Bill Peters mentions the attraction of Garston market for people from the only recently completed housing estate in Speke.

Garston was a long-established independent community that had only that century been incorporated into the city of Liverpool. It had an incomparably greater number and variety of shops than could be found at Speke, Woolton and Hunts Cross combined.

Garston boasted two cinemas, a great many social clubs and regular dances at the Co-op in Wellington Road and Garston Baths. It was at the Baths on Saturday nights that a young George Melly could be heard fronting the Merseysippi Jazz Band.

The Garston and Woolton Weekly News had recently changed its title to the South Liverpool Weekly News, but its offices were still in Garston. An early supermarket opened opposite the tram depot. It was also a major transport hub for trains, trams and buses and the airport was only a ten minute walk away. There was industry there, both heavy and light, and its own extensive system of docks on the Mersey.

Now, as the picture shows, the baths, the washhouse, the tram sheds and even the public toilets have all been demolished. One cinema has gone and the other hosts only bingo. The labour exchange is still there in its new guise as a JobCentre. But the heart has gone out of Garston.

Even the traffic isn't what it was, the village now being by-passed by Garston Way. It's no longer a community with its own personality. Safeways has come to town, but at a physical and economic cost to the old shops in St Mary's Road.