June 2008 Archives

WHEN the parents, pupils and teachers of St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School celebrated the school’s anniversary last month, they delved into more than 150 years of history.
The anniversary celebrations marked 40 years since the school was opened at its present site on Radnor Drive, Marshside.
But St Patrick’s history goes back much further, and an anniversary ball on Friday, July 11, will give parents and teachers an insight into school life in the 19th century.
Eve McNamara, secretary of the St Patrick’s Parent Teacher Association, has organised the ball and has been researching the origins of the school.
She said: “We are celebrating 40 years at the present site but actually the history dates back to the 1840s when Irish immigrants came over to the area after the Potato Famine.�

Former headteacher Sister Paul returns to St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School to celebrate its 40th anniversary on Radnor Drive

With the help of Martyn Senior, secretary and manager of Hesketh Golf Club, and renowned local historian Dr Harry Foster, Eve has uncovered Ordnance Survey maps showing a cluster of 47 houses known as ‘Little Ireland’ on what is now Hesketh Golf Course.
Newspaper stories from the mid-19th century paint an unappealing picture of ‘Little Ireland’ as a slum, with reports of fights, murders and thefts.
The 1876 Southport Directory shows its inhabitants mainly to have been labourers, cocklers and fishermen.
Among the squalor, however, a school was set up by the Sisters of Charity of St Paul, who were stationed at St Marie’s on the Sands.
Their aim was to save the children from the long walk to their school on Seabank Road.
Dr Foster’s research shows that two cottages in ittle Irelandwere assigned to become a school.
The plot would only have cost £200 to buy and convert for its new purpose.

The Southport Visiter photographed children in the new kitchen at St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School in 1968

In 1904, the school moved to the site of St Marie’s on Bath Street and in 1968, a purpose-built school was erected with seven classrooms on the current site on Radnor Drive.
The Southport Visiter covered the opening of the school, describing it as “bright and modern� with “up-to-date equipment including built-in units and the latest desks�.
There were 182 pupils under the guiding hand of headteacher Sister Mary.
St Patrick’s enjoyed the first of its 40th anniversary celebrations in May when former headteacher Sister Paul returned for a special ceremony. Sister Paul ran the school from 1968 to 1975, and now works in Romania.
Pupils released balloons and planted a tree to mark the occasion, and held a special lunch with Sister Paul, whom Eve described as a “very entertaining lady�.
The celebrations will culminate with the anniversary ball on July 11.
Former staff and pupils will celebrate alongside current staff at Southport Floral Hall, and Eve’s research will be presented in a display.
Tickets for the black-tie event are £25, available from St Patrick’s School office on 01704 225906 or by calling Sue Boyle on 07968 371217.

DO you have memories of St Patrick’s? Please leave them below.

HAPPY faces were all around at this street party at the end of World War II.
Rationing may have denied many comforts to these Southport residents who gathered on Nolan Street – a small cul-de-sac near Duke Street Cemetery – but both young and old sported looks of glee.
LookBack thanks Jeffrey Ridgway, of High Park Road, for sharing it with readers.
Mr Ridgway is not featured on the snap but his late wife Marjorie stands fifth from left on the back row.
The then Marjorie Hall was aged around 20 and stands beside her sister Lillian, who is sixth from left.
Her other sister Dolly and her parents Ted and Elizabeth Hall are also featured.
Mr Ridgway, 79, found the photo among the possessions of Marjorie, who died in 1994.
He believes the street party was one of a number held around the town at the close of six years of conflict.
Mr Ridgway grew up near Macclesfield and met Marjorie when she came to visit Lillian, who had moved to Cheshire.
The couple married in the 1950s and moved to Southport after Mr Ridgway started working as a driver for a Liverpool firm.
Mrs Ridgway – a skilled needleworker – spent time working at Todd’s doll factory in Southport town centre.
l Are you featured on this street party scene on Nolan Street? Is anyone you know?
Do you have any street party photos you would like to see featured in LookBack?
Call LookBack editor Robert Alcock on 01704- 398287, email robert.alcock@southportvisiter.co.uk or leave your memories below.

The Hall family were among those celebrating on Nolan Street after World War II

A REUNION call has gone out to former members of the 2nd Southport Company of the Boys' Brigade, based at All Souls Church on Norwood Road.
Former Palmerston Road resident Sean Sutton wants to get in touch with his old friends who were company members from the early 1970s to the early 1980s.
Sean attended Norwood Road Primary School until 1975, and then KGV from 1975-1982, and has lived in London for the past 20 years.
Norwood Road School was linked to the 2nd Southport Boys’ Brigade HQ at neighbouring All Souls Church Hall.
To get back in touch with Sean, email seans@blueyonder.co.uk or phone 020-7609-8737.

TRAMS helped keep Southport on the move during six decades that spanned the ‘golden era’ of the resort’s growth.
This long-gone chapter of local transport history is detailed in a fascinating new book, Southport in the Age of the Tram.
Co-authors James Dean and Cedric Greenwood – the latter an esteemed Southport Visiter journalist for 21 years – tell the full story of the town’s street tramway network that covered 17.5 miles at its height in 1924.
It was an era that began with the 1873 launch of horse-drawn street trams in Southport and ended in 1934 with the Town Council’s decision to shelve its electric trams in favour of buses.
Cedric writes in the book’s introduction that trams “helped to develop the town by giving mobility to the majority of residents and visitors who did not own a horse and carriage.
He continues: “As the tram was patronised mainly by those who could not afford their own carriages, it was generally stigmatised as the working man’s carriage.
“There were exceptions, such as the well-furnished trams to Birkdale Park and Hesketh Park and Liverpool’s exclusive first class trams.�
Southport in the Age of the Tram tells how it was Southport Tramways Company (STC) that opened two horse-drawn lines – running via different routes from Birkdale to Churchtown – in 1873-78.
On June, 3, 1873, the Visiter reported on the success of early journeys between St Cuthbert’s Place in Churchtown and London Square.
Our correspondent wrote: “The tramways did good business and the novelty of transit in Southport was no small attraction.
“Parties wended their way to Churchtown by the nearest route on foot or rode in the cars to the vicinity of the Strawberry Gardens.�
The Strawberry Gardens were part of the Meols Hall estate and were in 1875 succeeded by a much larger pleasure garden, named the Botanic Gardens.
The book traces the tram system’s development, including the opening of The Birkdale & Southport Tramway as the resort’s second horsecar company.
And in 1900 Southport Corporation opened three electric tramways, which made the trips from High Park, Blowick and St Luke’s to Hoghton Street.

A decorated private charter tramcar ready to leave London Square. This was an amateur snapshot of one of the last Corporation open-top cars in the early 1920s

Yet a unified tramway system only materialised in 1918, when Southport Corporation took over STC.
During the following decade, the tramways were modernised, upgraded and extended to Bedford Park in Birkdale.
The authors write that at the network’s heyday, “nobody in the town lived more than a five-minute walk from the nearest tram stop.�
Ultimately, the growth of bus and car use sounded the death knell for Southport’s trams.
The Town Council’s Tramways Committee noted there was congestion on Scarisbrick New Road as early as 1927, and blamed this on the tramcars running along the single line in the middle of the road from St Philip’s Church to Haig Avenue.
Seven years later, a large majority of council members voted to make the final switch to buses.
On New Year’s Day, 1935, the Visiter reported: “The passing of the trams was celebrated last night by members of the Transport Committee, accompanied by the Mayor and Mayoress.
“After the arrival of the party at the depot an old tramcar was set alight as a conclusion to the celebration.�
That may have been the end for the resort's trams, but Southport has retained a special place in tramway history.
Not only was the density of its network unsurpassed outside Britain’s major cities, its engineers helped pioneer passenger cable haulage in 1864 with the start of the pier tramway.
Today, the resort’s one surviving tramline remains on its restored pier, in the form of a battery-
electric unit that trundles the length of the pier in five minutes – the same journey time as the cable tram of 1865-1905.

Lord Street showing a Company tramcar stopping at the corner of Nevill Street

THE name Cedric Greenwood is likely to be familiar to longtime readers of the Southport Visiter.
For more than two decades, he was a highly respected news and features writer based at our Tulketh Street offices, eventually rising to the positions of chief reporter and deputy news editor.
Transport has been both a journalistic and personal passion for Cedric, who spent his weekends away from the newsroom restoring an old Leyland bus at Burscough aerodrome.
And in 1991, aged 53, he left journalism to take a job driving buses in Chester, before moving to Norfolk, where he lives today.
Southport in the Age of the Tram is the fourth book title and sixth volume which bears his name.
The first was a book on Southport’s architecture, ‘Thatch, Towers & Colonnades’, first published in 1971 and revised in 1990.
Cedric told LookBack that the new book’s primary author was James Dean, a Southport man and trams enthusiast who sadly died last year before the book’s completion, aged 86.
The former Visiter reporter completed and edited the work Mr Dean began.
Cedric said: “I think the whole period of the trams was a golden period. It was a golden age for Britain as well.
“Everything on Southport’s seafront was thriving. One of the main attractions was the Winter Gardens.
“You could go there in the summer or winter and get lost and enjoy yourself for the whole day – there’s nothing like it now.�
Today, aged 70, Cedric still drives part-time for a Norfolk coach company, as well as working on future publishing projects and enjoying line dancing and cycling.
Of his career at the Visiter he remembered: “It was a very happy time.�

Corporation car no.8 passes the old Market Hall in Eastbank Street, about 1908 Photos courtesy of Sefton Library Service

SOUTHPORT in the Age of the Tram is published by Silver Link and retails at £17.99. It is available at good bookshops including Broadhurst’s in Market Street, Southport.

Do you remember when Southport had trams? Was a relative once a local tram driver? Call LookBack reporter Robert Alcock on 01704-398287, e-mail robert
.alcock@southportvisiter.co.uk or leave a message below.

ON this day exactly 64 years ago, a military force numbering approximately twice the population of Southport landed on the beaches of Normandy in Northern France.
Operation Overlord began the Allied forces’ massive mission to end the Nazi grip on Occupied Europe.
Eventually, more than 850,000 troops – comprising British, North American, free European forces and others – arrived to take part in the quest.
One of them was a 20-year-old Irish Guards tank driver and Southport man, Tony Parkinson.
Today, aged 84, Mr Parkinson has raised more than £3,000 for a veterans’ charity by giving talks about D-Day.
“In the talks, I don’t speak about my own personal experience, I speak about the preparations for D-Day,� he told LookBack.
“Twice the population of Southport was put onto the beaches in about 12 hours.�

A British Army Sherman Tank drives to the English south coast in preparation for the Normandy Landings

The Birkdale resident recalled a “remarkable� response to his first talk, delivered at a local school to mark D-Day’s 50th anniversary in 1994.
He has since addressed more than 300 diverse audiences, ranging from schoolchildren to Probus Club and U3A members.
No charge is made for his appearances, with all donations going to the Royal Star & Garter home for disabled ex-service people.

Tony Parkinson at the Methodist Hall in Hesketh Bank, where he gave a talk to the Age Concern Luncheon Club. He is holding one of his paintings

For Mr Parkinson, the value of that home in Surrey is clear, having himself recovered from war wounds at Scarisbrick Hall near Southport and Edge Hill in Ormskirk – both now sites of educational institutions.
He said: “I was hit three times but I came home pretty much all right. I could have spent 60 years in the (Royal Star & Garter) home.�
Recognition of Mr Parkinson’s fundraising and narrative skills has come from a number of sources.
The Royal Star & Garter awarded him a special medal for his efforts while researchers have taped his recollections for the British World War II archives.
It is also hoped to make sound recordings of Mr Parkinson’s talks – which often deploy humour but are never trivialising – for the benefit of local schoolchildren.

Troops land on Normandy beach during the 1944 Operation Overlord offensive

Mr Parkinson volunteered to join the Army as he neared the age of 18 and received tank driver training in Yorkshire.
He saw that “nothing was left to chance� for the Normandy landings, but the Allied forces also made tactical bluffs when they found themselves outgunned during their advance.
German resistance was fierce and Mr Parkinson’s remembers heavy casualties during the advance on Belgium.
He witnessed the “grim� sight of comrades’ tanks going up in flames and the “merciless� fighting of the Nazis’ SS troops in Holland.
Mr Parkinson spoke of his huge admiration for the bravery of female nurses on the front line as well as of the conscientious objectors who served in roles such as stretcher-bearers.
In his post-Army career, Mr Parkinson managed Saxone shoes in Lord Street and was also involved in the opening of the Roland Cartier shoe shop on the thoroughfare.
A friend, the Southport artist and author Philip Berrill, said: “I have known Tony for over 20 years and have often been inspired by his talks, his motives for giving them and have seen at first hand the great appreciation he receives from audiences.�

IF you are interested in arranging for Mr Parkinson to speak to your group, call him on 01704-565749.

Do you have an interesting story from the Second World War or another conflict? Call LookBack reporter Robert Alcock on 01704-398287, email robert.alcock@southportvisiter.co.uk, or leave a message below.

WHO were these two bandits clutching their ill-gotten gains somewhere in Southport? We’d love to hear from ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and find out what they are up to today. Call LookBack on 398287, email robert.alcock@southportvisiter.co.uk or leave your memories below

SOUTHPORT’S English Rose beauty contest was recently featured in LookBack.
The annual pageant, which was held for the last time at the Floral Hall in the late 1990s, raised plenty of passions during its existence.
A delve into the Southport Visiter archives reveals the tale of one spat surrounding the contest, dating from 1952.
Our edition from Tuesday, September 16, that year, carried the tabloid-style headline: ‘Southport Won’t Ban Lovely Girls’.
At stake in the row was whether professional models should be permitted to be crowned English Rose, and the debate featured some attitudes and language likely to be frowned upon now.
The call for a ban on “professional beauty queens� came from Charles Carlton-Smith, entertainments manager of the fellow seaside town of Fleetwood.
“The original purpose of the contest is being lost,� he said, expressing a view shared by some correspondents to the Visiter.
“When professional models and mannequins compete, the average girl doesn’t stand a chance.�
Yet Councillor Mrs Mae Bamber, a member of Southport Council’s publicity and attractions committee, disagreed, warning the “good of the town� could suffer.
She said: “If you start banning girls the event will lose some of its attraction.
“Because a competitor has won at another town’s music festival you do not ban him or her from yours.�
Another committee member agreed, albeit in a less graceful terms.
The unnamed councillor said: “A system could be introduced where models receive a handicap.
“But why should such a restriction be imposed?
“Why should a girl be penalised because she has been taught how to walk and how to stand properly?�