St Sylvester's RC Church

(Image ©LRO)

(©2020 Pete Ryan)

St Sylvester's RC church, Silvester Street. I remember attending the funeral of my grandmother, Mary Kennedy, at this church in 1977, she lived in Hopwood Gardens.

(©2020 Pete Ryan)

Rachel Street

(Image ©LRO)

(©2020 Pete Ryan) Rachel Street looking west from Great Homer Street up to Cazneau Street/Scotland Road. Note one solitary car parked in the street and an 'an'cart's' fresh produce stacked immediately to the right of the picture.  These are the tenements in which William and Jane O'Donnell lived at No. 51, which was located at the very top of the street, next to the haulage company - LF Briggs.  Below, Rachel Street as it is today - a mere shadow of its former self. (©2020 Pete Ryan)

The Blitz

BBC - Liverpool Local History

Scotland Road & Victoria Square

(Image ©LRO)

(Image ©LRO)

Scotland Road Library

(Image ©LRO)

Schoolchildren gather outside the Scotland Road library for this 1930s picture.  The library was at the junction of Scotland Road and Collingwood Street.

©2020 Pete Ryan

The Queen of Lawrence Gardens

The following is taken from an old Liverpool Echo newspaper clipping from 26 October 1970.  It has been treasured by the family of the late Jane O'Donnell, hence the folded creases on the image.  Story is by Margaret Farrell and photograph by Eddie Barford.  Mrs O'Donnell is the same Mrs O'Donnell who appears in the photograph by Bernard Fallon titled 'Shawlie.'  Rather than portray Jane O'Donnell just as a represented image, as the family of Mrs O'Donnell suggest that's what Mr Fallon did, the Echo article, they believe, treated Jane O'Donnell with the dignity and respect she deserved. (Original Copyright belongs to Trinity Mirror Newspapers this image ©2020 Pete Ryan)

Little Mrs Jane O'Donnell is known as the Queen of Lawrence Gardens. She is barely five foot tall, has silver white hair neatly tied back in a plaited bun, and greets you wearing her working pinafore and a cosy pair of blue slippers.

“What is it you want girl?” she’ll cautiously inquire before completely opening her front door. She has learnt to be cautious with strangers.

Lawrence Gardens is a dark red brick building, a block of flats erected in the 1930s, which now stands like a fortress in the midst of mud and bricks and boulders. It waits, in splendid isolation from the Scotland Road community for its final death knell and demolition. The people of Lawrence Gardens have no neighbours, just the workmen with their excavators, shovels and drills.