John Lennon

1940 - 1980

The Vanished World of a Woolton Childhood with John Lennon

by DAVID ASHTON

Page 10

I remember walking with Ivan Vaughan on a Sunday night home from St Peter's Church choir snowballing one another in a snow-covered Church Road and one of the snowballs hit the Catholic Archbishop Downie's car as he drove past the Woolton Quarry.

He lived in Archbishops' House opposite in Church Road and both he and his chauffeur got out of the car and asked us for our names and which school we went to as he was going to tell the headmaster.

It would be serious double trouble because if he did and our parents found out they would certainly have supported Archbishop Downey. We lads all knew the Archbishop very well. He used to walk around Reynolds Park off Church Road reading his bible and composing his sermons and praying.

He was a saint-like man and he loved us girls and boys and often spent time to talk with us as did his predecessor Archbishop Heenan. Both men had black labrador dogs and they walked around the parks and village with us.

I remember crying when Archbishop Downie died. He was a sort of father figure to us kids as was Archbishop Heenan who I often met in my Granny Ashton's humble little cottage where he would drop in for a cup of tea whilst my Grandmother Agnes held court with all in the village who dropped by for a 'cuppa'..

My granny loved to talk like all folks of her generation. That's how they learnt and how we kids learnt. She talked to folk of all religions, creeds and races. She liked to talk to nuns from Knowle Park. As she used to say "They are good women".

As far as I know all Woolton folk were the same and I am sure the Woolton atmosphere was what inspired John Lennon's songs. In the Woolton of our childhood there was freedom to roam, to wander as far as we wanted without supervision, a freedom I am afraid modern childhood does not grant.

We would take off to Liverpool alone of the bus and take the ferry to New Brighton and go for a swim in Harrison Drive Salt Water Open Air Pool and come back home on the ferry and listen to debates on Liverpool's Speakers' Corner at the Pier Head where a world of ideas would be pulled apart and discussed in an informed, intelligent way. We hardly ever saw a policeman.

Such was the wonder world of the Woolton of our childhood.

The End.

Attached documents:

(a) 'The Ballad of Woolton Green' (anon)
(b) 'I Remember, I Remember' by J.F.Marsh. Taken from J.F.Marsh's book Parts 1 & 2 'The Story of a Woolton Pub' - 1930 in which the author wrote in the preface:-
Breathe there the soul so dead
That never to themselves has said
This is my own, my native spot.
J.F.Marsh (after Walter Scott)
- a Native of Woolton

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