The National Trust

I read yesterday that one of the custodians of the National Trust Beatles properties in Liverpool has now lived in the house longer than the original Beatle! In this case John Halliday, who gave up his job as a machine fitter to take up residence at 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, Liverpool. Reading this made me think about my own visits to all of the Beatles original houses in Liddy over the years. Until the National Trust acquired Forthlin and Mendips they were still private dwellings. It's amazing that the residents lasted so long against the constant flow of people visiting. Can you begin to imagine what that must have been like? It must have been hell. Having a gazillion visitors arriving by the bus load, standing outside every day pointing, staring and photographing your house like it was some sort of a public monument?
Yip...must have been hell.
I can't help but feel a tad guilty because over the years I've been one those visitors. My first visit to Mendips was during my first safari to Liverpool nearly 30 years ago. The Liverpool of then and now is totally different. Thirty years ago Liverpool was, by and large, not particularly interested in Beatle fans and to be honest there were probably less fans willing to make the pilgrimage to the city than there are today. Nor was it set up like it is today, with it's Beatle museums, it's Cavern Quarter and it's City of Culture tag. Not by a long chalk. Liverpool is a tough place - let there be no doubt about that and as a result it can be quite intimidating. This is more noticeable when you start straying away from the city centre which is what you need to do when heading out to the Beatle houses. In those days there wasn't a Beatle tourist bus offering guided tours. So it wasn't quite as easy as buy a ticket and get on board whilst a nice man tells you to look left and oh, by the way if you look to your right...etc. My first visits to these places was done by local bus and taxi. Then you had to seek out the place you were looking for. Eventually after finding Mendips, I can remember approaching the gate with some trepidation, thinking, this is all a bit silly and why am I doing this? I could see the (then) current occupant looking out of the window as if to say, don't you DARE stop at my front gate you Beatles fan you. Grrr..! I must have looked that obvious! Looking back though it may have been the collarless suit, winklepickers and Rickenbacker guitar I was sporting that gave the game away:-) Anyway, I decided to walk by as slowly as I could without stopping, but at the same time trying to take in as much as I could about the house where John lived...wondering what it was like beyond the gate, in the back garden, the porch, what was the inside like and all of that kind of stuff. After passing by several times I crossed the road to take a photograph. That was all I needed. Then I walked back to the gates at Strawberry Fields which is a stones throw from John's house. Again, a quick photo and back to town by bus. Somehow, I felt as though I'd gained a bit of insider knowledge having "visited" Mendips. My imagination of what life might have been like there, enhanced by seeing the house and being able to place it in its environmental context.
Now cut to a couple of years back.
When I heard that the National Trust had restored the property back to what it had been when John lived there and better still, that there would be public access, albeit limited, I couldn't resist completing the circle and just had to book a visit. Heading to Mendips this time was a lot easier. You would be picked up in town by minibus and taken there. As I waited my turn to enter, I remembered all of the times I had stood outside, beyond the front gate just wondering and no doubt looking like a lurker! All of that was about to change. A lurker no more - I had a ticket! Quite oddly, you enter the property through the side door to the left of the front entrance and make your way into the "morning room" which is a little public reception room where probably most people would have gone rather than to the spotless front door! I looked around the whole house and was left with a bit of an odd feeling. I felt somehow as though I had intruded. Not sure why really. I've never quite been able to work it out. Looking through the window of John's bedroom out on to Menlove Avenue, I got a shivering sense of what John would've seen from the same spot all the way up to the time when Mimi left the property... partly I suppose, due to people coming to stare outside of Beatle John's house! All in all a fairly strange experience but it did complete a circle for me. It was much easier again with this further layer of knowledge to imagine the laughs and tensions that must have existed in that house during the crazy years of the Sixties. It's easy to forget too, that when the boys came back home to Liverpool to see their families from conquering the world, it would be to these houses that they went. Almost beyond belief, Paul's council house at Forthlin Road in Allerton was the place he came back to rest his head after the groundbreaking, all engulfing trip to America in 1964 for example! Can you imagine the culture shock of that? From New York razzmatazz to the "what are you looking at?" attitude of the downtown council run Allerton estate. It must have been very strange to deal with. It also, no doubt, must have helped the boys to get their feet back firmly on the ground after reaching such lofty heights.
Sitting back on the minibus waiting to go back to Liverpool city centre, I felt I had gained something unique in Beatle tourism. Yes, these places are important to the Beatles story overall, but more importantly, they are places which evoke the atmosphere of a time before ALL of that. They give you much more of the real picture. The background to how the story would develop. You are struck by the sheer ordinariness of the opening chapters of what was to be a pretty unbelievable tale yet to unfold. The houses relay much more of the atmosphere of how such a story could have occurred in the first place. You also come to realise that real people lived here, and that when they closed their door at night, they had a private and ordinary life just like the rest of us.