From Shippon Building to Changing Rooms

The Holt family built the shippon building around 1883 to house cattle, horses and pigs. When the Estate was gifted to Liverpool City Council in 1944, the land and buildings had ceased to be used for keeping livestock, and by the 1970s the building was in a state of disrepair.

Having found the old photograph above of the building from the 1970s, the Growing Sudley team started a campaign to find the mystery ‘Ray B’ and ‘Brod’, who had decorated the building with their names, the date and their love of Liverpool Football Club.

A missing persons campaign was launched to search for scallywag Ray B and his friend. A range of posters were produced, a take on wanted posters, missing person’s posters and adverts from the personal column in the 1980s film ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’.

The posters were put up in prominent public places across the community and the Growing Sudley team patiently waited and hoped to hear from anyone who knew the whereabouts of Ray B. In Feb 2024 an email appeared from Ray B himself!

Alive and well, Ray B now lives in the Midlands. He contacted us after his sister had seen the posters and sent a photograph to him. Ray happily shared his memories of hanging out at ‘the Piggies’ and the ‘Apes’ (named after local APH Football Club) when he was 14, where his dad used to go every Sunday to support Grassendale Football Club. Ray attended Sudley Infants and Junior School and would play on the Sudley estate in his spare time.

Regarding the graffiti Ray told us “When my dad saw it, I can assure you, justice was severely dispensed. I would like to add I am now a responsible member of my community, and would never condone this type of behaviour (in my defence I was only 14). Yours guiltily, Ray B, graffiti artiste, retired”. Ray has many fond memories of his time at Sudley, “we spent a lot of time up the apes and played in the piggies and made swings from a massive tree just down the field from them, daring each other to go up higher and higher before launching ourselves at a tyre tied to a bit of rope hanging from a tree”.

We still have not located Ray’s partner in crime, Brod, so if you’re reading this please get in touch!

Following the destruction of the original wooden changing pavilion, under the ownership of the Council the building was converted into changing rooms in the 1970s for the use of sports teams playing on Sudley and Holt fields.

The original building was rebuilt and in-filled over the years as its use changed. One sandstone stall divider remains, that separated feeding stalls for animals and has been conserved within the refurbishment of the building. Much of the original brickwork remains, and has been left as it was found with the layers of paint and graffiti that had built up between the Holts’ time and the present day. Inside the building, the original walls can still be identified by the brickwork pattern which alternates stretchers with headers at regular intervals. There are also a few remains of hooks and fittings that would have been part of the original animal husbandry use. 

Find out more about Growing Sudley’s refurbishment of the old changing rooms.

The History Detectives uncovered plenty of references to the building’s past as a sports facility. These references have been conserved, not least in the name The Changing Rooms. Indents on the walls from studs, where people have dislodged mud from football boots, tiles left over from the standard issue shower rooms, and an ancient cricket score board and numbers all recall the building’s previous history. Even the signs around the estate were made using the benches where players would hang their bags.