The used-car sales area, by which you are currently standing, occupies the site of Nos 17-21 High Street, a block of three houses which were set back behind a tall brick wall. In the late nineteenth century this was a place of pilgrimage for American tourists just as Arnold Grove - George Harrison's birthplace - is today. For between 1828 and 1831 Mrs Felicia Dorothea Hemans lived at No.17 High Street, and Mrs Hemans was one of the best-known poetesses of her age. Famous in America as the author of 'The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers', which is traditionally recited on Thanksgiving Day, she is remembered in Britain for just one line: 'The boy stood on the burning deck ...' (from her poem 'Casabianca'). Born in Duke Street, Liverpool, in 1793, Mrs Hemans moved from Abergele in North Wales to Wavertree at the height of her fame, but moved away to Dublin after only three years. Reputedly she left Wavertree because the natives were too inquisitive!

At No.19 - the middle house of the long-demolished block - lived Dr James Kenyon in the 1840s. Born near Lancaster in 1814, he was another example of a professional man who moved to Liverpool and then chose to settle in Wavertree. It was Dr Kenyon who bought the field behind his house and created Orford Street, which he named after his wife's family. Later on, the house was the residence of Mr Patrick O'Connor, an Irish-born ironmonger, of whom more later.