This is a colourised wartime photo which appeared in the Daily Mail Weekend magaine a few weeks ago.

The caption says: ‘House proud: The war was on but that was no reason to let standards slip. A Mrs Stanford and her baby pass a woman keeping her doorstep squeaky clean in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1944.’

I wonder if anyone can identify the street?

William Street, near Argyle Street .....looks different now!

Thanks for that. I seem to remember there were still some houses in William Street in the early 1960s, but that whole area has long been totally transformed.

I think that brick structure in the road at the end of the street is an air raid shelter.

The building behind the air raid shelter still exists.

Is that Market Street?

Its the back of Market Street

The building behind the shelter was 35 Market St, at that time, H Murphie, Jewellers. 33-35 Market St.

Tiger, DD and Bert, thanks for the info - great stuff.

There was. My Mother was an agent for Howards, a credit goods company at the time. She kept me off school frequently to help her. We used to collect weekly subs and deliver goods all over Birkenhead. William Street was one of our visits.

I can't see any of the pictures!? I get the following message on all of them -


"You do not have access to download this attachment.

Return to the previous page or use search if you are looking for something specific."


What gives?!

Admin Note : Please note a valid subscription is required to view images within the History Section. Visit your account Subscriptions and subscribe. This also supports the History forum.

DD, Bert, how the hell do you DO that !!!! One road out of the hundreds and hundreds in Birkenhead, where original buildings were samey 2 up 2 down Corrie type roads , the buildings are now unrecognizable or missing ---- fencing different new full grown trees, roads no doubt resurfaced -- Im intrigued , what was the thing that gave you the clues? -- Ah, was it that you recognized an air raid shelter and narrowed it down from pinpointing all of those? Was there a map of air raid shelters?

The credit goes to Tiger, he recognised the street, DD and I only followed up after.

Thanks Bert. It was the stonework around the doorways and windows that did it. It's not typical of later terraces in Birkenhead and I think William Sreet being where it is was one of the older streets. Also pretty sure that woman scrubbing the pavement was still around!

Ah, sorry tiger, I missed your post altogether it seems . Well spotted.

Haha no problem. Looking at Bert's map and comparing it to DD's current scene, it is sad to think that all those happy little homes are no more.

I did it the easy way but tigger beat me to it https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detai...ng-a-neighbour-in-near-picture-id3368506

But how did you know the image was on the getty images site - Was it just a guess and you trawled? There must be loads of history sites with photos of the Wirral ?

I can't remember what I searched for now, I didn't do my usual trick of a google image search which almost certainly would have found it. It was something simple I searched for eg war birkenhead or ww2 birkenhead

There you go................personal knowledge and memories will always leave Google etc standing still :-)

Which is why it is so important to post knowledge and memories on the internet in the hope that it will continue after the person's memory has long gone.

Yes very well said. 'When an old person dies.................a library burns; down. As a child, sitting in a freezing MkI Ford Consul, in a very dark William Street, nearly 60 years ago, I can appreciate that statement.