Separated by the Mystery park, Smithdown Road and High Street run almost parallel through Wavertree.
Long the home of Liverpool's students, Smithdown Road was once characterised by its 10 pubs - 'The Smithdown Ten' - most of which are now long gone. Today, the road is now home to more artisanal venues, including a wood-fired pizza restaurant, bistros and several craft beer bars.
Similarly, Wavertree High Street was once a hive of pubs and local businesses. Like on Smithdown, many of these pubs have closed - along with plenty of shops.
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However, not as many new venues have made the street their home. In recent years, residents have told the ECHO of Wavertree High Street's "long decline".
Liverpool Wavertree MP Paula Barker told a council committee last year: “In recent years we have lost our job centre, we have lost our supermarket, we have lost our post office. I don’t know of any other high street in our city that has been decimated in the way that Wavertree has been.”
As large parts of Smithdown Road have been revitalised by new businesses and venues, Wavertree High Street seems to be waiting for its turn. With the two seemingly experiencing contrasting fortunes, the ECHO spoke to residents and businesses about the different paths that these parallel roads are taking.
The Smithdown Renaissance
Kevin McArthur runs the Handyman Pub and Brewery on Smithdown Road. The pub opened in 2017 in the distinctive Handyman Supermarket building, where it also brews its own craft beer.
Having lived in the area for 20 years, Kevin has noticed significant changes to the street, saying it has "gone in waves". He told the ECHO: "When I first started here it was definitely just for students. Then the smoking ban came into play and everything got quite quiet. Lots of the pubs at the top end began to close down - the 'Smithdown Ten' as it was before deteriorated."
Some of the traditional pubs which made up the 10- the Brookhouse, the Willow Bank and Kelly's Dispensary - remain, but the street is now home to more hospitality venues of a different ilk. Wine bar and bistro Belzan and wood-fired pizza venue Little Furnace are among the restaurants that now inhabit the road.
These venues are joined by a growing craft-beer scene. Following in the footsteps of the success of the Handyman and the Black Cat Bar, the Crafty Swine opened in February, sharing the site that was formerly TriBeCa with tapas restaurant Neon Jamon.
Helen Bond, who has worked at Smithdown institution Dafna's Cheesecake Factory since 2009 and took over the shop as managing director in 2019, thinks the emergence of such venues has improved the road.
She told the ECHO: "It always used to be a little bit run down or not so much going on, but recently there are more restaurants and cafes. It is kind of changing the feel in the sense of bringing more small, independent places, that sort of vibe.
"I’ve brought friends down and we’ve gone for brunch along Smithdown, which I never would have entertained in the past. It is also bringing a slightly different crowd to the area - there are still plenty of students, it’s still quite a hive of students here in the evening, but I do feel like there are more young professionals coming along."
Kevin has also noticed a changing demographic and said the ratio of students to locals at the Handyman is now around 60:40. He said: "I had Kelly’s Dispensary for years and when I started, in summer it probably went down to around 20% take of what it would be term time. Whereas now, it’s much more mixed.
"The road has gone in waves. It was students, then a bit dead, and now it’s now a mix of students, young professionals and locals."
Despite the shifting demographic, venues on Smithdown continue to cater to the student population. The Brookhouse serves a sizable number of students, while a poster in the window of Asian restaurant Chamber 36 advertises a "Student Build-A-Bowl".
Helen thinks that purpose-built student accommodation closer to and in the city centre has meant that Smithdown's population is more balanced between students and locals. As such, she thinks this has afforded the street the chance to diversify its type of venues.
Likewise, Kevin said: "Now you can come down and there are nice places to eat, so you can make more of a night of it and go to a few different venues, not just the one."
"When I started down the road, if you tried to sell a pint for £6, people wouldn't have it. Now, people want to enjoy their night out, they want to enjoy the drink that they’re having. If you’re going out, you want nice stuff.
"You’ve got the Brookhouse and students will obviously go to those nights. But both students and locals are more than happy to sit in here for the night and try out different beers."
Both Helen and Kevin cited the Smithdown Festival, which sees events hosted across the street's venues, as a significant factor in the road's revival - promoting it as a viable destination for the people of South Liverpool and beyond. Helen said: "There was the Smithdown Road Festival, which celebrated the whole thing of community spirit and being proud of where we live - things like that have been good and have got people working together."
She added: "It is nice to be in the midst of the area, rather than it being run down and people just coming to visit us, they’re coming for many places."
Andy Scott, who runs the Black Cat Bar and Bottleshop, summed it up by telling the ECHO: "We on Smithdown are in this good precipice between the students and the young professionals. They all come together in this one area where you’ve got nice stuff but affordable.
"You haven’t quite got Allerton Road prices, but you’ve got nice places."
Crossing the Mystery
"Wavertree High Street has been battered, hasn’t it?
"We were talking about the Smithdown Ten, but when that was around, the Wavertree and Picton one probably had 20. Every few steps there was another pub", Kevin told the ECHO before we left The Handyman to head to the high street.
Once home to a number of pubs and shops, the road - like so many high streets - has faced a plethora of difficulties in recent times. In 2019, residents told the ECHO that Wavertree High Street had suffered a "long decline", citing boarded-up pubs and other closures as characteristics of the road's struggles.
Walking along the road on a Tuesday afternoon, the number of shops with their shutters down and units left empty is notable, while footfall is low. Like on Smithdown, a few 'traditional pubs' remain - the Cock and Bottle, the Prince Alfred, and the Barley Mow among them. Unlike on Smithdown, few bars, restaurants or coffee shops have popped up to provide a more modern alternative to what has been lost.
However, one of the newer venues on the high street sits within one of its oldest buildings.
Hoping to spearhead a renaissance of Wavertree High Street is Natalie Doughty, who is one of the co-owners of the Wavertree Town Hall. Along with business partner Lisa Dixon, Natalie took over the Grade II listed building in 2020, refurbishing it and opening it as a bar, restaurant and function room.
Natalie told the ECHO that they wanted to provide something new for the high street but were also incentivised by the fact a large venue in L15 represented better value than setting up elsewhere.
She said: "We looked at small venues on Allerton Road and Smithdown. But we thought, what’s the point in having a small venue when we know the size of bookings and events we could take on?
"I drove past here one night and there was a ‘To Let’ sign and a tree growing out of the roof. It was awful - but the price of the rent here for a year was much cheaper than the other places we had looked at."
Having weathered the storm of several lockdowns, the renovated venue serves small plates from Monday to Saturday and Sunday lunches. It is markedly different to what the Town Hall offered in its previous iteration as Murphy's Town Hall Tavern.
Natalie now hopes other independent businesses follow her lead, set up shop on the road and help revive it. She does, however, acknowledge there is some way to go.
She added that, when she and Lisa took over the Town Hall, they questioned why so many people were going to Smithdown Road or Allerton Road and not the high street. She said she quickly had an answer: "Because there was nothing on offer here."
These thoughts echo those of Thayananthan, the owner of the High Street Market Newsagent, who told the ECHO last year: "When I first started it was very busy this area because of the pubs. But now there have been too many pubs lost.
"This is before coronavirus I'm talking about, five years ago when I came to this area it was really busy now it's quiet. My opinion is nobody is driving to here. The pubs attract more people and would be a way of making the road more attractive to people to come and shop more."
Natalie thinks that more venues in the vicinity would benefit not only the Town Hall but the entire high street, turning it into a viable option for people to spend an entire evening. She said: "There’s not much to shout about on the road at the moment but there are empty units.
"It’s the same as County Road and Prescot Road years ago. There are all these main roads to get you from town to the suburbs and they all look at the same."
"If you look at Wavertree High Street and you look at Smithdown Road, they look the same. It’s just that there are more open units there than there are here.
"We’ve set this up as a restaurant, bar and function room. It’s classed as a destination restaurant and we have to do all that we can to get people to stay here longer than they might, because there isn’t a bar next door to go to.
"If you’re going out for the night, you’re going to go to a bar first, then some food, then on to a bar. To get people to spend an entire night in one venue is a tough ask."
Natalie said she would welcome any independent business to the road - ideally a mix of hospitality and retail. However, she believes that a lack of parking is a significant barrier to bringing people to the high street from other areas of the city and will also discourage people from taking on the empty units. She said: "On Allerton Road you can park for free for two hours. You can't park here."
Labour councillor for Wavertree, Clare McIntyre, told the ECHO that she also wants to make the high street a destination, but she understands frustration regarding parking. She said: "There is nowhere to park around there and there are complaints about that from many of our residents. But the road is very well served by public transport as well.
"So many buses pass through the High Street and we’ve got the train station around the corner as well. We want people to get off the bus and stop on the high street rather than using it as a route into town."
Despite difficulties, Natalie is positive about the future of the high street. Bistro Papa's opened recently and Natalie told the ECHO that a coffee shop is opening near to the Town Hall in the autumn, which she hopes will provide another reason for people to head to the road, thus increasing footfall for her restaurant.
When asked how the high street can carve out a new identity, potentially in the ilk of Smithdown, she said: "Someone’s got to go first. When an area is popular, it spreads. It’s got to go somewhere. I do think what has happened on Smithdown is going to happen here."
She added: "The world needs to know that there are a lot of empty units on this road. There needs to be encouragement for people to take them on. It just takes one or two more businesses."
Asked the same question, Cllr McIntyre said: "The high street is quite different from Smithdown. They’ve got different demographics so I think it’s quite important that we need to find our own identity and work with that.
"We’d love to make the high street a destination place and that doesn’t necessarily mean pubs - it could be anything to bring people in."
She added: "There are a lot of positives in Wavertree. We’ve got a lot of community groups and lots of people who are really keen to look after their area.
"I feel like people are taking ownership of their community space and asking us to help them, which is great. Where we can, we will do. It’s about us letting them do it and us supporting where we can."
