John Lennon

1940 - 1980

The Vanished World of a Woolton Childhood with John Lennon

by DAVID ASHTON

Page 8

The areas of Woolton where we kids met and played without any adult supervision were many. It could be a park, a field, a road but there were two areas where we all mixed - Woolton Swimming baths and Woolton Public Library.

Most organised activities had to do with a church and Woolton had its share of churches. There was St Mary's Catholic Church, St Peters Church of England, the Methodist Church at the bottom of Church Road, the Congregational Church on Woolton High Street and the Unitarian Church on Gateacre Brow. My dad always said that Unitarians were very good people.

Most of us borrowed books from the library, which had been an old Methodist chapel,or went to evenings organised by the librarians to educate us about books and show a lantern slide show or a play. But the area we all met most days of the week was Woolton Public Baths.

We were lucky in Woolton because we had our own little baths which, according to my grandad Ashton, was built by the gentry so that they could swim there instead of having to swim in the River Mersey at Oglet Point near Hale where whales sometimes got stranded and which was becoming polluted from the Widnes Chemical Works up river.

As a child growing up in Woolton I had lots of maiden aunts I could call in to see for a talk or a sweet - usually an Uncle Joe's Mint Ball - and get sixpence pocket money. I had an Aunt Sissy who had a sweet shop called Elizabeth Ashton's Sweet Shop not far from John Lennon's house on the corner of Cobden Street and Quarry Street.

Another favourite aunt was Aunt Ethel Ireland who once took my sister and me bathing at Oglet on the Mersey. I remember that we walked there and she told us that this was the last place she saw her boyfriend, Reg, before he went off to the Somme in 1916 where he was killed.

She said "Reg trickled the red sand down my breast and said "As many grains of sand as there are on your nipples will be the number of children we will have when the war is over".

Neither Aunt Ethel nor any of my other aunts ever had any children because their men never came back. But they all had similar stories to tell and one of the memories I still treasure today is of all the love these maiden aunts gave to my friends and me as children.

After the 1914-18 war the Woolton Baths were taken over by the Woolton Parish Council and then later by Liverpool Corporation. It was there that we all learnt to swim as our parents had done before us. Though it was only a tiny pool measuring just 18 metres by 10 metres they had a very successful water polo team which Rod Davis and my dad played in.

We all had contracts for the baths and many were the hours I spent walking up and down Quarry Street with John or Ivan or Pete and all the others to and from the baths or playing in the children's playground on swings and roundabouts. It was a place to meet and have fun with and talk to girls and begin to explore our knowledge of the opposite sex.

Sex, or our knowledge of sexuality, was limited so, I suppose like generations before us, we learnt from those in our peer group who had been there first - or said they had.

John Lennon had usually done it first and so we fumblingly followed. Just as in the code of honour we followed then I feel honour bound now not to divulge who found out what with who, where or when.

And I am not going to name John's sources of information on sexual relations though I knew them well and he shared his knowledge quite freely.

Favourite love-making places as I remember them after Youth Club at St Peter's Hall or some such meeting, or chance meeting, or a night in Woolton Picture House (the 'Bug House' as we called it) were the dark lane and graveyard of St Mary's Catholic Church, St Peter's Church Field or lane going up to it, The Mill Style, Strawberry Fields Grounds, Woolton Woods and Out Lane.

I'm sure I have missed out many but I'm sure we I do not think we were any different from all the generations before or since. The change or revolution that John and the Beatles ushered in was to talk openly. He told the truth, he sounded right to us kids - but it did shock the life out of our parents!

The Youth Club run by Jack Gibbons played a very important part in our lives. The Tuesday evening meeting in the St Peter's Church Hall where we had dances to 78rpm records played on an electric gramophone player and speakers was the highlight of the evening.

I think we used to take 3 old pence each week towards buying new records. Victor Silvester, Joe Loss and Edmundo Ros seemed to be in and we were taught to do the quickstep, the waltz and foxtrot.

Those who could afford it went to the dancing school in Penny Lane. But the times were changing. In Liverpool there were always records from America brought in by seamen or you could go to the shop in Allerton Road where the girls who made silk and nylon stockings at Woolton's Bear Brand Stockings factory rushed at dinner time to buy the latest 78s which they played before buying it. When I think back we did not call it Rock and Roll.

It was regarded as being the music of Black America and I'm sure we called it Rhythm and Blues. I stand being corrected on that but records of Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Bill Monroe and Blue Moon of Kentucky (I think it was made by Sun Records of USA) could be heard at our youth club though Jack Gibbon was not keen on them and moved slowly in case out parents found out.

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