The Vanished World Of A Woolton Childhood With John Lennon – Part 4
The 3rd Allerton Cubs met in St Peter's Church Hall, which was where the Quarry Men played with local Woolton lads - Eric Griffiths, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Pete Shotton and John Lennon - on July 6th 1957. It was there that Paul McCartney met John. The Scouts had their own hut on the Church Field where the Rose Queen was held. The Scouts had been founded shortly after the end of the First World War in 1918 by Dicky Ball who lived in a thatched cottage which had been the Woolton Post Office It was the oldest house in Woolton but sadly, instead of being preserved as it should have been; it was pulled down many years ago.
Dicky Ball also ran his father's bricklaying business and had acquired the scout hut which had been a Boer War wooden army hut about sixty feet long by 15 feet wide. My dad, Ted Ashton, his twin brother Geoff and my granddad Edward Ashton helped Dicky Ball erect it and my dad was later, before the Second World War, to become Scout Leader of the 3rd Allerton Scout while my mother, Irene Ashton, was Cub Mistress. I think this was where they met and got to know each other although they were also cousins. These uniformed scouting organisations played a big part in Woolton's life from the Scout Band which played at Rose Queens and monthly church parades and marches around the village to collecting jam jars for recycling or Bob-a-Job Week where we went from door to door doing any sort of work for a shilling for the Cub and Scout funds. A favourite Bob-a-Job of mine was cycling down to the Gateacre Institute, to the Oddfellows Hall where, about the time of the Bob-a-Job week it was also time to renew the ration books which we all had during and long after the war for food, clothes, furniture and, worst of all! Sweets.
John Lennon from time to time turned up at Cubs and later at Scouts. He didn't attend regularly but I remember him being there on a various occasions like the Scouts Sports at Allerton and the Scout Swimming Gala at Garston Baths, but I mostly remember him turning up for the normal Scout meetings with their easy-going, relaxed atmosphere. We called ourselves 'The Backwoods Men' and used to laugh at the 2nd Allerton troop at Mossley Hill or Quarry Bank School Boy Scouts who were much better turned out than we were at the annual Lord Mayor's Parade. This was a church parade of all the scouts from the Allerton District, which took place at the Plaza Cinema at Allerton next to the fire station as mentioned in the song 'Penny Lane'. The Lord Mayor of Liverpool turned up in his horse drawn glass coach and addressed us and the cinema Wurlitzer organ played the hymn tunes - then later the mayor took the salute as we paraded past the fire station next to the TA (Territorial Army) base.
Even if we weren't the best-turned out troop we in the 3rd Allerton Scouts prided ourselves in being able to live off the land, to go camping and leave the camp site as though no-one new had been there. We had summer camps on farms for two weeks in North Wales and the Lake District and also Weekend camps at Nercwys near Mold in North Wales and at Graces Farm near Cronton just east of Woolton usually at Easter, Whitsun and in the autumn. We usually cycled and took the green scout trekking-cart to weekend camps. For the long summer camp we usually went in the back of a lorry. We once went to a scout campsite near Ormskirk called, Tawd Vale to meet the Chief Scout, Lord MacLean. We set up camp for the 3rd Allerton Scouts all on our own without any scout leaders and the Chief Scout came and talked to us all personally. I remember John being at that camp as he was in our patrol, the Badgers, and he helped me carry a milk churn full of water back to our campsite in the woods away from all the others. As we were going past Quarry Bank School Scouts' campsite he shouted, "We are the Third, The Mad Third. We come from ALLeeRTON and we are MAD...MAD” We were struggling with our churn of water and the Quarry Bank scoutmaster who knew John Lennon as one of his pupils, told Johnny Earp and another boy whose name I forget to help us with the churn back to our site in the back of beyond.
Our scout leader was Bill Whiteside whose brother, Charlie actually lived off Penny Lane, in Limedale Road - or their mother did. I think Bill still lives there. We sometimes had scout patrol meetings at his home. Bill is still one of Liverpool's unsung heroes. Apart from devoting time to and being involved with the 3rd Allerton Scouts he has all his adult life worked with under-privileged Liverpool kids - which we scouts certainly weren't. We were the lucky ones. I saw Bill about three years ago at Allerton Towers Park, Woolton where, in the stable block of a disused hall, he is running a project on a shoestring using Outward Bound ideas for drug addicts. Many Liverpool people have been recognised in recent years with a gong, a medal, an honour for work they have done but Bill Whiteside, the humble man that he is, has never received that recognition. Indeed, I'm not sure how he would take it if someone said "Thank you" to him. But I think the Whiteside brothers played a very important role in John Lennon's formative years as they certainly did in mine.
Charlie could play chords on a banjo and we scouts who met on Friday nights for our Meeting and again on Saturdays for 'hut repairs' as it was called, often had a camp fire sing-song in the Camp Fire Circle at the back of the scout hut next to the quarry wall with its 200 foot drop to the bottom. I remember making nettle soup and bread twists on sticks one Saturday for dinner while Charlie taught John the chords of 'Way Down Upon the Swanee River’ and 'John Brown's Body Lies a Mouldering in the Grave'. Sadly they did not like my nettle soup and spat it out over the quarry wall! It was at such campfire sing-songs that we learned the song 'The Happy Wanderer' which had become so well-known because of the success of the children's choir from Germany - the Oberkirchen Children's Choir - who had come to the International Music and Song Eisteddfod at Llangollen in North Wales in the early 1950s and won the competition with it. Everyone learned to sing it. John Lennon mastered it first on his mouth organ and when he wanted a bigger 'mouthy' I bought his old one for two shillings and paid another sixpence for the tutor book ‘How to Play the Mouth Organ'.
Before I finish with my stories of the 3rd Allerton Scouts - and there are many more tales I could tell - there's one about a daft game which we invented called Stone Age Football. There were no real rules. The ball could be picked up or kicked and you were allowed to fell your opponents. The ball was of the heavy medicine ball type and the whole of the church field was the playing area. We had two sets of goalposts - one by the scout hut at the top of the field and the other one by the Rose Queen's permanent stage (which was built by Jack Gibbons at the bottom of the field.
We learnt a lot in the scouts but whether it was what we were intended to learn from Baden Powell's Scouting for Boys I will never know. I do not think we paid much attention to it but scouts were great fun.
