An "amazing" street where "everyone waves at you" has been left to "go to wrack and ruin".
Ducks and geese used to waddle with their chicks outside the "beautiful buildings" of Hartley's Village, a square of houses in the middle of an industrial estate in Aintree. Built by William Pickles Hartley for workers at his jam factory in 1886, the largest of the 49 houses went to the most senior employees, regardless of family size.
Now wooden planks and metal grates cover the Grade II listed factory's windows. Weeds grow through the red brickwork of the building, which has sat dark and silent since it closed in the mid-1960s. A recreation lake behind the houses is now fenced off, and the square amid the houses, once used for tennis and bowling, is now tarmacked. The houses are still inhabited, but people living here feel their community has been neglected, despite moments of hope in the past decade.
