20 Forthlin Road

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The house at 20 Forthlin Road where Paul McCartney lived from 1955 to 1963

20 Forthlin Road is the house where Paul McCartney , singer and songwriter for the British rock band The Beatles , lived with his family from 1955 to 1963. The terraced house is located in the south of Liverpool in the Allerton district and is listed as a Category II building on the British list of monuments . The National Trust is responsible for maintaining the building .

history

20 Forthlin Road , view of the row house

The house was built for the city of Liverpool as part of the Mather Avenue housing estate. As part of this social housing program, a total of 330 houses were built between 1949 and 1952. The design for the apartments came from the architect Sir Lancelot Keay, who gave it the name "Intermediate Type Standard Building 5". On the lower of the two floors there is a living room to the left of the entrance, from there a double door leads into the dining room , which is connected to the kitchen. From the kitchen you come back to the entrance area, from which the stairs lead to the upper floor. There are three bedrooms, the bathroom and - a small luxury for the time - a toilet. The apartment has a walled backyard garden that can be reached from the kitchen. A photo of Paul McCartney tuning a guitar there, taken by Michael McCartney in 1962 , was used for the cover of the album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard .

The couple James (1902–1976) and Mary McCartney (1909–1956) moved into the house in 1955 with their two children Paul (* 1942) and Michael (* 1944). For the McCartneys, this move also meant a small social advancement. The family had previously lived in an industrial estate in the Speke district, an area in which rough manners were common.

“I looked around every corner for guys who wanted to beat me up. When George [Harrison] and I lived in Speke, there was always a fight. […] My mother was always looking for a better place to live for us. […] The neighborhood was also safer; a really bourgeois area, but an urban settlement was built between all the fine houses. "

- Paul McCartney

After the death of Mary McCartney, who died in October 1956 of complications from breast cancer , James McCartney raised his sons alone. With the breakthrough of the Beatles, the musicians' center of life moved from Liverpool to London at the end of 1963 . Paul McCartney finally moved into the house of the parents of his then girlfriend Jane Asher .

In 1965 Paul McCartney bought his father a house in the more affluent part of Wirral . A family named Jones lived at 20 Forthlin Road for the next 30 years . When the house went up for sale in 1995, the National Trust acquired the building. The organization markets the house as the "birthplace of the Beatles" because the group composed and rehearsed their first pieces here. In addition to the Beatles, the group The Scaffold also used the house at 20 Forthlin Road for rehearsals and meetings. Michael McCartney, who at that time had taken the pseudonym Mike McGear , was a member of this formation.

Unlike Lennon's house at 251 Menlove Avenue , 20 Forthlin Road does not have a blue plaque - and it will not receive one for the foreseeable future either, as English Heritage only awards the plaque if the person who lived in the house has died for at least 20 years or celebrated their 100th birthday.

As part of the restoration on behalf of the National Trust, the house was returned to the way it was in the 1950s. It is possible for visitors to visit the house. This requires booking a guided tour that also includes 251 Menlove Avenue .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ BBC News - Lennon and McCartney homes given Grade II listed status . bbc.co.uk. February 29, 2012. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  2. ^ National Trust : 20 Forthlin Road . Swindon, 2009. ISBN 978-184359-309-6 . P. 6.
  3. ^ Barry Miles: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now . Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1999. ISBN 3-499-60892-8 . Pp. 29, 32 f.
  4. ↑ 20 Forthlin Road . In: InfoBritain . September 3, 2009. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved March 1, 2015.
  5. ^ National Trust : 20 Forthlin Road . Swindon, 2009. ISBN 978-184359-309-6 . P. 16.
  6. ↑ 20 Forthlin Road . In: National Trust . 2010. Archived from the original on March 13, 2010. Retrieved March 1, 2015.
  7. ↑ Selection Criteria . In: Blue Plaques . English Heritage . 2010. Archived from the original on February 6, 2010. Retrieved March 1, 2015.

Coordinates: 53 ° 22 ′ 10 "  N , 2 ° 53 ′ 52"  W.