The Beatles - Liverpool England

One of my  projects this winter is to visit some of the various historic places associated with the Beatles.  I've been coming to Liverpool since 1985 and have never taken the time to purposely visit any of the sights associated with the Beatles.  This is also the 50th year since the Beatles first visited the States and performed on the Ed Sullivan show.  This winter I made an attempt to visit some of the more popular and some not so popular locations associated with the Beatles.  Locations like the Cavern, Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane are on the regular Beatles tours yet there are many other sites not often visited.  The locations I concentrated on were those such as homes where they lived, Schools they attended and locations they worked into some of their songs.  There are a great many places where they performed around the city.  These are so numerous that I decided to save that for another project however I did include more popular locations like the Cavern and Casbah.

This project started by visiting the Central Liverpool Library that has, as you can imagine, just about every publication written about the Beatles. I cataloged information on places where they lived, schools they attended, locations they worked into their songs as well as various monuments erected that were in some way connected to the Beatles such as the Yellow Submarine.

When I started this project I had no idea as to how much work would be involved in putting it all together.  Identifying, locating and photographing each location was more involved than I realized it would be.  Before venturing to find a location I would try to select ones that were relatively close to each other.  Since I do not have a vehicle here I used local bus transportation to get to an area. When I located what I was looking for I would photograph it as well as the surrounding area and using my GPS identified the specific geographic longitude and latitude where it was located.  I categorized my information into several topics such as place of birth, location of their home(s), locations associated with their songs, monuments dedicated to the Beatles and some information associated with the group before they changed their name from the Quarry Men to The Beatles.  Because of the amount of information I gathered I decided to break up the information into several posts.  I will post each once I have gathered all the information I have been able to gather on each topic.

It seems most appropriate to first write about where each of the Beatles were born.

Their Birthplace - Ringo and George were born at home while Paul and John were born in Liverpool hospitals.  The original section of Walton Hospital has been converted to apartments where Paul was born. The hospital John was born in was converted to a dorm for Liverpool University. Both still stand today.  The home Ringo was born is is now vacated and was ready for demolition  as a result of a regeneration project of the area where it is located however due to strong opposition the street will be renovated.  The home and the street where George was born still stands today.

Former Liverpool Maternity Hospital where John Lennon was born

124 Mount Pleasant St, Liverpool is the birthplace of John Lennon. John was born on 9th October 1940  in a second floor ward of the hospital. Today the building is used as a dormitory for the Liverpool University.

Birthplace and boyhood home of Ringo

Ringo (Richard Starkey) was born the 17th of July 1940 at 9 Madryn Street, Liverpool and childhood home of Ringo Starr, however, after his parents divorced he spent most of the time in his grandparents home at no. 59 on the same street. The homes on this street were scheduled to be torn down but due to strong opposition the street will now be renovated.

Birthplace of George Harrison

174 Mackets Lane, Liverpool- George Harrison was born here on the 25th of January 1943 and lived here from 1962 until 1965.

Walton Hospital, birthplace of Paul McCartney

Paul was born here on the 19th of June 1942.  The hospital was later converted to apartments however at present (2014) the building does not appear it is being used for housing.