Searching for my roots, I found a street full of characters.
Gary Nero, originally from Chester, moved to Vandyke Street, Toxteth five years ago after his home of 20 years, just a few streets down, was "sold from under" him. He said: "I drink with my next door neighbours down the pub - Chaplins is just there. During the lockdown period, we had to stand outside and have a drink out here because the pubs were shut, so we got to know everybody."
His house is a classic two-up, two-down built in brown bricks. Like many, it's been extended with a kitchen at the back since the Victorian era. The orange hallway, decorated with framed pictures on the walls and flower pots hanging from the ceiling, leads to a living room draped in tapestries.
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There's a pot bubbling on the stove in the next room, and the man in his 50s has acoustic and electric guitars in stands on the floor. They hark back to his 20s when he played in a punk band and wrote children's books. Asked what he does now, he said: "I don't know, I just make soup."
Roughly 140 years ago, Gary's house was home to my great-great-grandmother. I didn't know I had a connection to Liverpool when I moved here for university, not until my mum told me about her Scouse nan, born to a woman who arrived from Ireland.
We knew little about by great-great-gran, except she was born in County Kilkenny, lived in Toxteth, and married an older man. I was curious, so I stayed up into the early hours reading census documents, birth and marriage records and death notices.
In the 1881 Census, I found her - Catherine, born in Ireland, married to John Tindall, a Yorkshire iron turner 16 years her senior, and the first five of their kids, aged between one and six. They had another five, including my great nan - the youngest - over the next 16 years of living in Toxteth, a now-demolished street in Everton, and Goldie Street in Anfield.
Catherine arrived some time before 1871, when the census recorded her, then 16, and her 18-year-old sister Maria as lodgers in a house with eight inhabitants. I don't know what happened to their parents - records from the time were incomplete or lost to fire - but I know Catherine and Maria were born in Inistioge, a village with a current population of more than 200 people.
Less than two years after the Irish Potato Famine, it was largely owned by William Tighe, Lord Lieutenant of Kilkenny and inhabitant of the Woodstock Estate at the time. In the years before Catherine and Maria's birth, roughly a million people died and a million fled Ireland during the Great Hunger.
It was caused by years of failed potato crops, the eviction of families from the land of absentee landlords when they failed to pay rent, and the export of the country's grain supply. It left such death and economic destruction, it left many of Ireland's poorest with no food, no jobs and no homes - so they came to Liverpool.
Millions arrived by boat between the 1840s and the mid 20th century, moving elsewhere like America - which is what I believe Maria eventually did - or staying put like Catherine, giving Liverpool its proud Irish streak. By the 1871 census, roughly 15% of the city had been born in Ireland, many of them living in damp and overcrowded cellars prone to flooding.
A decade later, Vandyke Street was home to Catherine and her family, while Maria and her family lived across the road. There'd have been a sea of Irish accents thanks to a 60-year-old Chelsea Pensioner from Ireland and a chemist from Dublin in neighbouring houses, alongside people from Formby and Staffordshire.
The road is now a mix of home owners, housing association tenants and private rental properties. There are families, pensioners and friends, people from all over the world. Toxteth has received numerous waves of immigrants, not just from Ireland.
It's the historic home of Liverpool's Black community, the oldest in Europe. And it's been home to people who fled antisemitic violence and persecution in the Russian Empire to join Liverpool's Jewish community, once the largest outside London.
In recent years, Yemeni and Somali communities have grown among others. Lodge Lane, at the top of Vandyke Street, has become a byword for multicultural Liverpool, with a Kurdish butcher, Syrian sweet shop, and Manchester Superstore, an "extraordinary" supermarket selling "stuff that you can't get in other towns", according to Gary.
Among the most recent arrivals are Beza, 30, and her housemates, who moved to the street from Kensington two months ago. She said: "It's a busy area, but it's nice."
Kids play in the street where neighbours stand at the gate for a chat and "everybody will help you with little bits and bops". Gary told the ECHO: "The little kids down the street, during Ramadan they come and leave gifts and sweets and biscuits and sweets at the door. Everyone is lovely."
Vandyke Street is still home to Irish people like Michael Breen, who moved here from County Down in Northern Ireland 54 years ago. His house screams 'Irish', and not just with the sign on his front door offering 'céad míle fáilte' - the Irish for 'one hundred thousand welcomes'.
I've met a lot of Irish people - partly thanks to living there - but never have I met any so proud of their Irishness they paint their house bright green. Sometimes identity becomes more important when you step away from home, much like I hated Guinness before moving to England.
The street sounds quieter than when Michael first arrived. The 71-year-old, who's "going out to get drunk" this St Patrick's Day, said: "There was always something going on, always a bit of craic, you know, parties here and there. Everybody knew everybody else, but now I probably only know two people down this side of the street.
"Kids grew up and had kids of their own. They moved and the older ones passed away. You miss them, you think about them. I remember Fred and Bob, oh all the different ones."
Throughout decades of change, Vandyke Street has always been home to people from across the UK and the world abroad, to people fleeing war, famine and persecution, or seeking a better life for their family. There's a sense of solidarity captured by the green, white and orange, and the yellow and blue of the Irish and Ukrainian flags flying outside Michael's home.
He said: "I put the flag up, and I put the Ukraine flag beside it. I put that up the day the war started and I'll leave it there until it finishes."
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