Mendips — John Lennon's Home with Aunt Mimi

Mendips at 251 Menlove Avenue in Woolton, Liverpool, is the semi-detached house where John Lennon grew up under the care of his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George from the age of five until he left for Hamburg in 1960. Mimi Smith — his mother Julia's older sister — was a firm, unsentimental woman who provided Lennon with stability and structure while being unsympathetic to his musical ambitions. It was Mimi who is credited with telling Lennon that 'the guitar's all very well, John, but you'll never make a living out of it' — a quote Lennon delighted in repeating after the Beatles became famous. The house provided the domestic backdrop to his entire formative life.

Lennon's bedroom at Mendips was where he practised guitar, where he wrote his earliest material, and where Paul McCartney and George Harrison would come to rehearse in the front porch. The Quarrymen — Lennon's skiffle group, which evolved into the Beatles — practised in the bathroom and the front room. Uncle George, who had encouraged Lennon's music, died suddenly in 1955 when Lennon was fourteen; Lennon's mother Julia, who had taught him to play banjo and remained a more indulgent presence, was killed by a car in 1958 when he was seventeen. Both deaths shaped the emotional landscape of his later songwriting.

Mendips is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public on guided tours, booked through the Beatles Story attraction at the Albert Dock. The interior has been meticulously restored to its late 1950s appearance, with original furnishings and objects. Touring it alongside 20 Forthlin Road — Paul McCartney's National Trust home in Allerton — is one of the most intimate and historically resonant experiences available to Beatles pilgrims in Liverpool.