InfoBritain

 

Mendips, Liverpool

Mendips, at 251 Menlove Avenue, Liverpool, was donated to the National Trust by Yoko Ono. This is the house in Woolton, Liverpool, where John Lennon lived between the ages of 5 and 23 with Aunt Mimi. After the break up of Julia and Freddie Lennon's marriage, John went to live with Julia's sister - Aunt Mimi. John was then brought up at Mendips, along with lodging students who were taken in to help pay for the house and keep up appearances. Aunt Mimi is a rather ferocious figure in many versions of the Beatles' story, snobbish and unloving. But John always acknowledged the importance of the help and stability that Mimi provided for him. Philip Norman, Lennon's biographer, describes a typical scene from Lennon's later childhood. As an art student he had left home to live in student lodgings in Liverpool. Making his dramatic exit from Mendips, John announced that he was going because he didn't like Mimi's cooking. Inevitably the charms of youthful student living in artistic but squalid lodgings faded. When John needed a bath, clean clothes and especially some decent food, he would come back and see Mimi.

Visitors to Mendips will be able to see John's bedroom, and hear some of the music he would have listened to as he sat in there keeping out of Aunt Mimi's way. The garden is also interesting. It backs onto a former children's home, Strawberry Field. John used to get over the garden fence by climbing a usefully placed tree, and then run off and play with the Strawberry Field orphans. As Sylvia the house guide pointed out to me, John in effect was an orphan taken away from his mother, and he went off to play with a lot of other orphans at Strawberry Field. Later John was to write about the experiences of escape over his garden fence in his song Strawberry Fields Forever. Strawberry Field perhaps confirmed John as an orphan, but was also a place where he found friendship and fun with people like himself. Standing in Mendips' garden it occurred to me that in Strawberry Fields Forever John was singing to all his listeners as if they were a lot of orphans. Even though his listeners were scattered all over the place, like lost orphans, John in his song offered to take them to a dreamy place where they can all be together. "Let me take you down, because I'm going to, Strawberry Fields..." Aunt Mimi used to get cross with John when he climbed the fence. John's cheeky response was "C'mon Aunt Mimi, they can't hang you for it." This remark made it into the song as "nothing to get hung about..."

 

 

Garden at Mendips. John used to climb the fence into Strawberry Field

 

Mendips is fascinating in showing the small beginnings of a world wide phenomena. When Aunt Mimi got fed up with the boys making a noise rehearsing in her living room, she would send them off to play their music in a tiny front porch. I stood in the small echoing space of the porch. It struck me how a tiny porch had an echo reminiscent of a big place.

Visits are by scheduled mini bus only, with fourteen places on each tour. Tours run Wednesday to Sunday. It is advisable to pre-book. Morning tours leave the Conservation Centre in Liverpool's City Centre. Afternoon tours leave Speke Hall in south Liverpool. The tours last for about two hours. No photography is allowed in the house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opening Times: Tours for 2011 run from 26th February to 27th November, Wednesday to Sunday. Also open bank holiday Mondays. Advance booking advised as visiting by guided tour only.

Address: Mendips, Woolton, Liverpool L25 7SA

Directions: Click here for an interactive map centred on Mendips.

Access: No special provision is made in the property, or the mini bus. There are two steps to the front door, and stairs to the upper floor. A photograph album tour is available.

Contact:

e-mail: mendips@nationaltrust.org.uk

website: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/beatles

information line : 0844 800 4791

 Share