Utilising the Christmas period

During the Christmas holiday period when Team 1 was unable to work collectively due to family commitments and students were leaving Liverpool to return to their home towns or home countries (Elle and Matthew). I decided to try and discover local historical societies and interest groups in an effort to gauge how much the older generation especially in Liverpool was willing to discuss their memories and tell their stories. I came across an array of books covering peoples living memories of the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s, but there were two societies in particular which stood out and also covered subjects that I had never heard discussed. The first was a society called the Belle Vale Prefab Project Committee. Who had published a book called Prefab Days, A Community Remembers; published by Enterprise Marketing and Publishing Service in 2006. Which discussed in detail the stories of many people who in the post war Liverpool era, had to live in prefabricated temporary accommodation due to the extent of bomb damage caused to Liverpool housing during the Second World War. This society also had a very prominent president who was Sir Terry Leahy, the former head of the Tesco retail store empire.

The second society which stood out to me was the Merseyside Tramway Preservation Society who had themselves published a book called the Edge Lane Roundabout, a nostalgic look back at Liverpool’s Trams, written by Brian Martin. This book demonstrates the commitment and desire people have to tell their stories, as the M.T.P.S. had to publish this book themselves in 1984. What also grabbed my attention about this book was a particular story regarding the last tram. The title of the book “The Edge Lane Roundabout” refers to the name given to the tram depot that once existed on Edge Lane. The Liverpool Screen School is also situated on Edge Lane and if one looks directly out of the windows of Teaching Room 2 in the Liverpool Screen School, which is the classroom where I and Team 1 are to make our presentation from on the subject of peoples stories, one can see a large amount of waste ground. On this waste ground once stood the tram depot nicknamed the “Edge Lane Roundabout”. The book contains the story of Liverpool’s last tram car and its final journey on Saturday 14^th September 1957, which took place from the Pier Head to the Edge Lane Roundabout. The book contains photographs of how it was specially decorated for the day and it also has photographs showing crowds of tens of thousands of people lining Edge Lane to see the last tram end its final journey. To see such images of huge crowds on the roads and the now deserted waste land that surrounds the Liverpool Screen School seemed quite profound. Especially when considering that students at the Liverpool Screen School who are trying to assist in the creation of a local historical digital conduit to tell stories about Liverpool, had no idea of the history that once surrounded their own classroom. Which possibly demonstrates the importance of this project to assist in the passing of information from one generation to the next, and also how much interest this can generate.