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| Ours is a nice house, ours is | Ours is a nice house, ours is |
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| If we're not careful it's easy to fall into the trap of street name snobbery, says Laurie Taylor in his weekly column. | If we're not careful it's easy to fall into the trap of street name snobbery, says Laurie Taylor in his weekly column. |
| I was a fully developed snob by the age of 11. When officials or strangers asked where I lived I would tell them that I lived not in Crosby, but in "Regent Road, Crosby". | I was a fully developed snob by the age of 11. When officials or strangers asked where I lived I would tell them that I lived not in Crosby, but in "Regent Road, Crosby". |
| Where we live is a good sign of where we are in the pecking order | Where we live is a good sign of where we are in the pecking order |
| The road was crucial. How terrible if it was thought that I lived in one of the "wrong parts" of Crosby. | The road was crucial. How terrible if it was thought that I lived in one of the "wrong parts" of Crosby. |
| If, for example, it was thought that my house was to be found on Endbutt Lane or even, heaven help me, somewhere near the Marine Football Club ground on the notorious College Rd. | If, for example, it was thought that my house was to be found on Endbutt Lane or even, heaven help me, somewhere near the Marine Football Club ground on the notorious College Rd. |
| Not, of course, that Regent Rd enjoyed the highest residential status in Crosby. Long before my 11th birthday I knew that an entirely different class of person was to be found in the rarefied area around Eshe Rd North which lay a good five minutes walk away from my own front door. | Not, of course, that Regent Rd enjoyed the highest residential status in Crosby. Long before my 11th birthday I knew that an entirely different class of person was to be found in the rarefied area around Eshe Rd North which lay a good five minutes walk away from my own front door. |
| In Eshe Rd North, to use a joke I heard comedian Dave Morris make one night at the Liverpool Empire, they didn't go to bed. They retired. | In Eshe Rd North, to use a joke I heard comedian Dave Morris make one night at the Liverpool Empire, they didn't go to bed. They retired. |
| FIND OUT MORE Hear Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed on Radio 4 at 1600 on Wednesdays or 0030 on MondaysOr download the podcast here | FIND OUT MORE Hear Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed on Radio 4 at 1600 on Wednesdays or 0030 on MondaysOr download the podcast here |
| I was so fascinated by this upper set that some evenings I'd drag my friend Jim away from rowdy chip shop in College Rd and make him walk with me past the detached houses in Eshe Rd. | I was so fascinated by this upper set that some evenings I'd drag my friend Jim away from rowdy chip shop in College Rd and make him walk with me past the detached houses in Eshe Rd. |
| We would look up at bedroom windows and imagine what lay behind them - imagine beautiful, clean-smelling, well-spoken girls slipping into their silken nightwear. | We would look up at bedroom windows and imagine what lay behind them - imagine beautiful, clean-smelling, well-spoken girls slipping into their silken nightwear. |
| Of course, most people driving through Crosby, then and now, would find it difficult to make such fine distinctions between almost adjoining roads. | Of course, most people driving through Crosby, then and now, would find it difficult to make such fine distinctions between almost adjoining roads. |
| They'd miss many of the distinctions between College Rd and Endbutt Lane and Eshe Rd which meant so much to those of us who walked the areas most days of their life. | They'd miss many of the distinctions between College Rd and Endbutt Lane and Eshe Rd which meant so much to those of us who walked the areas most days of their life. |
| They wouldn't recognise, for example, that Regent Rd enjoyed higher status than the adjoining Princes Avenue because, if you peered closely at the head of the blackened stone gateposts you could just about make out the carved indentations of a house name. | They wouldn't recognise, for example, that Regent Rd enjoyed higher status than the adjoining Princes Avenue because, if you peered closely at the head of the blackened stone gateposts you could just about make out the carved indentations of a house name. |
| The truly rich | The truly rich |
| So our house wasn't merely a number it was also (and my mother used to finger the letters one at a time as she made the announcement to visitors) "Rosemount" just as the semi next door was really "Fernmount". | So our house wasn't merely a number it was also (and my mother used to finger the letters one at a time as she made the announcement to visitors) "Rosemount" just as the semi next door was really "Fernmount". |
| Sometimes my youthful obsession with residential segregation took me further afield. I'd take the electric train from Blundell Sands to Formby and walk down the road which led from the station to the beach so that I could admire the long row of huge detached houses. | Sometimes my youthful obsession with residential segregation took me further afield. I'd take the electric train from Blundell Sands to Formby and walk down the road which led from the station to the beach so that I could admire the long row of huge detached houses. |
| I knew from walks with Jim that the inhabitants of these colonnaded palaces were the truly rich. It was here that I might find Mr Hartley of Hartley's jam, or Mr Jacobs of Jacobs Cream Crackers or Mr Moores who ran Littlewoods Pools. | I knew from walks with Jim that the inhabitants of these colonnaded palaces were the truly rich. It was here that I might find Mr Hartley of Hartley's jam, or Mr Jacobs of Jacobs Cream Crackers or Mr Moores who ran Littlewoods Pools. |
| Some people need no excuse to go into snob mode | Some people need no excuse to go into snob mode |
| At the opposite end of the residential spectrum lay The Poets, an area off Stanley Road in Bootle which I visited occasionally so that I could collect Jim for Saturday afternoon football at Anfield. | At the opposite end of the residential spectrum lay The Poets, an area off Stanley Road in Bootle which I visited occasionally so that I could collect Jim for Saturday afternoon football at Anfield. |
| It was called The Poets for the very good reason that someone in the town hall had had the bright idea of trying to elevate the status of these mean back-to-back terraced streets by calling them Keats and Wordsworth and Shelley and Byron. | It was called The Poets for the very good reason that someone in the town hall had had the bright idea of trying to elevate the status of these mean back-to-back terraced streets by calling them Keats and Wordsworth and Shelley and Byron. |
| And it was presumably the same man who'd also labelled the cross streets with the names of flowers and shrubs - Iris and Daisy and Juniper. | And it was presumably the same man who'd also labelled the cross streets with the names of flowers and shrubs - Iris and Daisy and Juniper. |
| Not that the residents always appreciated their botanical labels. For years Jim believed that the Woodbine St which lay adjacent to his own house on Shelley St was a reference to the residents' preferred choice of cigarette. | Not that the residents always appreciated their botanical labels. For years Jim believed that the Woodbine St which lay adjacent to his own house on Shelley St was a reference to the residents' preferred choice of cigarette. |
| My youthful snobbery had a nasty corollary. Without thinking too much about it, I came to assume that people lived in certain areas not as a result of economic compulsion but because they were somehow constitutionally suited to those areas. | My youthful snobbery had a nasty corollary. Without thinking too much about it, I came to assume that people lived in certain areas not as a result of economic compulsion but because they were somehow constitutionally suited to those areas. |
| Residential segregation | Residential segregation |
| There was a natural, a proper affinity, between the character of Eshe Rd residents and Eshe Rd property, just as there was a perfect fit between the poverty of the residents of The Poets and their down-at-heel terraced homes. | There was a natural, a proper affinity, between the character of Eshe Rd residents and Eshe Rd property, just as there was a perfect fit between the poverty of the residents of The Poets and their down-at-heel terraced homes. |
| Now that I'm a grown-up sociologist I can no longer take such residential segregation for granted. | Now that I'm a grown-up sociologist I can no longer take such residential segregation for granted. |
| I need to know how much of it is a product of choice or compulsion, how much of the segregation is self-imposed. | I need to know how much of it is a product of choice or compulsion, how much of the segregation is self-imposed. |
| I need to know how such areas can come to be branded as "ghettoes", lacking even quite basic contact with the streets that lie around them. | I need to know how such areas can come to be branded as "ghettoes", lacking even quite basic contact with the streets that lie around them. |
| And even more specifically I need to know, in modern Britain, how much of this residential segregation is based upon ethnic identity. | And even more specifically I need to know, in modern Britain, how much of this residential segregation is based upon ethnic identity. |
| Are we really, as Trevor Phillips said, while head of the Commission for Racial Equality, "sleepwalking to segregation"? | Are we really, as Trevor Phillips said, while head of the Commission for Racial Equality, "sleepwalking to segregation"? |
| Below is a selection of your comments. | |
| Ah, Liverpool's "Flower-Name-Streets". I remember being, as a small child, fascinated by those names as we drove past returning to Cumberland after visiting my grandparents out on the Wirral. Then there were another bunch of streets named for Crimean War Battles - Alma, Sevastapol, and others. Now I live in a small town in Ontario, where we have streets named for capital cities - Rome, Amsterdam - and former prime ministers - St Laurent, Pearson, and Laurier. And the downtown walkways are royalty - Charles Walk, Anne Walk, all grouped around Elizabeth Square. It makes it easier to know where you are when you get lost.Liz Powell, Ontario, Canada | |
| I used to be an extreme snob; being brought up in a well to-do street in my area gave me the opportunity to look down on those less fortunate. However now I find myself in a council flat and have revised my opinion completely since my neighbours here are much nicer than any of the ones in that well-kept road.Lucy F, Kingston, Surrey | |
| There is also the equally curious reverse snobbery. As a Mancunian born and raised on the large council estate of Wythenshawe, it still gives me a perverse and guilty pleasure to watch the reaction of questioners when I respond "Yes, you're right, I am from the North. Manchester. Wythenshawe actually."Johny, Cambridge | |
| People naturally gravitate towards "like-minded" neighbourhoods. I live in a rural area; but some of my acquaintance hunger for the town. I cannot understand why until I visit the neighbourhoods they find so desirable and find that there are a lot of very similar people living there. Yes, I could be called a snob, but I think there will always be "class distinctions" as we are all very different.Mrs Melandra Smith, Manchester | |
| Having grown up in Formby and spent a lot of time in Southport, I am curiously aware of the snobbish attitude of locals that makes them recoil in horror if you suggest their home town is on Merseyside. In Southport in particular, you'll find that people insist they live in Lancashire (which, to be fair, they do if you ignore the arbitrary creation of Merseyside to include them). I always found it rather curious. What was it about Merseyside that they couldn't stand being associated with? As I've grown up, I think I understand.Michael, Formby, Merseyside | |
| In my father's small council house street in Blantyre, stood a sign saying "This is a social inclusion area". It was resurrected by the council. It was a perfectly normal street, with normal people, a few had bought their council houses, a few hadn't. My father had an active social life (with other residents of other streets where there was no signs stating the status of the street and it's residents) and was therefore far from socially excluded. Having spoken to the neighbours, none of them suffered chronic shyness. Why had the council felt the needed to declare this about his street? Who was socially excluding this street? Why, without the sign, would people assume the street and its residents were socially excluded? It shows that snobbery is often institutionalised, and not just a product of assumptions. Jacqueline, Aberdeen | |
| My grandmother used to own and run rowdy chip shop in College Rd, know as the College Supper Bar. Sadly she died long before I was born and my family emigrated to Cumbria. When I was at university I had the choice of saying I was from Barrow-in-Furness or from the "South Lakes" depending upon whom I was talking to, although strangely I reversed to usual usage; when taking to working class friends I was from the South Lakes and when with middle class friends I was from Barrow.Charles Bishop-Miller, Hereford | |
| It doesn't take genius or a sociology degree to understand that social climbing is one of the most fundamental human characteristics. Just watch a group of gorillas, chimps, or baboons: you'll soon see how the pecking order is established and enforced. Humans are just the same. Almost everyone (apart from a few misfits) secretly wants to be admired and deferred to. Good luck changing that.Tom Welsh, Basingstoke, UK | |
| What a load of over-elaborated twaddle. I chose to live where I do because on viewing the property it was exactly what I wanted for a home. The streets outside may not be quite what I want but once the drawbridge is up I still have the home I wanted. Tony Stephens, Ilford |