When Paul Melia set about converting the former Linacre pub in Bootle into a new community centre, he couldn’t believe how bright the lights were inside the dilapidated building.
Two weeks into the project early this year an electrician found The Linacre hooked up to an external power source in the street, a legacy of the £4m cannabis farm that was uncovered in the basement of the abandoned pub in 2019. “The electrician nearly had a heart attack,” Paul says, thinking back to the moment the building was immediately “de-energised” and made safe.
It was a moment that also left Paul and a team of volunteers literally in the dark through the depths of winter. Filled with abandoned furniture, rubble and even missing an entire external wall, the task of bringing a new community centre to heart of one of the most deprived wards in the UK, aided only by a diesel generator, revealed its enormity. No light was seemingly at the end of the tunnel.
