Rocky Lane

 

This is a post card of Rocky Lane, Liverpool as it was in the time of my Mum’s youth. The view is looking downwards from Childwall Priory Road (later Queens Drive) towards Bowring Park Road. It really was rocky and it really was a lane – a typical country lane with hedgerows and sandstone banks. This farm was known to Mum as Pye’s farm and in the 1910s the Pye’s had been there for over seventy years but it’s ‘proper’ name was Rocky Lane Farm. The wall on the left is off Broad Green Hall and the entrance was just beyond Laburnum Cottage which was on the opposite side of the lane. Behind that cottage was Childwall Gas Works with a small gasometer. The manager, George Harding, lived in Laburnum Cottage and Harding laid cast-iron gas pipes behind the hedgerows, made the gas, installed the necessary fittings in the properties served (which included Nana’s house) and read the meters. By-products of the gas industry such as tar and refuse lime were sold to local residents and farmers.
Nowadays all this is houses and asphalt and even the social club which replaced Pye's Farm (CADWA) has itself been demolished.

Mrs Judson’s

 

All this has changed! It used to be where the Liverpool end of the M62 now meets Queens Drive. My colour photo looking towards the Rocket was taken at the end of the sixties. The former cottages, once known as Childwall View had been shops since my Mum was small and the far end one – Mrs Judson’s – was the local grocers. Not sure whether any of it survives or in what form.


The cottages on the left at the end would really have had a view of Childwall at the end of the Victorian era before the houses opposite were built and the trees planted.

When Mum and Dad moved into Renville Road the Judsons continued to be their grocers with Mum and I walking around there to shop. It was a real ‘corner shop’ and seemed to stock everything despite only being big enough for a three or four customers to stand in it at a time. Later, I would go on my own with a list and a large rucksack to do the shopping on a Saturday morning. That rucksack was heavy by the time it was filled but I would never admit it! Later still Mr Judson Mum used to phone the list in and Mr Judson would deliver the groceries in his Morris Minor Countryman.


On the right of this 1973 picture – looking towards The Fiveways, the opposite way to mine - is The Mission Room. This was Miss Smith’s Preparatory School when Mum was small and she and Uncle Eric went there. When GB and I were small it was the Sunday School room for St David’s Church and he and I went there though my stint was only brief. I recall falling backwards off the bench and banging my head. That was all the excuse I needed to convince Mum to let me stay at home.


At the end of the sixties the shop at the opposite end of the row was briefly a sales outlet for Ron Baker’s paintings. Ron’s painting name was Cazier and I shall show some of his pictures on a future blog when I can find the slides. When I was in the sixth form I would often call in on my way home from school and talk to his attractive wife while deciding how long it would take me to save up for a painting. I bought two and then had a commission painted from my own slide of Great Gable.

Lime Street

 

All this has gone! Situated at the end of Lime Street, Liverpool, the Guiness clock and all these buildings made way for a multi-storey car park and hotel in the late 1960s / early 1970s.