Lennon’s Strawberry Field opens to public

BEATLES fans will be able to follow in the footsteps of John Lennon as the grounds of the children’s home which inspired Strawberry Fields Forever are opened to the public.

From tomorrow, visitors will have the chance to walk through the gardens of the Strawberry Field home in Woolton, Liverpool, where Lennon (right) would play as a boy.

The musician used to climb over the wall to gain entry to the Beaconsfield Road home, which he later immortalised in song, but the Salvation Army is now opening the site’s famous red gates to the public as a tourist attraction and youth training centre.

Lennon’s sister Julia Baird (72), who is also honorary president of the Strawberry Field project, said the grounds of the home had been a “sanctuary” for the musician as a youngster.

She said: “I suppose as children we all have somewhere that’s a bit ours, a bit special. “It might be a little hidey-hole under the stairs or it might be up an oak tree but it’s somewhere we take ourselves off and that’s a special place.

“It seems from the song that this was John’s special place.”

The home was made famous by The Beatles song in 1967 and around 60,000 tourists pose for photos outside its distinctive gates every year.

Replica gates are now in place but the original structures will be on display in the grounds.

The newly-built centre will include a cafe and exhibition on Lennon’s early life, but will also provide training for 18 to 25-year-olds with mild to moderate learning disabilities.

Ms Baird said that, as well as giving the young people work placements, the Steps To Work programme will teach them life skills and social inclusion.

Asked what Lennon would have thought of the project, she said: “I think he would have loved it, because he himself was not mainstream and was very aware of it.”