Halewood Village Memories

Some fascinating pictures from the town I grew up in - just outside of Liverpool - found at the Halewood Parish History Website.
My parents moved here in 1964 when Liverpool city council was shifting the white working class communities out of the city centre into the brave new world of New Towns like Huyton, Halewood and Kirkby with their sprawling council estates. We moved from Netherfield Road, just north of Liverpool city centre - a sprawling landscape of back-to-backs and Georgian and Victorian town houses which have now all been swept away.
In spite of perjortive associations of "council estate" we still regarded it as a village - we all knew each other, went to the same schools, worked in the same factories(14,500 of them in the Ford car plant) and drank in the same clubs and pubs. And, while the population of Halewood bulged from a couple of thousand to 20,309 in the Sixties - a village (the posh part) remained at it's heart. Here are some pictures from the "old" village much of it recognisable from my childhood still, much of it gone but lot's remaining.
Bailey's Lane - these cottages remain in place.

The Barracks - still there and still in disrepair.

Bridgefield - I used to play on the rubble, year's before it was demolished in the woods behind Bridgefield School. It was obviously surrounded by grand gardens with rhodedendrons, Japanese maple and azallias.

Brewery Lane, adjacent to the Eagle and Child Pub and, eventually the road down to the local comprehensive school.


The Eagle and Child Pub - when we first arrived my Dad remembers them serving beer from a jug from the cellar.

Leathers Cottage - presumably why the street on which we lived was called Leathers Lane.

Interesting that the map also shows the River Mersey to the west.