A historic Liverpool pub known for being an "iconic meeting place" for football coaches and tourists has been serving customers for generations.
It's easy to whizz past The Rocket at the end of the motorway on the way into the city centre. But for decades, the pub has been a Liverpool landmark and become a place where "everyone knows everyone." The original pub in Broadgreen first stood in the path of the M62 near a roundabout.
Named after the Stephenson's steam engine, Rocket, which broke down near the site, the original pub closed in the 1970s and was knocked down to make way for new lanes for the M62, before being rebuilt on Bowring Park Road in 1982. Now a Greene King pub, Paul Griffiths, 65, has been tenant for the last 15 years.
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Paul, originally from Old Swan, told the ECHO: "There used to be a roundabout where the flyover is now, kind of like the Five Ways. The shops on the other side remained intact and everything on our side was moved back.
"The border wall that goes around the pub now, the old pub would have been in the middle of the road on the other side of the wall. The day it closed, a friend of mine got invited to the last day because his father was a real regular in there.
"They day they closed it down they were charging the same prices for the beer as the day it opened, obviously trying to get rid of the stock. You had to take old money with you to buy a drink because we’d just gone decimal, using old coins to buy a beer which is quite a novelty."
Through the years, Paul has ran everything from nightclubs and pubs to Wacky Warehouses. After working at the famous Le Bateau club in the city centre and local pubs, Paul became tenant of The Rocket over a decade ago and remembers the pub boasting an old railway theme which they still give a nod to today.
Paul said: "If you don't know it and you’re coming off the motorway and you’re going a bit quicker sometimes you can miss it, how to get into it. But it is known as the iconic meeting place for football coaches or anyone coming into Liverpool.
"Its ‘meet me at The Rocket' isn't it. Sometimes we find ourselves as a breakdown service too, the amount of cars that breakdown when they reach our carpark.
"We give them a coffee, they ring the AA and we tell them where we are." Some of Paul's favourite memories through the years are of match nights in the pub and seeing the Champions League Parade go past The Rocket.
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Paul said the pandemic was a struggle and that government grants and the Bounce Back scheme has helped get the pub back on track. The last few years, the business has moved towards its food offering, but is still loved for being a good sports base.
Paul told the ECHO: "We change the menu constantly, we’ve got some quirky bits on there that other pubs wouldn't have. We do sui mai's and Chinese food that Scousers love, we've been doing that for a long time.
"You can get everything from pies to fajitas, fish and chips to salt and pepper platters. We just do what people like - it's eclectic to say the least."
Over the years, The Rocket has welcomed many regulars, such as the Stamper's family who have had generations pass through The Rockets doors. Paul also said the support of the community and Greene King area manager Paul Cunningham has meant a lot to the team.
Paul said: "We’re an open public house but we do functions as well in the restaurant side and we’ve hosted hundreds of occasions. They're all for people that we know so it’s almost like they're having their party, but staff are part of the party because everyone who celebrates something here comes here regularly.
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"The best thing about it is you’re really part of the community. There’s so many people here everyday, it’s almost like having an extended family.
"If I go in the front door it will take me 20 minutes to get to the office because you stop and chat to so many people. It's not a burden, that’s the way it is.
"It's almost like the Cheers song, 'sometimes you wanna go where everyone knows your name' - and in our pub everyone knows everyone. It’s a great pub and long may it continue."
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