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Picture source: Geoff Smith

The Coach & Horses was situated at 36 Leeds Street. This pub was demolished to make way for the new Leeds Street dual carriageway.

Source: Ian Chapman

My father, Frank Smith, was the landlord at the Coach and Horses from about 1936 until his death early in January 1952. My family, with parents and four boys and one girl, lived above the pub until a year after Frank's death when we moved to Birkenhead. I was the only one who lived in the pub from birth. After the war the pub was the home to the very successful Exchange Station Darts team, and their many trophies adorned the shelves behind the bar. Other regulars were the drivers from the WHSmith van depot opposite on Leeds Street, and workers from Costigans grocery warehouse on the opposite corner of Highfield Street, and from the tenements further up Highfield Street. The occasional rat or mouse got into the house and I remember that Frank, my Dad, dealt with them very efficiently with the head of a poker!

Frank Smith (June 2021)

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Name	Dates	Comments
John Quinn	late 1950s	I lived there as a young child, my Dad Tommy Quinn was the landlord.

Other Photos

Picture source: Geoff Smith

A Window on Leeds Street (1960s) by Ivy Smith, wife of publican Frank Smith

There isn't much to Leeds Street. A drab thoroughfare leading to the city centre from the Liverpool docks, but it was my home close on eighteen years. 30 years ago, the only residents were a family who lived in a large house near the Vauxhall Road end; the tenants of a couple of smaller houses half-way down, and opposite them a few tumbledown dwellings which housed (if one could use the term, for they were almost roofless), two or three old people. The family of mine host of the Coach and Horsescompleted the tale. City life was completely new to me when I took my family to live there, and for a longer time a peculiar trapped hemmed-in feeling persisted. I would sit watching the waving smoke-shadows from the railway opposite reflected in a small triangle of sunshine on the wallpaper, and in my imagination they became the swaying branches of the trees I was used to. Yet it seems now that I only really lived during those years, so much of the city's life-blood flowed along the sets of Leeds Street and my window looked out on to it all. They were happy, eventful years, and I can sympathise with city-dwellers who, in gaining what the planners call the amenities of a better environment in far-flung "new" towns, have lost the closeness, the neighbourliness, and yes the variety which is the spice of city life. Almost my first memory is of the grotesque monsters of elevators -- peculiar electrically driven contraptions which raised the huge tobacco drums in the bonded stores opposite. They lurched from side to side from one bay to another like ungainly prehistoric creatures, each with an eye gleaming in the middle of its "forehead", trailing cable-tails behind them. (Three years later an isolated raid early in Hitler's war reduced the stores to one bay, and sliced the front completely from one of the adjoining houses. The family, including a couple who had been married only that day, emerged from the back of the house blackened and shocked, but otherwise unharmed.) One seldom or never sees a horse in Leeds Street now, but at that time much of the transport from and to the docks was horse-drawn. A common sight, and a heart-stopping one, was that of a loaded wagon drawn by a pair of sturdy cart-horses as they raced down the slope under the railway bridge and across Pall Mall in order to gain sufficient impetus to negotiate the gradient on the other side - the carter running pell-mell beside it urging on his team. How often I speculated whether it would reach the top! Sometimes it didn't, and the grand beasts would slow to perspiring stop, struggling to keep their feet on the slippery cobbles, to await the good offices of a returning "empty" and the transfer of a horse to help the straining team until the summit of the hill was reached. Or perhaps a steam-wagon from a local mill would act as the Good Samaritan, backing up behind the loaded cart, taking the weight, pushing gently until the gradient was conquered. Sometimes I saw those great shire-horses collapse under the strain, and dying, they were carted away to the knacker's yard. Much as one regrets the passing of the horse-transport and those grand men who cared for them, one cannot but be thankful that the Leeds Street gradient no longer breaks the heart of man and beast as it did then. Leeds Street was a children's paradise! How they loved the straight run down the hill, hanging on to the backs of the wagons and racing up for another ride. And if there was little of the greenness of the countryside within miles, at least there was quietness in the street when traffic ceased for the day, and at weekends. There was laughter, too, in Leeds Street. As on the day a cattle-truck carrying live pigs shed its load. The squealing animals scattered hither and thither, scaring the life out of a trio of shawl-clad ladies, who, frantically crossing themselves and with many a "Holy Mary, Mother of God", scattered too. After many vain grabbings at slippery hides and practically nonexistent tails, the frightened porkers were chased into the yard of the Coach and Horses and rounded up. The "Courts" at the back of the local waterworks were demolished many years ago, but at that time "Maidens Green" (innocent least of any greenery) still housed families in the two up, two down bathless dwellings with the communal lavatories; and despite the difficulties and problems of such an existence at least one sturdy couple reared a family of 17 children in one of them and lived to see them prosper. ............... From early dawn until the evening the Leeds Street sound continued. Wagon wheel, clattering hoofs, screeching brakes and clanking chains; the raucous "Whoa there", and "Giddap" of the men to their horses, and the continuous clanging of a steam hammer contributed to the din, and above these the more melodious sound of church bells. An old man reverently doffed his in acknowledgement of the call to Mass of the bells of St Mary's in Highfield Street, as he passed the bottom of the street. The louder and more insistent tones of appeal from Our Lady and St Nicholas rang out over the river calling to a sailor and landsmen alike. Then came the war, and the bells were silenced, waiting for the call to sound warning of an invasion which never came. The usual quiet night in Leeds Street was filled with the unceasing hum of rolling vehicles carrying guns, planes, boats, and all the other paraphernalia of war to the docks. The six years the grim traffic never ceased along blacked-out Leeds Street, and as there was a heavier drone from the adjoining waterworks as they turned over their machinery to the manufacture of "war essentials". When the blitz came, a shattered railway, bomb-ruined, tobacco-festooned walls, and a great gaping hole in the street testified to the accuracy or inaccuracy of Hitler's bomb-aimers, as did the homeless families and later, a procession of hearses when the Luftwaffe claim a whole street of victims nearby. My window on Leeds Street was reduced to a small square of glass substitute, but although I could no longer see it, the dock traffic still trundled past, and the workers, stumbling over the rubble, still kept the wheels turning while their families streamed out each night to the suburbs, many to sleep out under the stars, anywhere from the nightly onslaught from bombs and mines -- even machine guns. (Leeds Street still bears the marks of one such low-flying sortie.) There were flashes of humour even then. The huge plate-glass windows of the Coach and Horses were shattered, and the manager, cleaning up the debris after the particularly vicious all- night raid, was greeted by his regulars on their way to work: "You're open early, boss!" "Couldn't sleep, lads", was the laconic reply. Leeds Street is quiet again now -- on occasion it has been too quiet when the usual stream of the city's traffic is halted, as the war could never halt it, not by the enemy without, but by the enemy within.