By the 1960s the close knit communities around Upper William Street had been dispersed as the courts were demolished. Most of the residents moved to the new districts of Huyton and Kirkby where newly built council housing offered much better conditions, yet many still missed the old neighbourhoods.
I was in the army so I was away for six years. In the meantime my mother and father and sister, who was all that was left at home, moved to a tenement in Old Swan and from there they got a change, about 1948, to a house in Huyton in Butleigh Road and there we were quite pleased to meet up with people who we knew in St Augustine’s, little knowing that they were in the same street. So while we were there, in the meantime, they had organised a new parish of St Columba in Huyton and were very much involved with the organisation of the new parish, improving things, a better church and hall, in fact later on they organised the opening of a lovely club, St Columbas club, which was very beneficial to the requirements of the parish.
Quite a few of us went to Birkenhead to find out how to organise bingo, which used to be illegal. So we went over to Birkenhead and cottoned on to how they were running the bingo. So we opened a bingo in the church hall and school. We had all the classrooms full twice a week and we had microphones in all the classrooms where; anyone who shouted house; we pressed the button, so we knew where the winner was. We were revelling in the money that we were bringing into the parish. So it all went very well. The same went on with St Aloysius which was up the road from our parish. They came over to us and we showed them how we ran ours, and they ran theirs the same way, so this was very beneficial as it brought a lot of money into the parish.
Kate Yates, former resident of Princes Court, and Katie Fitzsimons from Upper William St found themselves living next door to each other in their new homes in Huyton.
I wrote a book about St Augustine’s parish when I was up in Huyton because I thought these people are entitled to some sort of recognition in Liverpool.