Fifteen feet up, above the legend ‘YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE’
and embellished with swirling gold acanthus leaves, is to all
intents and purposes the Shankly heraldic device: the white cross
of St Andrew and a green-stalked thistle with a bluish-purple
lowerhead, together denoting Bill’s Scottish roots, and a crest
bearing a blood-red Liver Bird to symbolise his sustained passion.
It’s all because of Bill, this place of history and hokum where
they stood and swayed on one great terrace in their thousands
“to cheer and to chant, to shout and to sing, and to split open
the sky, the clear and starlit Anield sky” – as author David Peace
characterised Spion Kop folklore in his Shankly homage, Red or
Dead.
The gates were unveiled in 1982, the same year that the Anield
Road stand became all-seater. In 1997 it got its upper tier, adding
an extra 2,500 to its capacity.
It remains the smallest of the four stands and it’s taken a
“sustainable solution, one that works inancially,” as Mike Gordon,
president of Fenway Sports Group, explained in 2015, to justify the
new planning application featured earlier in this issue. Hitherto
Liverpool FC’s primary focus has been the new training complex
over in Kirkby, on track to meet its completion date in summer
2020.
The pavement gets wider in the shadow of the stand. On the
other side of the landscaped verge, between the car-park (plus
cycle-hub) and the zone reserved for broadcast vehicles, the
Family Park ills up quickly on matchdays – a place to soak up the
atmosphere, enjoy live entertainment, mingle with fellow fans and
meet club mascot Mighty Red if you’re into your cuddles.
It gets similarly busy in Paisley Square, linked to Anield Road
by 96 Avenue, home to the Hillsborough Memorial, the Anield
Forever stones, the new Bob Paisley (and Emlyn Hughes) statue,
and eight granite benches honouring Liverpool greats: Elisha Scott,
Billy Liddell, Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Kenny Dalglish, John Barnes
and Steven Gerrard.
Lake Street and Lothair Road used to be here, and somewhere
under the elevated Main Stand podium was the house on Anield
Road that belonged to brewing brothers Joseph and John Orrell.
In 1885 they sold the nearby sports ield to Houlding, then
president of Everton FC, for 5,228 pounds, eleven shillings and
eleven pence, plus legal costs.
Anield Road has a diferent vibe to Walton Breck Road on the
other side of the ground. It’s bordered to the north by greenery
while the latter for the most part is grittily urban and at the heart
of a regeneration project led by the council, the club and Your
Housing Group. A work-in-progress, it’s been held up by the
government as a textbook example of “community-led, place-
focused regeneration.”
Expanding the Main Stand – while, as FSG put it, retaining “the
heart and spirit of Anield” – has been key to this. Walton Breck will
have a new high street, home already to LFC’s shiny superstore
and the popular Kop Bar as well as independent success story
Homebaked – Twitter hashtag #morethanapie.
This is becoming somewhere attractive to live and work. This is a
place of opportunity.
Back on Anield Road, past the LFCTV container-studio and the
path to the park, the housing on the north side is less dense and
more substantial. It was an exclusive neighbourhood 150 years ago
where wealthy merchants from the booming seaport threw up the
kind of grand designs your average professional footballer might
live in today. Some of them still have their names inscribed on
ancient stone gate-piers, like Anield Lodge at no13.
They say the name ‘Anield’ comes from the ‘Hangields’ or
narrow strips of land which were here long before the football
venue, but there could be another provenance. An Ordnance
Survey map from 1845, held by the city’s Central Library record
oice, shows buildings in the area called Annield House, Annield
Villa and Annield Cottage, none of which remain, plus Annield
Lane which eventually became Anield Road.
There was also a St Ann’s Hill House. St Ann or St Anne, by
coincidence, was often depicted in a red robe and known as the
antfer
(Antfer)
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