Home > Lancashire > Liverpool > L20 > The Griffin The Griffin
Date of photo: 1982	Picture source: Maurice Rigby
The Griffin was situated on the corner of Derby Road and Bankhall Street. This pub was present by the 1860s.
My relative, Kathleen English, who is in her 80s and lives in Fethard-on-Sea, County Wexford, in the south east of Ireland lived in the Griffin Pub in the 1930s and 1940s where her family ran the business. The pub was ran by Mary Anne and William English. She is currently telling us about her time at the pub and recalled that during the Blitz in the 1940s how her father and mother used to tell her to quickly go upstairs to check whether the station lights were out. If they were, then they were rushed to the shelter. They would then urge all the customers to leave the pub for their own safety. The people of Liverpool were offered to be evacuated if they met at Stanley Road at the end of the week. The English family took up this offer and were picked up in a lorry lined with straw and were offered a home by a kind lady in Rainhill called Mrs Crompton. They did, however, occasionally return to the Griffin once as an incedary bombs hit Canada Docks. After bombs were dropped on Canada Dock the badly injured were brought up to the Griffin Pub where they were cared for and looked after. She says when the sirens rang people used to run up Bankhall Street to the Hudson Shelter. The pub was hugely popular with the sailors that returned from the convoys back to the Docks. The pub was hugely popular and busy. It had 5 bar staff, 3 of which were called up and not being able to find anyone to replace them, Mary Anne was trained up by her husband to work behind the bar. Kathleen was at school and was too young at the time.
James Odling (August 2016)
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Other Photos
	Picture source: Roger Fitton