish church for the local Catholic community, which likely included Mary McCartney when she moved to St. Thomas White Gardens in 1945.
On 19 September 1938, St. Edward’s moved from St. Domingo Road to Sandfield Park in West Derby, an occasion marked by every student walking the three miles from Everton to the new location. Soon after, the old college was demolished and construction work began on the new tenements. A section of the original sandstone wall from the college was incorporated into the boundary wall of Sir Thomas White’s in Penrose Street, and ironically, it remains the only surviving remnant of either building today.
.jpg)
According to
the Sir Thomas White Gardens' Facebook page the lady about to cross Penrose
Street is Mrs Ringworm (photo circa 1973). Part of the large stone wall is
still present today.(L.R.O)
The artists
impression for Sir Thomas White Gardens with St. Domingo Road running to the
left, Beacon Lane to the right, and Penrose Street across the top
As can
be seen from the original design above, the new building had to accommodate the
site of the existing church. The plans were ultimately scaled back, presumably
due to the outbreak of the Second World War, and the flats in the bottom right
corner were never built.
Sir
Thomas White JP was a Liverpool Councillor who had began his working life as a
cabin boy before building his career in the brewing trade. He entered local
politics and became chairman of the Tramways and Electricity Committee and was
later chairman of both the Liverpool Housing Committee and Speke Airport
Development Committee, living on Menlove Avenue for a time. He died in 1938 and as a tribute the new housing
development was named after him.
Both
Paul and Michael McCartney have written autobiographies and "Tommy Whites" is
mentioned in both books, but neither appear to have retained any memories of
the place. As Mike admits, he was only three at the time.
When Mike returned to his old home in the late ’70s to snap a photo for his book, he ended up with a more memorable impression than planned—courtesy of his foot. Stepping out of the car, he landed right in a pile of dog muck. Definitely not the homecoming he’d envisioned.
.jpg)
Paul and Mike circa 1947 (c) Paul and Michael McCartney
These
tenement flats, like many in Liverpool, were built around wide communal squares
and housed hundreds of people. Whilst Paul and Mike were barely there long
enough to form any sort of attachment it is clear that those who lived there
longer hold many fond memories. Whilst doing research for this blog I was
surprised to discover a Facebook page set up and devoted to “Tommy Whites” and
its former residents, all of whom, seemingly without exception recall their
time there with great fondness and sentimentality. Clearly the tenants here
shared strong bonds and a sense of community. With Everton being one
Liverpool’s poorest areas the families here may never have had much wealth to
speak of but they looked after each other.
Dave
Parkinson was a former resident and lived in flat 72 between 1949 and 1965. His
flat was in the front square on beacon lane and recalls “we was all posh we had
an indoor toilet, not like me granddad, he lived in (nearby) Calder Street, he
shared his outside bog with his pigeons. Great memories”
Anne
Hess recalls that "when I grew up there (many moons ago) we used to walk
around the first square under that very arch and sing ‘We are the tommy white
gang, we know our manners and how to spend are tanners we are the tommy white
gang”
Mavis
Ellis: “I used to go out down the slope, but back home up the steps, because the
bus stop was right opposite, I used to hate going home, running through the
arches across the squares, then up the stairs, sometimes the lights were out on
the staircase, I used to be terrified some times, I don't know how we did it,
when I think about it now, Ha!!!”
Mary
Jones: “Does anyone else remember the smell of Sunday roasts coming out of all
of the kitchen windows onto the landings. Lovely memories”
Debra
Jones has more specific memories regarding Our Lady Immaculate: “The large
middle window of the church was the alter .. The left side of the church, was
where the crib was situated at Christmas, the confessionals were on the left
also... If you walked up from the altar to the middle of the church, there was
a double door, this led to the vestry and the sacristy.. At the very back of the
church was the organ , Mrs Walsh from Our Lady's school played the organ... I
remember the smell of the candles, the polish, and Father Carr’s tobacco...
Our bench was facing the christening font by the doors...”
Freddy
O’Connor, author of “Liverpool It All Came Tumbling Down”(revised edition 2013)
recalls his daily walk through the flats with his brothers, sister and friends
when at school. “Occasionally we would encounter sectarian trouble, not that
we’d even heard of the word then just the Orange (protestant) and the Green
(catholic) to us, and our school was in an Orange area anyway, although
Catholics also lived here”
It
seems another big memory for a lot of the former residents is the games of
football which took place in the big square. Freddy O’Connor: “It was amazing,
no one ever knew how many a side were playing, it could have been anything up
to 30 odd each team, or even more, and the score would be as high, no one ever
got it quite right, far too many goals!”
The
lady who has helped me out most with my research for this blog is Christina Smith another
former resident from the Facebook page. One of the other members of the group
posted the photograph above. The girl with her hand in her pocket is
Christina’s sister and the little boy at the front is her brother. What’s
remarkable here is that the photograph also shows the actual flat where the
McCartneys lived.
Christina confirms that the two ground floor windows on the
bottom right hand side belong to number 75, and to the right of it is the
“wonderfully historic Beacon Lane”.
She adds “If you’ve never put a piece of
wood on top of a set of pram wheels and hurtled down the Beacon Lane cobbles,
you’ve never lived!”. To my knowledge, this is the first time the McCartney’s
flat has been positively identified. Thanks Christina!
Another
view of the McCartney's flat viewed from Beacon Lane
List of voters for Sir Thomas
White Gardens with Jim and Mary at no. 75
In August 1947, the McCartneys made their first move to South Liverpool. The Liverpool Corporation’s Municipal Midwifery Service needed a domiciled midwife on the new housing estate in Speke, and the job came with a rent-free house at 72 Western Avenue. Mary accepted the position, and after two years in Tommy Whites, the family was on the move once again.
Paul
himself seems unsure as the reason behind their move to Speke: I don’t know
why; maybe she volunteered. Maybe she wanted to get a new house because a house
came with the job.
A
document exists of the minutes of a 1947 health committee meeting concerning
the transfer of Mary McCartney to 72 Western Avenue and reads: “Nurse McCartney
has incurred expense in removing her furniture to this address and as the
transfer was effected in order to meet the convenience of the Midwifery
Department, the Medical Officer recommends that she be paid a sum not exceeding
£5 to cover her expenses, in accordance with the usual custom”
"It all came tumbling
down" - the rubble in the foreground was formerly block 16
to 20
The flats were demolished in 1984-5 and despite
having listed status, the Chapel of Our Lady Immaculate was demolished in 1990.
"Tommy Whites" viewed from Penrose Street
The colour
photo below was taken in the late 1960s by Philip G Mayer: Looking east across
St Domingo Road we can see STW on the right. From left to right - The church of
St Cuthberts which stood on the junction of Robson Street and Burleigh Road
South until demolition in 1970, in the foreground is the short Hodder Street,
then Calder Street, Carmel Street (where my parents-in-law were living when my
wife was born in 1970), and Penrose Street adjacent to Tommy White’s.
Carmel
Street (Nos 3-23 on 12.1.68) - with housing typical of many streets surrounding
"Tommy Whites". All would be cleared by the early 1970s.(L.R.O)
A new
housing estate now occupies the triangular site of "Tommy White's". Comparing
today's map with the one at the start of this blog, the clearance of the
surrounding "slum housing" in the late 1960s and subsequent
redevelopment is all too evident. Beacon Lane for example, is a fraction of its
former length. (Google)
It wasn’t just the Victorian terraced streets that were cleared; in many cases, entire areas of Everton were demolished—good housing alongside the dire—often with little thought about what would replace them. In the process, the heart of the community was torn out, as residents received compulsory purchase orders and were relocated to new estates in Kirkby, Speke, and Cantril Farm. Many say the slum clearances by Liverpool Council caused more destruction than the Blitz itself.
Some of the cleared sites remained untouched until the last couple of decades. The issue was that, with government grants, purchasing and demolishing properties was relatively cheap, but through the 1970s and 1980s there simply weren’t enough funds for rebuilding. Today, while Everton is still one of Liverpool’s most deprived areas, it has been redeveloped with masses of green space, and continues to boast the best view over the city centre.
Source:
Web:
Book:
Freddy O’Connor: Liverpool It All Came Tumbling Down (revised edition 2013)
Share your memories of "Tommy Whites" here!
