Turn the corner onto one Liverpool street and "it's like a bubble with lots of houses for sale".
Set back from Wavertree High Street is a road of 36 Victorian houses with The Edinburgh pub at the end. Mostly built between 1848 and 1852, Orford Street was home to gardeners, blacksmiths and coachmen employed by the wealthy inhabitants of nearby mansions like Olive Mount on Mill Lane.
One that was once occupied by an engine maker is now home to Lydia Rimmer, a history teacher who moved here from Warrington in January 2020. She told the ECHO: "We just love it here. We love the character, we love the area, there's just so much charm. I'm a history teacher as well, so I love the history of the street. I love that I get to be part of it, I just wish they didn't cost so much money to do up."
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Despite their similar styles, the houses vary in height and layout, having been built separately. But each has high ceilings and steps leading up to the doors. Their design is somewhat unique compared with surroundings streets of terraced houses, with one resident, 61-year-old postal worker Frank Sanders saying: "There aren't many streets like this, I think there's only this and Egerton Street. "
Maintaining the Victorian buildings carries a hefty price, leaving Lydia to face a £10k bill to fix her roof and escape the "indoor rain". Her neighbour Donal, who moved here with his partner six years ago, said: "170 years is a lot to maintain."
The 41-year-old has apple and pear trees in the front garden which bear fruit he uses to make sauce and crumble, or to share with his neighbours on the street where nearly everyone's favourite memory is a street party they held for Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in June. Postal worker Frank Sanders, 61, said: "I'm no royalist, but it was good, everyone got together."
Michael, a shopfitter who moved back to Liverpool from Bournemouth five years ago, said Orford Street is "friendlier by a mile". Standing on his front step chatting to neighbours, the 59-year-old told the ECHO: "Everyone's so friendly, it's unbelievable. I lived down there for 34 years and I didn't even know my neighbours. Here, I know every neighbour."
With 'sold' and 'for sale' signs erected outside houses along Orford Street, the road is full of relative newcomers, or "blow ins" as Donal described himself. He said: "You turn the corner and it's like a bubble with lots of houses for sale"
Sophie Todd, 34, has only lived here with her husband and young child for a year after waiting for one of the "cosy" houses to become available. Sophie says she's known she wanted the first home she owned to be on Orford Street since visiting relatives here. The mum-of-one said: "I've moved back from London to something like this, which you'd probably dream of living in in London and you can't, so for me, this is brilliant."
The popularity of the street with doctors and architects, along with rising house prices nationally, has driven up the price of properties on Orford Street. Prices have risen so much in recent years some say they wouldn't be able to afford their homes if they were on the market now.
Michael said: "They've gone up massively, they're selling in two seconds. Five of them went up after covid and sold straight away."
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