Liverpool: Mathew Street.

Apologies for the swearing on these pages of late. Fuc*ing disgraceful. Moving on...to Mathew Street, probably the place most closely associated with them as a group (as opposed to them as individuals), and as such, largely demolished by Liverpool Council in the mid-70s. It's now uber-Beatled, of course, with a ludicrous number of references crammed into and onto what was once a smelly little street of fruit warehouses. Again, these grainy black and white images of them standing just outside the entrance to the Cavern at some point in 1961 are very evocative. The Cavern side long gone, and re-built, but the other side still there. You can pinpoint the exact location by comparing above and below:


Speaking of which, the most interesting thing about this end of Mathew Street these days isn't the re-built Cavern. Impressive though it is, the fact it had to be constructed facing the wrong way and deeper than the original (due to the weight of the new buildings above) rather spoils things for anoraks like me.
What's of greater interest is the fire exit - which, as happenstance would have it, is on the exact spot of the original entrance. Rather cleverly, they've put a life-size photo of the old entrance in situ:


The precise location was discovered by doing a "then and now" using this photo of someone or other hanging around in the old Cavern's doorway:


All well and groovy. Of interest up the other end is a couple of pubs, about which more to follow.