I
t took six thousand staples to secure the football pitch to
the ceiling of the saloon bar in the Flat Iron. “I know,” says
licensee Sean Dunne, “because there’s a thousand staples to
a box and I went through six of them. They all thought I was
mad putting grass up there. You can see where the staples
went in, I call them stud-marks.”
Below the artiicial turf, which has its own penalty-area marked
out in white, are four big stencil portraits of Bob Paisley, Bill
Shankly, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher, and on the next wall
a montage showing Shanks with stars from his two great Liverpool
teams and an old-school club crest.
This isn’t just a pub, it’s part-shrine, art gallery and social hub.
Dubliner Sean, along with business partner Alan Brown, has
run the Flat Iron and Breckside Hotel for four years, on the tight
corner-plot at the southeast nexus of Anield Road and Walton
Breck Road, ive minutes from the ground.
On matchdays “you can’t move in here.” Among the regulars are
“the Athlone crew, about 45 of them, and a dozen from Dublin. For
the Norwich game we had a load in from Cork, they come over
four or ive times a year. And there’s the Bridgwater crowd from
Somerset, 15 of them for every home game including the European
ones.”
Popular with away supporters, too, the bar and backroom are
only part of this local landmark’s charm. Up two narrow lights
of stairs, linked by a landing with a loor-to-ceiling image of the
famous building in New York from which the pub takes its name, is
the accommodation.
“When we took over we gutted all the upstairs and put in ensuite
guest rooms,” says Sean matter-of-factly as he opens the awning
window of one to reveal the stadium’s silver-grey mass on the near
horizon brooding over rows of Welsh-slate rooftops. Some view,
and who knew? ‘Modesty is the art of encouraging people to ind
out for themselves how wonderful you are’, proclaims a poster for
Jameson downstairs.
Back outside it’s quiet. It’s Tuesday lunchtime, there’s no game
today. This is Anield Road when the football isn’t looking.Its eponymous primary school – motto ‘Aim High’ – is 133 years
old, still going strong but hushed for the summer holidays. On the
next block the old red-brick police station has a stone Liver Bird
under a grinning face carved in sandstone, straight from the pages
of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The story goes, ive of the streets which intersect Anield Road
like step-ladder rungs were named after the builder’s children:
Lillian, Elsie, Gertrude, Miriam and Edith. One hundred years ago
they were home to Liverpool players too, legendary skipper Alex
Raisbeck for one living on Elsie Road.
Between here and the hulking Arkles pub at the corner with
Arkles Lane/Utting Avenue, some of the Victorian terraced houses- all pale-yellows, bufs and creams – have seen better days, but
many more are beautifully maintained. Dinky window panels sit
atop front-doors inside wrought-iron railings still sporting their
original rose motif. In the late 19th century these were homes to
skilled labourers and white-collar workers like stonemasons and
seamstresses, book-keepers and bank clerks – some of the irst
generation to ‘go the match’.
Onwards on the road’s north side is the turreted no73, also
known as Stanley House. Built in 1876 for John Houlding, founding
father of Liverpool FC, then as now it overlooks the park of the
same name.
Today Houlding is immortalised in bronze at the opposite corner
of the stadium while down on Oakield Road matchgoers frequent
his Sandon Hotel where the players used to change and ‘King
John’, chairman of the Liverpool Brewers’ Association, sold his own
beer. Inside, Stanley House reputedly had more than 20 rooms, the
inest with high ceilings and marble ireplaces, and a billiards table
on the top loor – from which there must be a belting view today
of the Shankly Gates opposite.
Three years ago they were relocated here at the entrance to
the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand’s concourse (formerly the Centenary
Stand and before that Kemlyn Road) as part of the Main Stand
expansion which coincided with the team’s dizzying resurgence
under Jürgen Klopp.
ANFIELD ROAD