Today, it’s hard for many of us to imagine what the area would look like without the shopping and entertainment complex
13:06, 27 Apr 2025Updated 13:07, 27 Apr 2025
(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
Before Liverpool ONE there was once a green oasis that people used to soak up the sun. The city’s shopping destination transformed the area when it was built in 2008.
However, before all the stores there was Coronation Gardens, a green space where people would go to relax. It opened in 1953 to the public and was situated between Paradise Street and South John Street.
The creation of the gardens marked the city’s redevelopment after WWII. Liverpool was the most heavily bombed city outside of London during the Blitz.
The gardens were were built on a former Blitz site to cover the damage caused by the bombings and were only ever supposed to be temporary. It’s understood the gardens lasted for around 20 years.
Summer 1957, and Coronation Gardens – off Lord Street – is packed with office workers and shoppers enjoying lunch and watching a performance by the band of the 1st Battalion of the King’s Regiment(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
Coronation Gardens was named after the Queen’s coronation which was held on June 2, 1953, at Westminster Abbey. An article published in the Liverpool Daily Post at the time said the gardens were opened by the then leader of Liverpool City Council, Alderman Sir Alfred Shennan.
Photos from the ECHO’s archive show hundreds of workers sitting on the grass in the gardens on their lunch break during the summer of 1957. Other images from the 60s show people gathered in the gardens to listen to the Liverpool City Police Band.
Liverpool office workers enjoying lunch in Coronation Gardens on a summer’s afternoon in 1969 – do you recognise anyone?(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
Coronation Gardens vanished when the area was redeveloped and decades later it was redeveloped once again as part of the Paradise Project.
Paradise Street, North and South John Street and sections of Church Street were all transformed by the “Paradise project”, with Liverpool ONE first opening its doors to the public in May 2008.
Today, it’s hard for many of us to imagine what the area would look like without the shopping and entertainment complex.
Coronation Gardens, Liverpool. Circa 1965.(Image: Mirrorpix)
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