Crosby’s Blitz Beach with a Yashica D and Kodak Gold 200 – The Whole Roll

I’m sure every long-in-the-tooth parent knows this situation. And if you as a parent haven’t yet reached that certain age believe me you’ll experience it eventually. You’ve brought the kids up as best you can, equipped them for life and sent them out into the adult world. Then you receive a text and experience a sinking feeling when the first words pop up on the preview screen, “No obligation, but…..” And so, under no obligation, we found ourselves just north of Liverpool house sitting for my daughter and her partner while they were away.

On the face of it house sitting is easy. Just dossing around in someone else’s place hoping your presence acts as a deterrent on the off chance that a would be intruder with burglarious intent comes snooping. Not so in my daughter’s case. In addition to the house to look after there are five cats with three disabilities between them, an African hedgehog, a tenrec and sundry outdoor wildlife with needs to cater for. Nonetheless in what free time we had we were able to indulge in various touristy things and for me to undertake a photographic exercise I’d had in mind from the last time I was up there two years ago. For this I’d taken a recently acquired Yashica D which I loaded with a roll of Kodak Gold 200

I was hoping for enough successful shots to cobble together a Five Frames (hence the feature image) but in the event I was so pleased with the results that I’m sharing them all, albeit not in order taking, as a Whole Roll piece. That’s more than enough introduction, there’s subject matter of a far more serious nature to attend to.

The Liverpool Blitz

Afternoon, 28th August 1940. On airfields in Northern France units of Kampfgeschwader 76 prepared their aircraft and themselves for the night ahead. Groundcrew fuelled and loaded the Do 17s and as there is no reason to suppose that German airmen were any different from their British counterparts perhaps somewhere close by a gramophone was playing something sentimental. Or perhaps given the occasion it was something more rousing like the Luftwaffe song, “Wir fliegen gegen Engeland”. Meanwhile the aircrew were being given their briefing and issued with charts for the nights mission: large-scale British Ordnance Survey maps overprinted with German annotations, such are the ironies of war. The target was Liverpool and this was the first raid of the Liverpool Blitz.

In blunt historical terms Liverpool’s Blitz was second only to London’s in terms of casualties and damage. Yet whereas London’s, now much befogged by time, myths and half-truths, remains in the handed down public consciousness as one of the defining points of the Second World War Liverpool’s is comparatively unknown. Therefore it is worth considering some figures, unreliable though they may be and sometimes disputed by revisionist historians. It is generally accepted that the dates for the London Blitz are 7th September 1940 until 11th May 1941 and for Liverpool’s 28th August 1940 until 10th January 1942. Not only did the Liverpool Blitz last longer but given the smaller target area it was more intense. For instance, at its peak in May 1941 there were seven consecutive nights of sustained bombing at the end of which in one working-class area alone, Bootle, barely 20% of the houses were left. Small wonder then that some historians concede that Liverpool’s per capita destruction and damage of property and infrastructure may actually have been greater than London’s, as were the casualties in terms of percentage of population. Statistics, as always, are no consolation if you happen to be be one of them.

With a whole Ministry set up for the purpose censorship during the war was thorough and stringent, although the attitude relaxed somewhat regarding the reports filed by press correspondents of friendly nations. London epitomised Britain to the eyes of many potential allies and reports of cheerful Cockneys sing-songing and carrying on regardless during their Blitz were considered good propaganda. The systematic destruction of the port which handled 98% of Britain’s imported war material was definitely bad propaganda and a blanket ban on the reporting of it was imposed. While this no doubt contributed to the subsequent lack of awareness of the Liverpool Blitz it also fostered a resentment among Liverpudlians at the time who felt that their sufferings were being ignored. A grievance that persists to some extent to this day.

Crosby Beach

Follow the coast road northwards out of Liverpool and you come to Crosby Beach. The effect is similar to the coastal towns in Northern France and Belgium: there’s the port and its outlying industries and then without any transitional buffer zone there are windswept dunes and miles of flat sandy beach. Crosby’s, however, is a beach with a difference, two in fact. It is the site of an impressive Antony Gormley sculpture installation, ‘Another Place’, which consists of one hundred cast iron figures embedded to various depths in the sand and gazing out to sea. Turn your back to these and worn bricks can be seen half buried in the sand against the short stretch of stepped sea wall. Further north still and following the England Coast Path the reason for the presence of the bricks becomes apparent. The beach is no longer a conventional beach but becomes an ever broadening ribbon of rubble.

This is what has become known as Blitz Beach. It was here that the remains of many of Liverpool’s buildings were brought in order to clear the streets during and after the Blitz. The dressed stone and marble of grand civic edifices and the rude brick of shabby dockside dwellings. The great and the small. The rich and the poor. All jumbled together in an undiscriminating equality.

This, however, is not quite the whole story. Compared with South-East England in the early years of the war Liverpool was relatively lightly defended against aerial attack. Even as the Blitz continued the handful of mobile anti-aircraft units were hastily augmented along the coast by a line of purpose-built emplacements for heavier guns. During the 1950s these were demolished and the rough reinforced concrete chunks to which they were reduced were tipped on top of the Blitz rubble.

Each spring tide or Atlantic storm adds a sprinkling of salt-bleached driftwood and gnaws away at the base of the dunes to loosen further rubble which eventually tumbles down.

And the receding water carries yet more down to the low-tide mark.

In places the rubble can be seen to have been rearranged by visitors to this bewildering landscape, usually as a simple cairn-like stack or a row of bricks. Occasionally more thought has been given and the result is poignant.

Blitz Beach is neither a conservation area nor a listed heritage site. Whatever the legalities may be vintage bricks taken from it adorn many a local garden. Tempted to take a souvenir I twice picked up interesting looking pieces. Twice I put them back. Even the smallest seemingly insentient fragment speaks. It speaks of its time and place. Whether it speaks as memorial or portent it is for you to decide. Whichever the case a voice told me that this is where they all belong….

…where the land, Mersey and Irish Sea meet and mingle.

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