Taking the National Trust tour of John Lennon’s and Paul McCartney’s childhood homes in Liverpool, Sunday, 13 August 2023
[A while back we had a thread about various Beatles-themed tours in Liverpool. I just thought I’d throw my two pennies’ worth in here…]
There are lots of Beatles tours that you can take in Liverpool. They all claim to “take you to the Beatles childhood homes”, but in practice this means gawking at the outside of the four houses. There is, however, one tour that’s the real thing. It’s the National Trust Tour of John Lennon’s and Paul McCartney’s Childhood Homes. They only permit 60 people per day to do it – four groups of 15 – and consequently it’s booked up weeks in advance.
Mrs duco and I made our way to South Parkway station in the suburbs of Liverpool and hung around there with 13 other – mainly Spanish – Beatles fans until the National Trust minibus arrived. We received strict instructions: no photography permitted inside the houses!
John’s house first: 251 Menlove Avenue, where he lived with his Aunt Mimi and the various student lodgers that they took in. Menlove Avenue is a busy main road – a dual carriageway, in fact. Number 251 is a neat semi-detached house which was purchased by Yoko Ono in 2002 and donated to the National Trust.
Entering the house, it’s clear that, by the standards of the 1950s, this was a comfortable, well-appointed middle-class residence. Nevertheless, by 21-century standards, the rooms – particularly the kitchen – are rather small. Some of the furnishings are the originals, while others are period-faithful replacements. I particularly liked looking into the actual shaving mirror that John Lennon used – it’s a small, delicate hexagonal thing in silver. John’s bedroom was the tiny box-room at the front upstairs, and on the bed is a letter from Yoko, welcoming all visitors. As our friendly Scouse guide descended the stairs, all the Spanish members of our party showed a flagrant disregard for the rules and started taking selfies, confident that Instant Karma wasn’t going to get them. Well, I suppose it’s not every day that you sit on John Lennon’s bed. On 9 October every year (John’s birthday), the National Trust leaves the light on in his room all night. A nice touch.
And then back on the bus to Paul’s house at 20 Forthlin Road, about a mile away. This was the terraced council house to which the McCartneys moved when Paul was 14, shortly before his Mum’s death from breast cancer. It’s a more modest pad than the Lennons’, and it’s also where most of the early Beatles songs were written. John’s Aunt Mimi disapproved of his and Paul’s music, and so most of their practicing and songwriting was done at Forthlin Road. When the National Trust purchased the house in 1995, they had their work cut out. The family who had bought 20 Forthlin Road when Jim McCartney moved out in 1965 had changed everything inside the house. Luckily, though, Paul’s brother Mike had taken many photos inside the house in the early 60s, and so the National Trust were able to redecorate it as close to the original as possible. In addition, Paul asked for a wooden plaque to be added above the front door on the inside, paying a loving tribute to his parents.
Shortly before the end of the tour, one of the Spanish visitors asked if he could play the piano in the living room. Our friendly Scouse guide said that yes he could, seeing as it was not the McCartney’s original piano, only a replacement that had been put there. It was then that the visit really kicked off. The Spanish guy launched into “The Long and Winding Road”, and automatically, the rest of us joined in, bound by the Beatles’ great legacy of love. Emboldened by this tremendous singalong, the Spanish guy struck up a funky version of George’s “Old Brown Shoe”, with some of us a little unsure of the lyrics. Next up was a spirited “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five (from “Band on the Run”). By this time, our guide was hopping from foot to foot, flapping her arms about and shouting “time to go now”. The pianist studiously ignored her and plunged, undaunted, into “Let it Be”. We all joined in. Of course we did. After all, that winding road had led us fifteen strangers to Paul McCartney’s door, and here we were, singing his song about his mother Mary in the living room that had once been their own.
I went on that tour with a group of unruly Spanish tourists too. At John’s house, they excitedly dispersed to every room, picking up things and taking selfies and so on. When I went into the kitchen there was even someone messing around with the cutlery drawer!
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen – there was a Spaniard in the forks.
*Applause*
Very good sir!
Excellent post. Loved the last line.
Great and most eloquent post
Glad to see your tour was a more positive experience than Craig Brown’s.
Hah! Yes – he committed the cardinal sin of making a few notes in his notebook…
And approached the whole thing with journalistic cynicism.
After all, he had a book to write.
Done it 3 times (each with different people). It’s excellent
Excellent post! Glad you enjoyed it. I had a great time when we did this tour about ten years ago. It was spine tingling soaking up the atmosphere in Mimi’s house, particularly little touches like listening to the reverb in the tiled front porch where John and Paul would have strummed their guitars and practiced their Elvis voices (manna for Beatle geeks like me).
What about the other two?
Yeah. Good question. I asked the National Trust guide this.
She said that both George’s house and Ringo’s house are “owned by private landlords”.
I don’t know whether they’re not interested in selling to the National Trust, but the fact is that the guide said that the NT are actually not interested in acquiring the other two houses. When I asked why, she said that the houses were “not of architectural significance”. This seemed a ridiculous answer, because John’s and Paul’s houses aren’t of architectural significance either. What makes them significant is that a BEATLE LIVED IN THEM.
George’s house at 12 Arnold Grove doesn’t even have one of those blue plaques on it. A blue plaque can be placed on a house a minimum of 20 years after a famous person’s death. George died nearly 22 years ago, so I say get that blue plaque up there now! [Note. George’s house is currently vacant, as the occupier died a couple of months ago].
Not sure about Paul’s house but I believe Yoko bought “Mendips” when it was up for sale and gave it to the National Trust. Think the house that Ringo mainly lived in as a child (in the Dingle) has been demolished.
They were going to demolish the street with Ringo’s house but a petition saved it. It’s a tiny terrace, owned by a Beatles fan. Somehow, eighty people attended a 21st birthday there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Admiral_Grove
George’s home from the age of six, 25 Upton Green in Speke, has been extensively renovated. It will take a lot of work to ‘restore’ it.
ok thanks
PMBryer – formerly of this parish – also has form on this… https://www.blokeonawire.com/post/dear-sir-or-madam-will-you-read-my-blog
Thanks @Shirky. That was very entertaining. Not in the same class as DuCool, but not bad!
It mentions the Carpool Karaoke episode in which Paul himself visits the house and plays that piano. It’s 8 minutes or so into the show.
I did the tour a few weeks ago. It was as described so eloquently above so I won’t try to cover the same ground. Just a few additional bits.
The NT also bought the neighbouring house to Paul’s. They used it to restore original features because a subsequent owner had modernised the windows and the kitchen. We were allowed to photograph things in John’s house, but not Paul’s. Some items are so valuable that the worry is that burglars can be very specific about their target if there are screeds of images online.
In John’s house, the guide told a story I hadn’t heard before. Apologies if it’s something you’ve already heard – but anyway, here goes. The neighbouring property to Mendips was a small building and some land owned by the Salvation Army. John liked to play in that land with his pals, much to the disapproval of Aunt Mimi. She told John that if the Salvation Army caught him there, they would capture him and then hang him! This explains the line “nothing to get hung about” in Strawberry Fields.
We had a smattering of tourists, mainly American, in our group. The guide told the story of Bob Dylan just turning up at the houses and being told that the only way he could visit was to join one of the tours – and he did! He totally ignored the instruction not to pick up Paul’s guitar and strummed away. He spent a long time starting out of the windows in thoughtful silence, apparently.
On another occasion, the tour witnessed a surprise visit by Yoko. She was dropping off some items from the Dakota at John’s house and happily answered questions from the group. Pardon the pun – but imagine that! She was amused by the creaking floorboard outside his bedroom – because John had talked to her about that. The creak would alert Mimi to his very late return to the house after gallivanting most of the night.
At Paul’s house the guide hinted that the visit for the James Corden thing wasn’t as easy and breezy as it appeared. He didn’t go into details but he was certain that Paul won’t visit again. An interesting detail is that Paul doesn’t attend funerals, partly due to losing his mother so young and also the fact that it would then become all about him and not the deceased. The house has many photographs taken by older brother Mike and the fact that he was there also makes the house feel more natural and lived-in than John’s. One photo is of their father doing the washing up, dressed in a suit and tie – which he wore at all times. There’s also the quite famous one of Paul in the garden playing guitar framed by net curtains and clothes on the washing line.
It was a great tour, but the guide, Colin Hall, recalled stories of famous visitors who had been in Lennon’s house.
Dylan, Springsteen, Plant, James Taylor, etc.
Dylan had turned up in a limo for a private tour, he was playing in Liverpool that night – it’s a great story!
He sent 2 tickets by courier to Colin a few hours later, after signing his Dylan albums.
I think the Spaniards had the right idea in disregarding the rules taking selfies – it’s not the Dead Sea Scrolls.