Everything Old Is New Again

I'd been to Kirkby exactly twice before in my life.  The first time was at the turn of the Millennium, when I came here for a job interview at Knowsley Borough Council; I didn't get the job, and my main memory of the place is the bus exchange, where I loitered while I waited for my appointment.  The other time was when I collected the station, and back then I walked out, took a photo, and walked back in.  

This was the first time I was walking to the town centre without being a bag of nerves, and it meant I could look around and see Kirkby properly.  I imagine there's a certain amount of sniggering going on out there among local readers, something along the lines of why would you want to?, but I was open-minded, and to be honest, it looked like one of a hundred other English towns I've visited over the past couple of decades.  Rows of houses, semis and terraced, small blocks of flats, the odd cottage that pre-dated the construction of the estate and now looked out of place.  

I was walking along one of those "shared spaces" they have for pedestrians and cyclists.  I hate those.  A white line down the middle of the pavement to divide you from people on bikes, but nothing to say who should be on the left or the right.  It's not infrastructure, it's paint.  Dig up the pavement and put in a proper cycle lane with a kerb either side - there was certainly enough room.  Of course that costs money, but at least people might use it.

I passed a woman walking an incredibly odd looking dog - it was like a black labrador, except it had the legs of an Irish Wolfhound; it looked like it was on stilts - and a house with a Liverpool FC themed number plate.  Five stars were arranged neatly across the top line, and then, above the Liver Bird, they'd added a sixth, slightly off centre.  

Millbrook Park - sorry, Millbrook Park Millennium Green - appeared on my left, a long stretch of lawn and trees curving around a small brook.  There was a helpful notice board to welcome you to the park, but I'm afraid it was covered with bollocks - not graffiti, nonsensical copy that actively irritated me.  There were Tips to make the most of Millbrook Park Millennium Green  which included:

• TALK: this is a great place to meet friends

as well as

• DAYDREAM: this parks [sic] offer a perfect setting to rest, unwind or enjoy a picnic

Thanks for the hints, guys!  I wouldn't know how to use a park without them.  Perhaps you could advise me on how to use the paths - I put one foot in front of the other, right?

St Chad's Church, one of those older buildings that dated from the 19th century (though there's been a church here for hundreds of years more) sat amidst a neatly landscaped park, and then there was a huge roundabout to signal the entrance to the town centre.  This gave me my first look at the All-New Kirkby.  Originally built after the war, Kirkby was a place for Liverpool residents who'd lived in slums to move to; it was a New Town, even if the Government refused to designate it as such.  It carried with it that hope of a new, healthy, exciting future, a 20th century where people can live somewhere designed for them.  Town planners tried to make it a place where the residents would thrive.

The problems started almost immediately.  People were moved here before facilities were opened.  Communities were broken up and scattered.  Kirkby became the home of Z Cars, the slightly dodgy northern town riddled with crime, and then the 1970s crashed into Merseyside.  Joblessness rose, drug addictions followed, poverty swept across the town and kneecapped all of those hopes that the city had imbued in its child-estate when it built it after the war.

For years, the town has been undergoing regeneration of one kind or another.  The 2000s have, however, brought real concerted efforts to remake Kirkby.  At first this involved a new stadium for Everton alongside a Tesco superstore.  There was considerable opposition to this, both from the locals and from Everton fans, who noted that it would mean moving the club outside the City of Liverpool. Kirkby is Liverpool, to me, the same way Bootle or Birkenhead or New Brighton are, but that's because I'm an outsider who doesn't understand the passionate disdain each part of the city region has for one another.  All the Merseyside boroughs count as Liverpool as far as I'm concerned, the way Tower Hamlets and Brent and Enfield are all London.  Those plans failed when the Government refused to support them, so Everton, eventually went off to the docks, while Tesco simply wandered off.

The council joined up with a different developer, who helped to construct a new retail offering on the north side of the town centre, while the local authority demolished an office block and a swimming pool and a library, moving them to newer facilities elsewhere.  Then that developer partnership went south, and it's only now that a huge patch of land just south of the main precinct is getting developed - though I'm not sure what they're building.  There was going to be a Lidl and a cinema as well as new houses, but looking around I can only find evidence that the houses are going ahead; the Lidl will almost certainly appear at some point, but it all seems to have gone quiet on the cinema front. 

On the plus side, the bus exchange has been vastly improved since I last saw it, so there's that.  It now backs onto a new Civic Square, constructed on what was a car park for the council, which has some large Instagram friendly chairs with wings positioned around for tourists to use as backdrops in their photos.  Kirkby being overwhelmed with tourists, of course.  Still, you can't argue that it's not an improvement on a car park.

I was headed for the Kirkby Centre, the replacement for the civic centre that sat on one edge of the square.  It's home to the library and the Kirkby Gallery, which the website informs me is "one of the best contemporary art galleries in Merseyside and the North West of England" - a bold claim, given that Merseyside is also home to the actual Tate Gallery.  I scampered up the stairs and found a pair of closed doors to the gallery, but a helpful sign informed me that this was because they were keeping the heat in.  That wasn't all they were keeping in.  I pushed it open a couple of inches and was confronted with the noise of over-excited primary school children in the middle of some kind of art experience.  Everywhere I looked there were red jumpers.  I backed away.

Instead I went into the library next door, which does have a piece of art of its own: a fibreglass and resin sculpture by William George Mitchell.  It was commissioned for the original library and then ported over to this one.  Its 1960s aesthetic doesn't quite fit with the more pared down practicality of 21st century municipal - it's like wandering into an Amazon distribution warehouse and finding a Chagall on the wall.  It needs to be surrounded by architecture as brave and interesting as it is.  At least they kept it, though; it would've been easy to chuck it in a skip for being outdated.

I checked the stacks for James Bond books - not a single Ian Fleming, shame on you Knowsley Libraries - then walked back out and into the shopping precinct.  Like High Streets all across Britain it had seen better days.  A central square was surrounded by Iceland, Max Spielman, B&M, and a closed Sayers with a logo they haven't used for at least thirty years.  Charity shops and vaguely council-looking outlets occupied many of the storefronts.

There was also, though closed now, a Benetton.  A bit of scouting around on the internet revealed it lasted three whole years, from 2022 to 2025, and I am absolutely astonished.  Benetton is one of those brands I thought was high-class and expensive - I always think of Victoria Wood saying "I don't always buy anything in there but I do like to go in and unfold things" - so the idea of it being in one of the poorest parts of Merseyside next door to a Pound Bakery is baffling.  Mind you, the only branch in the Liverpool city region is in Allerton, not Liverpool One as you'd expect, so who knows what's going on there.  

The shopping centre reminded me a little of Coventry.  The same Fifties/Sixties aesthetics, the same long straight lines of construction, the simple yet clean look.  It was a precinct built for an era of small local shops and mum walking into town a daily run for groceries, before fridges and supermarkets and cars changed everything.  

The market was a similar story, now mainly mobile phone unlocking services and vape shops, though Martin's Deli did advertise itself as "the home of the famous Kirkby sausage".  I can't actually find what a Kirkby sausage is; even the Echo wrote a piece entitled Have you heard of the "famous" Kirkby sausage? and they're always claiming that some minor shop on a back street is "iconic" or "unique" and has a queue of people out the door every morning.  The recipe must be a closely guarded secret because I can't find anyone who's talking about what's in it.  If I was a proper travel writer I'd have bought one and eaten it there and then - raw so I could taste the flavour - and then waxed lyrical about its stunning taste, but I'm not, so I didn't.  The Kirkby Sausage remains a mystery to me, unless you count that lad I once met who [that's quite enough of that].

A closed up bank building continued the 1950s look, no doubt soon to be demolished because nobody would want a shop that looked like that, while to the side two women rolled out of a different marble-clad former bank that had been converted into a pub.  It was ten past eleven in the morning.

I'd reached the new part of Kirkby town centre, the bit that they were especially proud of.  It consisted of a health centre, a vast Morrisons, and a few drive in takeaway restaurants - McDonalds, Taco Bell, KFC.  Surrounding it was a huge car park.  It was not the model of regeneration I think anyone should aspire to.

I understand that hard-up councils get a supermarket offering to build in their town and leap at the chance of jobs and opportunities.  What it then does, however, is stop anyone from going anywhere else.  Birkenhead did something similar when it allowed a huge Asda to open on Grange Road - there was suddenly no reason to wander any further into the town, so nobody did, and everything started closing.  It's a massive Trojan Horse.  I found it profoundly depressing.  The precinct had been human-sized and pleasant - walk to a shop, walk to another shop.  Here you could park ten yards from the front door then get your dinner from Maccy D's on the way home without even leaving your car.  

Kirkby pleased me in many ways.  It had self-evidently had its struggles but the recent regeneration did actually feel transformative - it was more than a few new lampposts and some bushes, it was comprehensive.  I liked the Kirkby Centre, and I'll have to go back to see the artwork some time when it's not swarming with six year olds.  I hope that the new development on the former college site will bring housing and people and bustle to the town centre.  It's just a shame that there was that massive supermarket leeching off the hope to one side.  It didn't help that the Morrisons looked away from the precinct, showed it its back.  I do hope that the town gets back on its feet.  I want it to succeed.