Community
Speke is known for Speke Hall, a Tudor wood-framed house now owned by the National Trust and open to the public. It is also notable as the location of Liverpool John Lennon Airport, known until 2001 as Liverpool Speke Airport. From the mid-1990s the re-development of the original airport site, enabled by the construction of the new airport complex and runway, had left land available for the construction of a business park. The completion of the A5001 road consolidated the rise of the airport and improved communications in the area. The Speke Liverpool local history website shows a lot of the developments that changed Speke the village into Speke the estate with photographs and documents from 1870s onwards.
The New Mersey Shopping Park was re-developed in 1999 from an older retail site. It houses many large retail and textile outlets as well as mainstream restaurants. The New Mersey Retail Estate is situated between Speke and Garston, directly opposite to the Old Liverpool Airport main terminal building, which is now a hotel complex.
The area also features the Mersey Wave, officially opened on December 15, 2003, a 200 ft-long (61 m) and 100 ft (30 m) high illuminated sculpture comprising two sets of six aluminium fins. The sculpture, designed by Peter Fink, was removed for repairs within weeks of opening, a problem causing its fins to move dangerously in high winds having been discovered. It was rebuilt in June 2005 and the structure, 30 ft (9.1 m) taller than the Angel of the North at Gateshead, is visible from as far as Winter Hill, Horwich, Greater Manchester.
In 2011, planning was submitted and subsequently granted for Estuary Banks, a £6 million business park scheme developed by Capital & Centric Plc and Barnfield Construction. Constructed started on 80,000 sq ft (7,400 m2) of speculative construction in November 2011. The latest phase (120,000 sq ft) has been completed with 80,000 recently sold to Business First in June 2012.
Recent developments in Speke have seen a multi-million-pound Morrisons superstore, situated directly next to the A561 Speke Boulevard (locally known as 'The Ford Road'), which is located only metres away from the Mersey Wave. Planning was granted in May 2012 for Speke Business Park on Goodlass Road. It comprises 45,000 sq ft (4,200 m2) of business units and was developed by Manchester-based developer Capital & Centric Plc.
Football Club:Speke South Liverpool, a local amateur football side, was originally founded at the Austin Rawlinson Sports Centre, Speke. However, late 2005 saw the club relocate a short distance away to Mossley Hill. The leading amateur football club in the area now is St Christophers FC, who are located at Little Heath.
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Famous quotes containing the word community:
“Jesus, Buddha, Mahommed, great as each may be, their highest comfort given to the sorrowful is a cordial introduction into another’s woe. Sorrow’s the great community in which all men born of woman are members at one time or another.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“The heroes of the world community are not those who withdraw when difficulties ensue, not those who can envision neither the prospect of success nor the consequence of failure—but those who stand the heat of battle, the fight for world peace through the United Nations.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.”
—Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)