Homes and Pies
On March 10th 2017, Homebaked Co-operative Bakery won five awards at the British Pie Awards, including a Gold for its Scouse Pie. Not bad for a bakery that launched less than five years ago and almost didn’t launch at all.
The building where the bakery and café now sits, had been a local institution since it opened in 1903, and later became famous with fans visiting Anfield who called it, ‘the Pie Shop’. It had closed as a local residents, and local customers, were forced out of the area during the Housing Market Renewal Initiative (HMRI). Like much of the area, the building had been designated to be demolished along with 1,800 other homes and shops. It was the biggest loss of housing and commercial properties in the country as a result of HMRI.
HMRI was a New Labour Initiative, which was launched by then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in 2002 as a way to clear swatches of what the market considered low value housing, and replace it with new houses which would in turn increase the appeal of areas and the values of houses. Anfield and Everton were the two areas where HMRI would wreck it’s wrecking ball in the city. HMRI, along with a series of failed master plans for the area and a football unsure of whether they will move ground or not, had a devastating effect on the areas. Many houses – large terraces and family homes – ended up ‘tinned-up’. One-by-one on historic streets, sending the area into a slow decline. The threat of CPO’s forced families, some of whom had owned their homes for generations to remortgage and take out new loans to buy new homes elsewhere – away from the place they call home. The area lost many of its people, and with it, large parts of its identity…..
Read the full article at https://ethos-magazine.com/2017/05/home-and-pies/
