A Liverpool nan has shared her story of growing up in the city centre and making her life there.
Having grown up just five minutes up the road from where she lives now, Ellie Rice (nee Swatton) was born and bred in Liverpool 1.
And she says she’d never live anywhere else.
Ellie, 72, was raised in Kent Gardens tenements in the city centre, with her parents and seven siblings, where she eventually lived with her late husband Peter too.
Speaking about her childhood, she said: “We grew up in the ruins of the Blitz, there were still holes and craters in the ground from where we’d been bombed during the war.
“I remember going down to Castle Street with my friends, it was bombed really badly and there was a place we called the Four Holes that we always went to and we even managed to find a soldier's helmet once.
“The area was so different, it was industrial back then with warehouses everywhere, mostly goods coming in from the docks, Heaps’ Rice Mill was still operating and Levy Brothers still had their warehouses over the road.
“It was nothing like it is now.”
In the 1980s Ellie and her husband moved to Lakeland Close, a newly constructed street just down the road where they raised their two sons, but they had a fight on their hands first.
Local businesses owners wanted to use the land where the Custom House had once stood for a different project, but residents in the surrounding area had a different idea.
With Liverpool city council offering residents to move from their homes in tenements in the city centre to newer areas such as Speke and Garston, many found they didn’t want to leave their homes and the place they’d grown up.
“I could have gone anywhere, Speke or Garston, but I wouldn’t have survived there, we never left, our family stayed.” Ellie added.
After council meeting upon council meeting, the residents finally won their battle, and in 1986 Ellie, her husband and young son moved into their new home.
She said: “I’d never even seen a new house before, certainly never lived in one.
“The street across from us, Maritime Way, had been completed a few months before ours and my mum and sister moved in there.
“It was so close to Kent Gardens that my husband just carried all the furniture down the street on his back, and this became the type of place where you just leave your front door open because we trust each other.
“The area is so representative of Liverpool, it's so diverse and multicultural. Peter used to say we’re ‘non-ers’, we’re not from the North or the South, we’re from nowhere.”
In the time Ellie has lived in the city centre, she has seen the landscape around her completely transform, including the construction of Liverpool ONE and the regeneration of the Baltic Triangle.
She said: “City living wasn’t a thing 20 years ago, everyone was moving away from the city centre, and this little pocket is unique, especially now with the way it has changed."
“I’ve hated the building work and even argued against some of it, but seeing it now is amazing. We’re in between two vibrant areas and we’re often used as a walk through when people are going into town for a drink or for shopping.
“It’s hard but I want my grandkids to know where we grew up, to know this place. My heart is here.
“Liverpool one will always be in my blood.”
