06/05/2026
What is The Liverpool Nobody Knows Tour?
They are historical walking tours in and around the city of Liverpool - but with a difference.
Taking place in parts of the city usually overlooked by tourists and visitors and even local people - they unearth the real history of Liverpool.
All over the city there are buildings and places we pass every single day without paying them much attention. But often they have fascinating and complex histories and sometimes have stories of great poignancy attached to them.
A busy commercial premises, 348-372 Stanley Road in Kirkdale, Liverpool. If you take a closer look you can see the main building was once York Hall. Countless such buildings were once found in Liverpool - used by the local community for events and entertainment.
York Hall appears in local directories in 1900 and 1911 but by 1938 it was in mixed use, both a plumbers and a printers later used the premises. Indeed, most local people I have spoken to remember the building as a printers.
Argos Hall at 360 Stanley Road run by the Rocklight Spiritual Fellowship and listed in the 1938 directory has long since disappeared.
Ellis Humphrey Evans was born in the Welsh village of Trawsfyndd on the 13th January 1887.
Receiving only a basic education he left school aged 14 to work as a shepherd on the family farm. But he showed great talent in poetry - writing his first poem aged just eleven.
His work gained increasing recognition and a wide audience. In 1910, fellow poets bestowed the title ‘Hedd Wyn’ on him - Hedd being Welsh for peace, Wyn - which can mean white or pure.
When the Great War broke out in 1914, Ellis Evans, as a Christian pacifist, wanted no part in it. His poem, Rhyfel or War, at the time reads in part -
‘Why must I live in this grim age.
when to a far horizon, God has ebbed away
and man, with rage,
now wields the sceptre and the rod?’
Farming was a reserved occupation but by 1916 the Evans family were required to send one of their sons off to join the armed forces. Ellis Evans went solely to prevent his younger brother from having to go.
In February 1917, Ellis Evans was sent to the Litherland camp in Liverpool for training.
In the BBC documentary, Hedd Wyn, The Lost War Poet, some filming takes place outside the old York Hall on Stanley Road. The narrator tells the viewer how Ellis Evans and his fellow soldiers would visit the hall on their free evenings. It was used by the local Welsh community who put on concerts for the soldiers.
Ellis Evans was asked by his comrades to stand up and thank the community for their support.
In March 1917, he was required to return to the family farm to work for seven weeks. He left and would never return home again.
In June 1917, Ellis Evans was sent to France. He wrote ‘heavy weather, heavy soul, heavy heart. That is an uncomfortable trinity isn’t it?’
He was killed within a few hours of the start of the Third Battle of Ypres on the 31st July 1917.
He now rests in the Artillery cemetery in Boezinge in Belgium.
On a clear day, the hills and mountains of north Wales are perfectly visible in that part of Liverpool.
