The houses on the street are over 170 years old
Danny Gutmann
12:10, 12 Apr 2026
The street is hidden away in Wavertree (Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
Just a few yards away from Wavertree High Street lies one of Liverpool’s most picturesque rows of houses, which one resident has fallen in love with after moving from Italy.
Dating back over 170 years, Orford Street was built by Wavertree High Street resident Dr James Kenyon between 1848-1852 and was named after his wife, Ann Orford, who was the daughter of William Orford of Everton, a wealthy merchant. The street’s original residents consisted of joiners, plasterers, upholsterers, a gardener, a school master and a banker’s accountant.
While the street is almost unchanged since it was built all those years ago, many residents have come and gone since then. One of the newest residents on the street is GP Elena Dinoi who moved over a thousand miles when she swapped Puglia, Italy for Liverpool.
She told the ECHO: “I’ve been living in Liverpool for 15 years and I was living in Toxteth before [moving to Orford Street]. When I started looking for a house to buy, I was first looking in the Aigburth, Toxteth areas, and then I work as a GP close to here, so I came across this kind of enclosed area and I just fell in love with it.”
Elena Dinoi is one of the newest residents on Orford Street(Image: Liverpool ECHO/Danny Gutmann)
Despite the obvious differences between Puglia and her Liverpool street, the 49-year-old said that the view from her window always reminds her of home.
She said: “Italy’s full of churches, there’s a church at every corner, so having one just across the street [St Mary’s Church] that I can see from the window, that’s pretty Italian.”
Despite being hundreds of miles from where she grew up, Orford Street now feels like home, thanks to her neighbours. She said: “My neighbour, the one that lives across the street from mine, he’s a painter, he painted my house for me when I moved. And there are another couple, a GP and another doctor, like me. It’s just a lovely community.”
The Victorian homes on Orford Street were built in the mid-1800s(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
Just across the road from Elena is Rebecca Carvell, 38, who lives on the street with her husband and two children.
Much like Elena, Rebecca said that one of the main things that strikes her about the street is the bond that she has built with her neighbours. She said: “It’s just lovely every time you come outside. When I’ve been doing the front garden, I never actually get to finish anything because someone’s always going to stop and chat for 20 minutes.”
Looking back to when she first moved to the street in 2019, they originally lived just a few streets away on Frederick Grove before jumping at the chance to move to Orford Street.
The street has hardly changed down the years (Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
She said: “We thought ‘right, if a house comes up we’re going to try and go for it’, but we had to move quickly, these houses go so so fast. And we’ve even spoken to people who’ve said, ‘can you let me know if you know of anyone who’s thinking of moving? And here’s my number,’ just so they can get a little bit ahead of other people. It’s really sought after.”
While the street boasts a number of original grade II listed properties, Rebecca said that most people who come to visit had no idea that it existed. She said: “There’s some people who maybe know the Edinburgh pub [at the top of the street], so that’s a real attraction for people. But, when people have visited like my daughter’s friends and mums picking children up, they’re really surprised and they say, ‘oh I didn’t I didn’t expect it to be like this’.