Toxteth

Toxteth is an area of inner-city Liverpool, England, starting approximately a mile south from the city centre. The area is roughly located in the psuedo triangle formed by Sefton Street (A5036, along the river), Upper Parliament Street leading into Smithdown Road (A562) and Ullet Road (B5342). It is also known as "Liverpool 8" after the former postal district (now the "L8" Postcode area). However, the bad reputation that Toxteth has had in the past means several L8 locations prefer to be known by their sub-area rather than Toxteth itself, eg, the Georgian area of "Canning", around Canning Street.

Politically, the parliamentary constituency Liverpool Riverside is under Labour Party control (although the MP, Louise Ellman, is Labour Co-op rather than strictly Labour).The council ward (Princes Park) has two Labour Councillors and one Liberal Democrat Councillor (Ali Mohammed Mahmoud), who is also the first local councillor of Somali origin.

House prices are cheap in Toxteth: in summer 2003, the average property price was just GBP £45,929 (compared to the national average of £160,625). Housing tends to be in terraces but there is a growing number of flats available as larger Victorian properties (particularly around the Princes Road/Avenue boulevard) are broken up into separate dwellings. The previously mentioned Canning area, at the north of the Toxteth boundary, features many fine examples of Georgian architecture - previously the houses of merchants and those profiting from the port of Liverpool, and including many fine examples of building constructed for ritual use.

Riots

Outside popular opinion labelled the riots, like those around the same time in Brixton, Handsworth and the year before in Bristol, as simply "race riots" but this is not strictly the case. There are many reports of similarly frustrated white youths travelling in from other areas of Liverpool to fight alongside those from Toxteth against the police. Putting the blame on "race problems" allowed many people, including the Merseyside Chief Constable at the time, Kenneth Oxford, to ignore the possibility of general social problems behind the violence.

History

Toxteth Park Puritan Colony C1600s. Puritans from Bolton settled in Toxteth royal deer park. Setting up 25 farms on land outside Church of England control they worshiped at the "Ancient Chapel" of Toxteth on Park Road. Opposite the chapel is the last remaining significant part of the Liverpool Overhead Railway, the underground sections of the Park Road station at the end of the railway's south extension tunnel.

Famous people

• Paul McGann Star of cult classic film Withnail and I, The Monocled Mutineer, and Doctor Who (Enemy Within), among others.
• Jeremiah Horrocks, who first observed Transit of Venus. A plaque dedicated to him can be found in Toxteth Ancient Chapel.
• John Lennon once lived at No. 3 Gambier Terrace, where he shared a flat with Stuart Sutcliffe.
• Herbert Louis Samuel, the first Viscount Samuel of Mount Carmel and of Toxteth, who became the first Jewish Home Secretary.
• Toxteth O'Grady, a fictional character mentioned in the classic 1980s British sit-com, The Young Ones
• Granddad Boswell, a fictional character in the 1980s BBC Bread (television series) sit-com bread, which was set in a street in Toxteth. Grandad (played by the non-Toxteth thespian Kenneth Waller ) was a cantankerous character whose episodic cries of 'Piss off!' made 20 million of the UK's citizens convulse with hilarity every week. He was a member of the Boswell family.
• Robbie Fowler, a popular player of the English game soccer whose merry jest about cocaine abuse (in which he humourously pretended to sniff a line on the pitch in the same way Cocaine abusers sniff lines of the drug) brought opprobrium upon him.
• Holly Johnson, the superstar former lead singer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood lived in Toxteth in 1981. He also took LSD in 1981. His biography does not state wether these factors are connected.
• John paul ii, the famous Pope drove through Toxteth during his visit to Liverpool in 1982.
• Ringo Starr, perhaps most well-known as the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine, lived in Toxteth as a child. Controversially his old house is due to be taken down brick by brick and moved somewhere away from Toxteth. More controversially the remaining several hundred houses in the locale are due to be pulverised and turned into abodes for well-off middle-class people. Ringo Starr's old house story
• Alex Cox runs production company ToxtethTV. He made several excellent films such as Repo Man & Sid and Nancy. He also made Revengers Tragedy, a movie that proved once and for all that the market for Jacobean futuristic dramas set in a disease-riddled post-apocalyptic Liverpool (performed by Dr Who , Alan Turing and a cast of the caiber of Margi Clarke ) is small. Even if Chumbawumba does the music. Perhaps if Alex had been less inspired by 1970s thing Jubilee and more inspired by Blade Runner then he could have made a futuristic Jaobean drama with flying cars, genetically engineered owls and a denoument featuring Dr Who and Eddie Izzard having a fight while Izzard rants about 'watching C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate' before dying. That would still have been box-office poison, but Geeks would buy the DVD for sure... For that matter while we're on the subject can Liverpool film-makers please stop doing those awful gangster things that are supposed to be witty because they include a cameo from Meat Loaf or Stan Boardman ? They're TERRIBLE. Leave this genre to Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorcese. Liverpool can't even make a decent film about the beatles for heaven's sake.
• The Chants, a popular music combo of the 1960s were from the Toxteth area. They later formed a band called The Real Thing. They are still working to this day, which in Toxteth counts as a Miracle.
• God has Omnipresence, and so it can reasonably be assumed that the Divine One has knowledge of Toxteth and the entire Liverpool area.
• Steve McFadden, who has played much loved character Phil Mitchell in the popular soap-opera Eastenders (as well as myriad other successful roles ) opened the new-look Toxteth branch of Kwik Save in late 2004. McFadden is a well known conisseur of the art of Dogging
• Curtis Warren- Toxteth crime lord and fiend.
• David Ungi - Famous for being shot.

See also

• Toxteth Unitarian Chapel
• Sefton Park is one of the last reminders of the once open countryside.
• The Belvedere School