大象传媒

We lived at No 2 Hope Place, opposite the Jewish School and Synagogue. Our local Church was St Lukes. My two younger sisters went to St Luke's Infant School in Colquitt Street. We all attended St Luke's Sunday School and I belonged to the Girl Guides. The church was very beautiful with lovely windows and had a thriving congregation of the poor and the wealthy (many members living in Rodney Street)
Miss Swift was our Superindendent. Her brother was Justice Swift a famous judge from London. Miss Swift used to visit the sick in the neighbourhood carrying a basket of posies which had been picked from St Luke's gardens. She was a very good lady but quite austere. She lived in a gracious Georgian House in Mount Pleasant. We were aked to sell tickets for the Guides Concert around the Rodney Street and Knight Street area and to then take the money to Miss Swift's house. Her house was so grand and I was very nervous but Miss Swift was kind and would always give us an apple from her elegant cut-glass fruit bowl! After Christmas a party would be held in Church and we would all be given a toy donated by the more wealthy families in the Church.
We left Hope Street a year before St Luke's was bombed, but I remember going into Liverpool after the Blitz. We could not get near the bombed areas because the Home Gaurd had put barricades around the buildings, there was a smell of acrid smoke and the damage was appalling. We were suprised that the steps were still intact around St Luke's. There was a hole in the middle of the Church. Some people were crying when they saw all the devastation. We often wondered why St Luke's could not have been rebuilt from the centre I know that they did this to some old buildings in America, however two years later an architect said that it was not possible as the damage had been to great.

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