A once "very quiet" street is now home to an 'eclectic' mix of residents.
Brown leaves are piled up on the pavement of Arundel Avenue, a street of Victorian redbrick terraced houses just a five minute walk from Sefton Park. Running along the southern edge of Toxteth Park Cemetery, it's a convenient route for drivers cutting between Smithdown and Hartington Road.
Susan, 76, remembers it being a quiet street when she and her family moved here from Gateacre 38 years ago. She told the ECHO: "It was very quiet. It used to be lovely actually, on New Year's Eve you could hear all the ships. You don't hear any of that now for some reason."
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She's concerned about how often the council cleans the street, and about a spate of cat disappearances. She was one of several residents to show the ECHO an A4 page with the picture of a cat under bold, red capital letters saying 'MISSING', the latest such flyer to do the rounds.
But a rise of cars is Susan's main worry. She said: "The cars cut through all the time. It became a rat run years ago, probably about 1990. Then they built those flats and they said it wouldn't affect anything, and it did. Then they built Asda and they said it wouldn't affect anything, and it did, because more cars came all the time the minute they opened Asda."
She added: "It's just gone down the grid. It used to be a lovely little road, and gradually it's all been taken over by student landlords. They don't care about it basically. The sense of community is gone. It's such a shame because it was such a lovely neighbourhood."
Built on the land of the Earls of Sefton in the late 1800s, you can tell the age of these houses from their high ceilings, bay windows and the odd roof falling in. Once home to Irish migrants and Jewish people worshipping at the now-decaying Greenbank Synagogue nearby, Arundel Avenue has retained what one resident described as an "eclectic" mix of residents.
This includes one man who said he's acquired the bedroom door of Emad Al Swealmeen, who built a bomb in a house on Rutland Avenue just off Arundel, before detonating it outside Liverpool Women's Hospital in November last year. He intends to use the period door in his home renovation.
Further down the street are Angela McConnell, 70, and her husband Brian Goodall, 68, who bought a house in 1998 after pulling up outside with no appointment. That was the only house they viewed, and although the front needed to be replaced - as Angela put it, "It wasn't in particularly good decorative order" - they fell in love.
Angela, who teaches maths, said: "I knew the area from being a student and I knew it was a nice area. I hate shopping, so the first house we saw, I thought, 'We'll have it'. It needed a bit of work doing on it, but it's a brilliant area to live in. The buses are fantastic, buses on Smithdown Road, buses on Ullet Road, the park on your doorstep."
She added: "You've got so many eating and drinking places on Smithdown Road. You've got Lark Lane in walking distance, and Lark Lane is fantastic. Or you can hop on the bus, we were in town today to meet some friends."
They bought the house for £62,250 from a man who'd paid £11,000 for it the previous year. Now they couldn't afford to buy a house on this street, particularly since prices soared after Liverpool became Capital of Culture in 2008. Houses sold in the 1990s are now worth around £300,000 or higher, at least five times more than the likes of Angela and Brian paid.
Part of the draw is the lucrative business of renting rooms to students, who might pay upwards of £400 each in a house of four to six tenants. Angela and Brian have a good relationship with their neighbours, who look after their cats while they're on holiday.
But like Susan, who has warm words for the students next to her, Angela and Brian feel too many houses on Arundel Avenue have been converted into student accommodation, particularly at the end near Smithdown Road. Their arrival has made the street's population a seemingly even balance of students and homeowning families.
Francis Fisher, 65, grew up here. He said: "It's okay at the moment, it's not too bad. Weekends are noisy with the students. They walk home at four o'clock in the morning, singing with cans in their hands. Then when they go home, it's quieter, you know, over Christmas."
Many of the students living here study medicine, including Pirasuja Prabaharan. She and her fellow final year medics are living in luxury compared with the home she had last year that had a broken shower, insect-infested floors and mould. The 23-year-old said: "This house is probably the best house I've lived in. We're all en-suites here now, that was our priority. I lived with five guys, so last year was disgusting with one bathroom."
Final year psychology student Georgia Gillman, now in her second year on Arundel Avenue, has enjoyed living on the street, but she said "it's dodgy sometimes". She told the ECHO: "One of my housemates, she was walking home from a night out and she got beat up, so it can be dodgy, but it's alright. It's alright for students because there are the shops and the bars and everything, but it's obviously one of those parts of Liverpool that's not the best."
The 20-year-old added: "I don't walk around at night on my own. There are some lads living here, so I'll normally force them to come out with me. It can be scary."
It's never been a street where kids play out with a ball, according to residents who spoke to the ECHO, but the growing stream of traffic and rise in car ownership have turned parking after work into a treasure hunt and makes it hard to cross the road.
Susan said: "You have to live with it, but I get a bit annoyed sometimes because I can't get across the road. I'm stood there waiting for four or five cars to pass before I can get across, and then something will come the other way and I think, 'Oh my God'."
Not everyone feels put out by the noise, and one person even bagged two full pizzas left on the wall outside their house. Medical student Andy, 22, said: "It's always busy without being too busy. There's always life about, but you can still go to sleep. You don't feel like you're living in the middle of a crazy place."
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