Home Run

The first thing you see when you step out of Walton station is a wall.  Five metres high, with a rounded top.  The distinctive exterior of a prison.  This is Liverpool Prison, or, as it was known before the modern world decided to suck all charm out of everything, Walton Gaol.  The main prison for the Merseyside region, famous and infamous, home to 1300 people and not somewhere I ever hope to see the inside of.

Prison frightens me, as I think it does for anyone who's never so much as shoplifted a Mars Bar.  One of my most persistent fears is that I'll be accused of something I didn't do and end up serving time for it.  A friend of a friend was once accused of molesting some kids he'd babysat for as a teen.  It got all the way to trial before being thrown out by a judge who was baffled by the lack of evidence; he was entirely innocent, of course, and it turned out his accusers had made similar allegations about other people in the hope of getting compensation.  Still, imagine getting that close to being locked away, tarred as a criminal, put in the nonce wing; vulnerable, scared, and entirely innocent.  At least if you've done the crime there's a slight edge of "it's a fair cop".  I shuddered slightly as I walked by.

The traditional, Victorian, HMP Slade gates are now hidden behind the wall, and a new entrance has been built in the corner of the complex.  Colourful images of the city skyline welcome visitors like it's a theme park; in reality, it's an awful place to be, regularly condemned for its conditions, overcrowded, and in need of comprehensive redevelopment, if not demolition.  There's a real problem with drug use and the small signs pinned to the walls advising that flying drones is illegal don't seem to be as off putting as you'd expect, strangely.  

I turned south onto the Southport Road, one of those fine avenues that are all over Liverpool.  Long straight lanes constructed to allow trams to run with ease, but completely devoid of them in the 21st century.  Semis with paved over lawns were the norm, with the households' other cars parked on the pavement.

A side road took me between two expanses of municipal green.  The Stuart Road Playing Fields straddled the road, wide lengths of playing fields laid out for the betterment of the residents.  There probably should've been a leisure centre here, but instead there was an "Activity for All" building.  It seems to be a sort of indoor football pitch with a cafe attached.  Looking at their website, it's a community interest company, doing stuff the council used to, which is the modern way I suppose.  My main objection is that it uses the American spelling of centre on its exterior.

I walked round the side of it to get access to a leisure facility I've never seen before in the UK.  The playing fields are home to the Liverpool Trojans who proudly proclaim they're the oldest baseball team in Britain.  As such, they've got a diamond laid out behind the "center".

That's an actual baseball diamond, sitting in a park in Bootle.  It's fascinating to think that there are leagues and games going on for these sports all over the UK with a small but loyal following.  I actually don't mind baseball; it's the most tolerable of America's big sports, with a proper history and style to it, and like all the best sports you don't need hundreds of dollars of equipment to play it - just a bat and a ball.  It also helps that it's basically Posh Rounders, and we've all played rounders at school, so it's that little bit more comprehensible than whatever nonsense happens during an American Football game.  Also, and this is very gay indeed, but I really like baseball shirts.  They're very appealing.

I took the opportunity to stand on the Home Plate like I was [quickly googles "famous baseball player" here - who was the one who was married to Marilyn Monroe?] Joe DiMaggio and take a selfie.  Look at me, I'm doing a sports.  Then I turned back and walked through the car park to the street, attracting the attention of a wiry gentleman and his mate in a car with the engine running.  They watched me as I left, examining me for possible narc giveaways, but then concluded I was simply a fat loser and left me to it.

The houses along Stuart Road get a great view of the playing fields, and it was clear that many of the owners had spruced up their homes with extensions and attic conversions and the like.  One household had left a pair of unwanted bar stools on the pavement for any passers by to claim, so if you like black leatherette, head there now.  A carpet van was parked on the lower stretch, hazards flickering, while the workmen manfully carried an enormous length into a house that didn't look big enough to accommodate it.

On the back streets behind, there were terraces of Victorian redbricks, two up two downs.  Occasional new builds gave away the locations of bomb sites.  Outside a sheltered housing development, there were two workmen, one in his forties merrily carrying a single bag to his van, while behind his teenage apprentice staggered under the weight of a load of tools.  He helpfully opened the back of the van and waited for his protégé to catch up.

The Breeze Pub is, per Google, "temporarily closed;" the Facebook site hasn't been updated since January last year and half the sign is missing, so expect it to be converted to bedsits any day now.  It's a terrible shame when a pub closes of course but looking around it was a miracle it had lasted this long.  A real back street boozer, no gastropub menu, reliant only on local patronage, not a destination in any way.  Society has changed, as has what we want to spend our disposable income on, and for all the trumpeting about "save the British pub!" if nobody wants to use it then is it really good to preserve it?  If it were up to me I'd have put all the WH Smiths under preservation orders and insisted on government money to force them to go back to the orange cube logo and selling records but this is the problem with capitalism; the market dictates.

A series of bollards across the road discreetly demarcated the old city from a new development.  Walton Hospital was a famous neurology centre on Rice Lane for a century, but consolidation of the services in the area plus a need to expand saw it move to Fazakerley - sorry, Aintree - Hospital in the 90s.  The empty site has since been converted into a twist of cul-de-sacs and town houses with neat little driveways and Ring doorbells.

The railway line ran across the back here.  A couple of bridges crossed it, taking you to undeveloped scrubland, ready for enterprising homebuilders to sweep in at some point, but also the site of a never-was station.

The plans for the Link and the Loop back in the 70s were incredibly ambitious, with underground loops meeting at a new six platform station called Rocket, a below ground University stop, and new halts all over Merseyside.  One proposal was a new station called Breeze Hill, between Kirkdale and Walton.  It shows up on some early "proposal" maps, sometimes as a replacement for Walton and Rice Lane - allowing interchange between the branches - and sometimes as an extra station to fill the gap.

It never happened, of course, and I can't really see it ever having had much demand; it would've cannibalised the stations either side if it was an infill.  It's not really a huge gap, and there's not a density around there to justify it.

It is, however, fun to imagine where it might have been, and this cutting behind the old hospital seemed like a prime candidate.  No expensive tunnelling necessary, next to a useful amenity, space to encourage new development.  I wandered onto the bridge and snapped a photo of what might have been in a world where Merseyside got everything it ever wanted.

Back onto the road, and round the front of the Walton Hospital, now converted into apartments of course.  It's still a prominent local landmark and pleasingly preserved, even if the clock is wrong.  

There's still some medical provision on the site.  Clock View Hospital is a mental health centre, catering for acute cases, and housed in a pleasing modern building.  I shuffled past, once again hoping never to see the inside of it.  Next door was a block of housing association apartments with inset balconies.  Strangely, each balcony had a glass screen at the top and bottom, with only a narrow gap around it to let fresh air in.  It negated the principal of a balcony, to me, and if anything reminded me of Hannibal Lecter's cell in The Silence of the Lambs, with its perspex front and air holes to let you smell Jodie Foster's L'Air du Temps.  It's an unfortunate association given the building across the way.

I was on Rice Lane proper now, a road that gives its name to a station I'll be visiting another time.  There's a huge Sainsbury's, and a former pub, and a small curved building which houses a pizza delivery firm.  It's a surprisingly elaborate building, considering its humble occupant, and that's because it was originally built as the entrance booth to the Liverpool Zoological Gardens.  

Where there's now a housing estate and car park was, for a period in the 19th century, a space for chimpanzees and elephants.  It was a disaster almost from the start, with the owners constantly adding new attractions to try and pump up visitor numbers (a concert hall! a camera obscura!).  It gained a reputation for prostitutes, though, which meant it definitely wasn't a place to take the family on a quiet afternoon, and finally closed in 1865 after thirty two years.  The pizza place is the only remnant of the old zoo.

The road's lined with retail units with flats above, though more and more were being converted into ground floor residences too.  The Revival 7 tea room carried the Royal coat of arms over its door, though the wording underneath was Recognised by HRH, a delightfully vague term.  I'm imagining the Queen being driven along the road in her limo on the way to Aintree Racecourse and pointing at the shop out the window - "oh a tea room, how nice" - and that was it, Royal patronage.  

I turned off into a side road.  Victorian villas that would be getting high six figures elsewhere in the city looked dirty and unloved; multiple bells by the door told the story of their conversion.  As I rounded the corner, a man was hefting a wardrobe down his driveway to his waiting car.  I felt like I should've offered to help him, but I've recently been suffering from terrible back spasms - I spend way too much time slapping on Deep Heat patches and grimacing at the dinner table.  Don't get old, folks.

Between the side walls of two houses was a tiny public footpath, which I eagerly took.  I love delving into the backs, the off grid routes.  This one takes you over the top of the Kirkby branch of Merseyrail...

...and drops you neatly at the back of Walton station in time for your train.  I'd completed a loop, or, if we're going to use baseball terminology, I'd rounded all the bases.  I think.  I don't actually care enough to check if that's right.

This entire trip was paid for by Ko-fi donations.  Once again, thank you for your support!