BackStory: Two Young Lads

These two young lads are Will and Ronnie Hall.  They lived with their parents, grandad and two young uncles on Ashbourne Rd in Aigburth, Liverpool in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and the house stayed in the family for years afterwards.  Will Hall (when he met Marguerite in 1944, he was going by Bill) was my dad, and I’ve placed Maude living next door to him, in a terraced house attached to his. As Maude describes her home, yard and the Anderson shelter built there by her grandfather, so we can imagine those of Will and his younger brother Ronnie. In this photo, we can see the fronts of a row of terraced houses like the one they lived in.

Unlike Marguerite and her quantities of letters and diaries, my dad left no stories until he began corresponding with Marguerite after their brief wartime meeting. (These letters will make their debut later in the podcast series).  Therefore, via a combination of my research of the era added to the small bits of Hall family lore that I do have, (much contributed to by my cousin Elaine, Ronnie’s daughter) a picture of my father’s life as a teenager in Liverpool can be imagined via Maude’s letters.