English Heritage, the organization in charge of naming places in England that should be preserved, has ruled that the birthplace of Ringo Starr in Liverpool is not worth adding to their list.
The home at 9 Madryn Street was scheduled for demolition before a committee was formed and petitioned the British government to make the house a historical site. The local council wants to knock down the home and surrounding streets to make way for new housing.
This past August, Philip Coppell, a Beatles tour guide for the past twenty years and Chairman of the Save Madryn Street Society, told the Britain's Telegraph "What the council is proposing to do is nothing short of criminal and they will be convicted in the court of international public opinion if they go ahead with it. If the council in Stratford wanted to knock down Shakespeare's birthplace and move it to the NEC there would be outrage. The only difference between the two is that Shakespeare has a four hundred year head-start on the Beatles.
"If they move it to the museum it will lose the sense of the area where it stands. Seeing it in a museum is just not going to have the same impact as visiting the street where Ringo was born. Ringo Starr lived in other houses, but he was only born in one. If it's knocked-down, even if it is moved, fans all over the world are going to be up in arms. They will just not understand how Liverpool can carry-out this kind of cultural vandalism."
Making the recent decision even more controversial is the fact that English Heritage recently ruled that the street crossing in London where the cover of Abbey Road was shot should be preserved. A spokesperson for Save Britain's Heritage, which opposes the demolition, told the website BDOnline "How is it possible to argue that (the) birthplace of Ringo Starr is less important than the Abbey Road crossing? Madryn Street, which Ringo frequently refers to in his own writings and lyrics, draws in thousands of visitors from across the globe.
"It is in an area desperately trying to cling on to its historic identity in the face enforced blight and threatened destruction. The house and neighbourhood embody the romance of the Beatles story."
VIDEO: Joe Walsh, watch the Undercover video interview with Ringo Starr's brother-in-law Joe Walsh below:
