Alex Baker leans on his walking stick and shuffles slowly down the garden path. Pointing to the greenhouse in the corner, he recalls: ‘That’s where the old air-raid shelter used to be.’
He clearly remembers him and his brothers digging the hole for the shelter back in 1939, giving the family a safe haven whenever German wartime bombers threatened.
Searching through old family photographs, he comes up with a snap showing the Baker lads in the back garden at the time. But that’s a mere 68 years ago. Alex’s memories of the house go back a lot farther than that – because he has lived in the same property in North End for every one of his 96 years.
The liner Titanic had yet to make her fateful maiden voyage and the First World War was three years away when Alex was born in the two-up, two-down house in Basin Street.
Remarkably, Alex is still living there today with wife Edith. After 68 years in the house, she is a comparative newcomer.