FAMOUS NAMES ASSOCIATED WITH ST MICHAEL’S

Jeremiah Horrocks

Jeremiah Horrocks (1618 – 3 January 1641) was an eminent English astronomer. He was the first person to demonstrate that the moon moved around the earth in an elliptical orbit; and he was the only person to predict the transit of Venus of 1639, an event which he and his friend William Crabtree were the only two people to observe and record.

Jeremiah Horrocks was born at Lower Lodge Farm in Toxteth Park. In the church is a marble tablet dedicated to the memory of ‘Jeremiah Horrox’.

Arthur Askey

Arthur Bowden Askey, CBE (6 June 1900 – 16 November 1982) was an English comedian and actor. Askey was born at 29 Moses Street, Dingle, Liverpool, the eldest child and only son of Betsy and Samuel Askey, company secretary of Sugar Products of Liverpool. Six months after his birth the family moved to 90 Rosslyn Street, Liverpool, just around the corner from St Michael-in-the-Hamlet Church.

As a child Arthur Askey sung in the choir at St Michael-in-the-Hamlet Church.

George Melly

Alan George Heywood Melly (17 August 1926 – 5 July 2007) was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer and lecturer. George Melly was born at The Grange, his Grand-Fathers house, which used to be situated in what is now known as Priory Wood, a short walk away from St Michael-in-the-Hamlet Church.

Melly was to describe St Michael’s Parish as ‘a small pocket of rus-in-urbe which lay unexpectedly concealed behind the bustle of Aigburth Road with its small shops and noisy trams.’