33 Head Street,
Toxteth
Liverpool 8
The
Birthplace of Julia Stanley
John
Lennon's maternal family was Welsh. His
Great-Grandmother Mary Elizabeth Morris, whose family were all farmers in North
Wales, was born on the family farm of Berth-Y-Glyd, in the village of Llysfaen,
just outside Llandudno.
At some
point she met and married John Millward from Flintshire in North Wales. They
were living in Chester, when in 1873 their daughter Annie was born in the
famous Bear and Billet Inn in Lower Bridge Street. Annie Millward would be John
Lennon's Grandmother.
The
Millwards moved to Liverpool when Annie was a small girl. Reportedly a wealthy
Welsh uncle left Mary a tidy sum of money, so she bought five or six little
properties dotted all around where workmen would shortly commence construction
of the Anglican Cathedral in 1904. She rented these properties out and when
they became vacant the Millwards would move in until a new tenant could be
found. After Annie grew up and met George Stanley they continued living in the
various houses and flats.
The
story of the Stanley legacy, actually the Millward legacy, has been told
verbally by John Lennon's cousin Stanley Parkes, and in print by John's half
sister Julia Baird*. The alternative theory put forward to explain why the
family had to keep moving addresses is because they were on the breadline and
could not afford the rent. In fact there is no hard evidence supporting either
explanation. Is it possible perhaps that the legacy story was told to save face
whenever one of the kids asked why they had to move house again? Maintaining
the right public image to give the impression that they were of a higher class
than their neighbours was certainly a Stanley trait as Julia Baird's book
confirms.
Annie's
future husband George Ernest Stanley was born in 1874 in the Shaw Street area
of Everton. John Lennon would know him as "Pop" Stanley. How he met
Annie Millward is unclear but what is known is that by 1899 they had produced
their first child and uncommonly for the times, did so out of wedlock.
What
was common at that time was the heartbreak of infant mortality. Sadly their
first two children died, Charlotte Alice in April 1900 (age 9 months) from
pneumonia, and their only son, George Earnest in April 1903 (aged just 3
months) from indigestion.
Both
children were buried within the grounds of St James Cemetery, just two of the
57,774 laid to rest between 1860 and 1936 in what was then the Liverpool's city
cemetery.
Thankfully
over the next ten years they would produce five healthy daughters. As a
consequence of their living arrangements the five Stanley sisters were all born
at different addresses.
Their
third child, Mary Elizabeth Stanley (John's Aunt 'Mimi') was born on 24 April
1906 and baptised at St James Church just under a month later on 23 May. At
this point the Stanleys were living at 21 Windsor Street, a short walk from the
church but they were not here long. When George and Annie were finally married
at the Liverpool Parish Church, St Peter's in Church Street, on 19th November 1906
they had moved to Cornwallis Street close to the Public Baths.
In 1908
whilst living at 5 Emerson Street, Annie gave birth to another daughter,
Elizabeth Jane on 29 November. She was baptised at St James Church ten days
later. To John and his cousins she was known as 'Mater'.
Annie
('Nanny') was born in 1911, Julia ('Judy', John Lennon's mother) in 1914 and
finally Harriet ('Harrie') in 1916.
Three
of the Stanley sisters. Left to right: Mater, Harrie and Mimi
St James Church, where the Stanley daughters were baptised, sits on St James Place at the corner of Upper Parliament Street and Park Road, just a short walk from whichever property they were living in at the time.
The
church was built in 1774–75 by Cuthbert Bisbrown, who also probably also
designed it. The land was presented by Lord Sefton and the church, which costs
£3000 was paid for by local shareholders. It was opened for its first service
on June 4, 1775. The timber roof was added in 1846 by William Culshaw. The
chancel, designed by H. Havelock Sutton, was built in 1900. At its peak in the
late 1800s the congregation of St James
was so huge that there were 1,000 children in the Sunday School!
To
local historians St James is of huge interest as one of the oldest standing
churches in Liverpool. The architectural style of the interior is
'conventionally Georgian'. There are galleries on three sides, carried on slim
quatrefoil cast iron columns said to be the earliest remaining examples in the
whole country, which is why I was keen to visit it when it was opened to the
public during September's annual Heritage Weekend.
Cast and wrought iron were to revolutionise the architecture and
engineering of the 19th century and at St James we can see, in embryo, the
start of the giant leap into vast light fireproof prefabricated structures,
technology employed locally with great success during the construction of
Liverpool's docks
Cast
Iron column supporting the gallery. (Left)
The
church of St James has often been referred to as ‘the slave church’ as many of
the 27 shareholders who contributed to its cost were merchants engaged in the
slave trade.
Inside
the church there are 19 monuments dating from the late-18th and the early-19th
centuries, many to the memory of people connected with the slave trade.
The
burial registers of St James feature the names and origins of people from all
over the world, including several who were black, buried without discrimination
alongside each other in the church grounds. From about 1900 the graveyard was
closed for internment and part of the land was used to widen St James Place.
The remaining part of the yard was subsequently grassed over, which is how it
remains today.
In the
east window is stained glass designed by Henry Holiday, dated 1881.
On 1
October 1974 the church was declared redundant, and on 9 June 1976 was vested
in the Churches Conservation Trust. At one point the church was to be
demolished to make way for a new motorway and ring road, plans which saw the
demise of the David Lewis Theatre close by.
Luckily the planned road improvements were never made and St James was
saved . In May 2010 the church was returned to the Liverpool Diocese and
re-opened as the Church of St James in the City. As it was in a "semi-derelict
condition", a marquee was erected within the church to allow the
resumption of worship. Repairs are being undertaken to secure the church's
structure but as with the restoration of any historic building this will take
time and a lot of money.
John
Lennon's mother Julia was born on 12 March 1914 at 33 Head Street***, five
months before the start of the Great War. At the time of Julia’s birth this was
an area of poor quality dwellings as these photographs illustrate.
Critchley
Court. Poor quality 'Court' Housing in Back Chester Street which backed on to
Head Street (1911).
The maps show Head Street packed with back-to-back buildings of all different heights, squeezed into the space between Chester Street and Dexter Street. There was a mix of cramped court housing, tiny yards and workshops, with the whole area book-ended by the Anglican church of St James and the Catholic church of St Patrick.
Both churches are still there, but most of the streets in between have long since disappeared. Today, Head Street is little more than a small industrial estate, with workshops and small businesses where the houses once stood.
Some of the original buildings were still around as late as 1968, although the slum clearances may have begun as early as the 1940s — perhaps with a bit of unasked-for help from the Luftwaffe. We know that the last German bombs to fall on Liverpool came down on 10 January 1942, on Upper Stanhope Street, just one road away from Head Street. In a strange twist of fate, one of the houses destroyed was the former home of Alois Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s brother.**
Head
Street (1968) looking towards St Patricks Church. The same view (2015) is shown
below. Julia's house would have stood bottom right on the new photo.
Of course,
by then the Stanleys had left Head Street. They moved several times after
Julia's birth, spending much of the post war 1920s living at 23 Cedar Grove off
Lodge Lane. By the 1930s they had resettled at 71a Berkley Street, around the
corner from Upper Stanhope Street. The outbreak of war in 1939 saw the family
move again, for the first time away from Toxteth and the nearby docks to
Wavertree.
Berkley
Street features again later in the Beatles' story. I'll cover that in a future
post.
Notes:
*
Julias book Imagine This, Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon
**
Alois Hitler and his family lived at 102 Upper Stanhope Street. Adolf Hitler is
rumoured to have stayed with them here during 1912-13. The house was destroyed
in the final night of the Blitz and the area is now landscaped.
Link:
Watch some fascinating videos about the restoration of St James, presented by
the Rev. Neil Short on the St James in the City Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/St-James-Toxteth-Heritage-Hope-Project-417788251655356/
Another
view of Chester Street at the time Julia Stanley was born.
Source:
Stanley family photos found on-line and used with the permission of David Birch.
Original photos of Liverpool from Liverpool Record Office (LRO)
