"Lark Lane is in fact a street, but it thinks it’s a village. With small, quirky independent shops – from purveyors of new age candles and crystals to an old-fashioned chandlery – and an old police station transformed into a community centre, ‘the Lane’, as locals know it, is imbued with a spirit that is rare in British suburbia.
‘The Lane’, as it’s known locally, is long and straight and leads up to leafy Sefton Park from Aigburth Road (pronounced Eg-burth), one of the main arteries into the city centre from the airport. There aren’t many areas of Liverpool that have escaped the avaricious eye of the regeneration industry, but Lark Lane, about three miles south of the city centre, where urban turns suburban, has so far managed it. Regeneration is generally regarded as ‘a good thing’ but in Lark Lane’s case it would be a tragedy as this friendly, rather ramshackle anomaly is not just a street, but a way of life.
One of the last remaining havens of the unreconstructed city, Lark Lane is full of character and characters – Bohemian Liverpool at its best. If the pavements were wide enough for tables, it would be able to do café society unselfconsciously, for people who like to chew the cud and not because some council edict declared it good for the economy.
In a way Lark Lane is a metaphor for Liverpool’s vicissitudes. Up until the 1960s it was a workaday thoroughfare, with a dairy, post office, fire station and police station, everyday shops and pubs and the odd milk bar making a post-war appearance. And remnants of this monochrome world remain.
Then wine bars started appearing, most notably Keith’s (allegedly the first wine bar in Liverpool) and it all got very jolly and colourful and started to attract students, musicians and arty types who joined the indigenous Liverpudlians. When the treacherous 1980s hit, the Lane became cursed with all that decade’s associated ills, including crime. It has since thrown off this reputation but in some ways still bears the scars. The buildings – and some of the inhabitants – are looking a bit careworn and weather-beaten, but in Lark Lane this can be construed as idiosyncratic charm rather than unfettered deprivation.
What is clear is that community spirit is alive and well in Lark Lane. At its heart is the old police station, now the thriving St Michael’s and Lark Lane Community Association. This crumbling but cheery brick-and-stone building was built in 1885 and is detailed with gothicky gargoyles and livery. Local residents are well looked after here, with pre-school, after-school and senior citizens clubs and classes ranging from majorettes to belly dancing. As well as the community emphasis, regular flea markets, record fairs, craft fairs and ‘healing days’ help attract visitors from further afield.
Shops range from retro and new age offerings to an old-fashioned chandlery and a barber shop, providing a strong continuity with the community’s past. An internet café has set up shop just down the road from Balbero’s Kitchen, a traditional bakery that offers such delights as strawberry shortcake and lemon tiffin. Newcomer Retro 49 sells quirky clothes and accessories from previous decades, and the long-established Remains to be Seen, next door at number 51, has all manner of artistic and architectural remnants. Small businesses such as architects’ practices and accountants round off the services that make the community so vibrant and supportive.
Come night time, it’s always lively, with people meeting and greeting and spilling out onto the street to hail taxis for ‘going on’ into town. The Lane also gets dolled up for Christmas, with twinkling lights crisscrossing the Lane, giving it more of a village feel than one of an anonymous suburb.
One of the Lane’s best watering holes is the legendary Keith’s. Everyone has a Keith’s story – it can be a rambunctious place, and many a romance has been kindled or cruelly crushed here. But don’t expect servility. If there’s a training college for rude waitresses, these folks are graduates cum laude, but don’t take offence – it all adds to the haphazard charm.
The two best known pubs in the Lane are the Masonic and the Albert. The Masonic was traditionally the drinking den for local workers and the Albert more for the ‘blow ins’ – the students and young artisans who moved into the area in the 1970s and ’80s – but both are stimulating places where conversation would never be limited to Big Brother, football or the weather. The newer Parkfield, built in the style of a traditional boozer, is just as friendly.
But Lark Lane is not Local with a capital L and pronounced with a funny accent. It’s a cosmopolitan place, reflected in the range of food on offer, from chippies and takeaways, pub grub and pizza joints, to bistros, wine bars and upmarket restaurants such as stylish newcomer 52 Lark Lane Wine Bar and Bistro. Along the way you’ll find Greek, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Spanish and Mexican restaurants and, of course, if you’re already at the trusty Keith’s, you will have your choice of a broad range of tasty home-cooked meals.
The popular Maranto’s is an Italian restaurant in one of the most interesting buildings on the Lane. Built in 1884 as the Christ Church Institute with a half-timbered and decorated upper storey, it has had many incarnations since, including a plumber’s merchant, a skating academy and cocoa rooms for local workers and families. Its décor is just as eclectic, with Edwardian and Oriental elements blended with the no-nonsense features of a traditional public house.
Much needed greenery is supplied by the leafy Sefton Park, which lays through a double set of Gothic gate piers at the top of the Lane. One of England’s largest parks, this beautiful, informal Victorian park spans over 200 acres and boasts glorious mature trees and broad, curving and gently sloping paths leading to delightful features including glades and statues, streams and a picturesque lake. The park’s centrepiece is the recently restored Palm House, a magnificent Grade II-listed Victorian glasshouse. Having just secured a £4.5m (¤6.7m) lottery fund grant, the park administration is looking to significantly improve the park throughout 2007.
But has creeping homogeneity started to drain the colour out of Lark Lane? French restaurant L’Alhouette, one of Liverpool’s first smart suburban restaurants, has closed and been replaced by Thai chain restaurant Chilli Banana, and at the top end of the Lane, some canny developer has squeezed in a clutch of characterless townhouses on the site of an old Rolls Royce and Bentley garage. For now, at least, the unique character prevails, bolstered by such institutions as the monthly farmers’ market. Held on the fourth Saturday of each month, it’s a popular event packed with superb regional produce, such as tangy Lancashire cheeses, traditional dandelion and burdock and sarsaparilla drinks, unpasteurised beers and even the more exotic choice of ostrich meat.
Across the busy Aigburth Road is St Michael’s Hamlet, an early 18th-century cluster of villas around one of Liverpool’s most intriguing churches, St Michael’s in the Hamlet. Its tiny churchyard has a host of fascinating monuments, some with quirky inscriptions like that of the Herculaneum Pottery Benefit Society:
Here Peaceful rest the POTTERS turn’d to Clay Tir’d with their lab’ring life’s long tedious day Surviving friends their Clay to earth consign To be remoulded by a Hand Divine!
Here’s hoping Lark Lane is never remoulded, by hands divine or otherwise".
WORDS BY DEBORAH MULHEARN (Source :- Velocity magazine)
POWWOW Is back again this evening and every **** LAST SUNDAY OF THE MONTH **** hope that you can make it. @ Vinyl, Lark Lane From 8 o'clock. But we think the bars open, well ...... erm now?? Alternative Music et al from 8pm.
Thanks for the add! Why not come along to our 'End Of Oxjam Party' on Sunday 28th October @ Debees Winsford? We have The Farms Keith Mullin headlining the event so promises to be a great night!
Thanks for adding. Lark lane one of my favorite places in the world :) seems ages since I sat in keiths supping wine and feeling the ambience. great page and idea..
Altho, I have driven and admired all yer wee shops and bars, I never sat on yer pavement. lol Everyone I know raves about Lark Lane though! Fluff Nicqui
