Netherley
Paul Farley
Image 1 of 16
The end of the line: A few shops are still open for business
Image 2 of 16
Netherley Brook, so sluggish and un-Heraclitean it’s hard to imagine it empties into the Mersey a few miles away, below Widnes
Image 3 of 16
The kind of wall that invites a ball to be kicked against it
Image 4 of 16
The last of the parade of shops, seen from the bus stop
Image 5 of 16
Growing up in Netherley was all about edges, borders, adventures
Image 6 of 16
A typical kludge of a barrier
Image 7 of 16
The very edge of Liverpool, then open country
Image 8 of 16
We don’t remember this ever having been here. A shelter in the middle of a field.
Image 9 of 16
Ditch, seventeenth-century
Image 10 of 16
Haunted woods
Image 11 of 16
White Bridge graffito. ‘Gimp’ was not a word we would have used, or known, in the seventies.
Image 12 of 16
Image 13 of 16
Near Niall’s house. Streets ending in fields.
Image 14 of 16
The shop unit furthest from view was Mr Walker’s, the newsagent, who lived upstairs and had his steps buttered so he couldn’t get down during a break-in
Image 15 of 16
Visiting the off licence – the ‘offy’ or ‘outdoor’ – was always like running a gauntlet
Image 16 of 16
Our parents had never known such nice houses, such light and space.
For Granta 102, Paul Farley and Niall Griffiths returned to Netherley, on Liverpool’s north-eastern rim and the fringes of rural Lancashire, and to what remains of the housing estate where they grew up. Built as part of the city’s regeneration during the 1960s, the estate was pulled down in the late ’80s. These photographs, taken by Paul Farley, show what’s left. You can read Paul and Niall’s piece here.
