{{infobox UK place |country = England |latitude = 53.374 |longitude = -2.865 |official_name = Woolton |population = 14,836 |population_ref = (2001 Census)

History

Originally a separate village, it was incorporated into the City of Liverpool in 1913. The area was referred to as Uluentune in the Domesday Book, with the name translating as "farm of Wulfa". Shortly after the Domesday survey, which was completed in 1086, Woolton became part of the Barony of Halton and Widnes. In 1189, a charge was granted by John, Constable of Chester, to the order of Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, a religious order who protected the routes for Christians who were on a pilgrimage to The Holy Land. These Knights Hospitallers held land in Woolton for over 350 years, until it was confiscated from them in 1559 by Queen Elizabeth I. The manorial rights to Woolton passed from Queen Elizabeth to James I who sold them to William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. Woolton then passed to Isaac Green, and through his daughter to her son Bamber Gascoyne of Childwall (MP for Liverpool 1780-96 and an ancestor of Bamber Gascoigne

Government

The elected councillors for Woolton are Cllrs Malcolm Kelly, Barbara Collinge and Barbara Mace - all Liberal Democrats.

Places of worship

Woolton features three Christian Churches. St. Peter's Church of England is located opposite its church hall. St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church is found about fifty yards down Church Road and along a driveway around 150 yards south-west of St. Peters. Finally St. James's Methodist is found on Church Road South, facing its Church Hall. The old congregational church is now a nursing home at the junction of Quarry St South and High St.

Landmarks

Mendips (251 Menlove Avenue)

St. Peter's Church, Woolton, Liverpool

Strawberry Field

Woolton Hall

Woolton Picture House

Woolton Woods and Camphill

Transport

Hunts Cross Station is one mile south of Woolton, with local services on the southern route of the Manchester to Liverpool line between Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester Oxford Road, and also Merseyrail's Northern Line to Liverpool Central and Southport. Liverpool South Parkway, one and a half miles to the west of Woolton, serves the same lines in addition to Crewe and Birmingham stopping services.

Bus services provide connections with Liverpool John Lennon Airport, the city centre, neighbouring districts and the broader Liverpool area.

Notable residents

John Lennon, composer/musician/activist and co-founder of The Beatles.

Fábio Aurélio, footballer with Liverpool F.C.

Malandra Burrows, former Emmerdale actress and singer.

Dirk Kuyt, footballer, also with Liverpool F.C.

Pepe Reina, footballer, Liverpool F.C.

Fernando Torres, footballer, Liverpool F.C.

Ernest Wright Alexander, World War I recipient of the Victoria Cross. The house in which he was born, "The Hayes", has been demolished.

Steve Brookstein, X Factor winner.

Lucas Pezzini Leiva, footballer, Liverpool F.C.

Jon Lolis, former ''Hollyoaks actor.

Ryan Babel, footballer, Liverpool F.C.

Steven Pienaar, footballer, Everton F.C.

Martin Škrtel, footballer, Liverpool F.C.

References

Andriy Voronin Liverpool FC Steven Blore Son of Graham Blore

External links

Liverpool City Council, Ward Profile: Woolton

Liverpool Street Gallery - Liverpool 25

Category:Districts of Liverpool

Caption	Coco Chanel, 1920
Name	Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel
Nationality	French
Birth name	Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel
Birth date	August 19, 1883
Birth place	Saumur, France
Death date	January 10, 1971
Death place	Paris, France
Education	Catholic Monastery in Aubazine
Label name	Chanel
Significant design	Little black dress
Awards	Neiman Marcus Fashion Award, 1957

Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel (19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971) was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of the famous fashion brand Chanel. Her extraordinary influence on fashion was such that she was the only person in the couturier field to be named on .

Early life

Chanel was born in Saumur, France. She was the second daughter of Albert Chanel and Jeanne Devolle, a market stallholder and laundrywoman respectively at the time of her birth. Her birth was declared by employees of the hospital in which she was born. They, being illiterate, could not provide or confirm the correct spelling of the surname and it was recorded by the mayor François Poitou as "Chasnel". This misspelling made the tracing of her roots almost impossible for biographers when Chanel later rose to prominence. Her parents married in 1883. She had five siblings: two sisters, Julie (1882–1913) and Antoinette (born 1887) and three brothers, Alphonse (born 1885), Lucien (born 1889) and Augustin (born and died 1891). In 1895, when she was 12 years old, Chanel's mother died of tuberculosis and her father left the family. Because of this, the young Chanel spent six years in the orphanage of the Roman Catholic monastery of Aubazine, where she learned the trade of a seamstress. School vacations were spent with relatives in the provincial capital, where female relatives taught Coco to sew with more flourish than the nuns at the monastery were able to demonstrate. When Coco turned eighteen, she left the orphanage, and the ambitious young girl took off for the town of Moulins to become a cabaret singer. During this time, Chanel performed in clubs in Vichy and Moulins where she was called “Coco.” Some say that the name comes from one of the songs she used to sing, and Chanel herself said that it was a “shortened version of coquette, the French word for ‘kept woman,” according to an article in The Atlantic.

Personal life and entry into fashion

While she failed to get steady work as a singer, it was at Moulins that she met rich, young French textile heir Étienne Balsan, to whom she soon became an acknowledged mistress, keeping her day job in a tailoring shop. Balsan lavished on her the beauties of "the rich life": diamonds, dresses and pearls. While living with Balsan, Chanel began designing hats as a hobby, which soon became a deeper interest of hers. "After opening her eyes," as she would say, Coco left Balsan and took over his apartment in Paris. Biographer Justine Picardie, in her 2010 study Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life (Harper Collins), suggests that the fashion designer's nephew André Palasse—supposedly the only child of her sister Julie—may actually have been Chanel's child by Balsan.

In 1909 Chanel met and began an affair with one of Balsan's friends, Captain Arthur Edward 'Boy' Capel.

Capel financed Chanel's first shops and his own clothing style, notably his jersey blazers, inspired her creation of the Chanel look. The couple spent time together at fashionable resorts such as Deauville, but he was never faithful to Chanel.

The affair lasted nine years, but even after Capel married an aristocratic English beauty in 1918, he did not completely break off with Chanel. His death in a car accident, in late 1919, was the single most devastating event in Chanel's life.

According to local report a roadside memorial at the site of the accident was placed there by Chanel, who visited it in later years to place flowers there.

Chanel became a licensed modiste (hat maker) in 1910 and opened a boutique at 21 rue Cambon, Paris named Chanel Modes. Chanel's modiste career bloomed once theatre actress Gabrielle Dorziat modelled her hats in the F Noziere's play Bel Ami in 1912 (Subsequently, Dorizat modelled her hats again in Les Modes). Fashionable like Deauville, Chanel created loose casual clothes made out of jersey, a material typically used for men's underwear.

Later years

In 1925, Vera Bate Lombardi, née Sarah Gertrude Arkwright, reputedly the illegitimate daughter of the Marquess of Cambridge, In 1927 she built Villa La Pausa in Roquebrune on the French Riviera hiring the architect Robert Streitz. The villa has a staircase and a patio inspired by her orphanage, Aubazine. La Pausa has been partially replicated at the Dallas Museum of Art to welcome the Reves collection and part of Chanel's original furniture for the house.

In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, Chanel closed her shops. She believed that it was not a time for fashion. She also maintained an apartment above her couture house at 31 rue Cambon. In 1943, after four years of professional separation, Chanel contacted Lombardi, who was living in Rome. She invited Lombardi to come to Paris and renew their work together. This was actually a cover for "Operation Modellhut", an attempt by Nazi spymaster Walter Schellenberg to make secret contact with Lombardi's relative Winston Churchill. When Lombardi refused, she was arrested as a British spy by the Gestapo. Chanel was later charged as a collaborator, but avoided trial due to an intervention by the British Royal family. suggest that Coco Chanel had close contact with another Nazi, Walter Kutschmann, who was responsible for the murder of thousands of Poland's Jews early in World War II. He was transferred to France in 1943 where he became Chanel's Paris SS contact. Kutschmann made frequent trips to Spain with Chanel with large sums of money passing between them.

In 1945, she moved to Switzerland, eventually returning to Paris in 1954, the same year she returned to the fashion world.

Film depictions

The first film about Chanel was Chanel Solitaire (1981), directed by George Kaczender and starring Marie-France Pisier, Timothy Dalton and Rutger Hauer.

The American television movie Coco Chanel debuted on 13 September 2008 on Lifetime Television, starring Shirley MacLaine as a 70-year-old Chanel. Directed by Christian Duguay, the film also starred Barbora Bobulova as the young Chanel, Olivier Sitruk as Boy Capel, and Malcolm McDowell. The movie could be viewed as rewritten history for the Chanel company, as it portrayed Coco's mistress life as love stories, left out her Nazi collaboration and her use of royal connections to avoid trial. The movie also left out possible comparisons between her and Mata Hari, the World War I spy who was also a dancer and courtesan to the rich. However, any such comparison to Mata Hari may be viewed favorably today as she was said by the Gestapo to be working for the British.

A film starring Audrey Tautou as the young Coco, titled Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel), was released on 22 April 2009. Audrey Tautou is the new spokeswoman of Chanel S.A.

The film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, directed by Jan Kounen and starring Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen, concerns the purported affair between Chanel and Igor Stravinsky. The film is based on the 2002 novel Coco & Igor by Chris Greenhalgh, and was chosen to close the Cannes Film Festival of 2009.

Two more projects are said to be in the works, including one directed by Daniele Thompson.

Literary depictions

Coco & Igor is a novel, written by Chris Greenhalgh, which depicts the affair between Chanel and Igor Stravinsky and the creative achievements that this affair inspired. The novel was first published in 2003.

In 2008 a children's book entitled Different like Coco was published. It depicted the humble childhood of Coco Chanel and chronicled how she made drastic changes to the fashion industry.

The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman is a novel written by Karen Karbo. Published in 2009, it chronicles the humble beginnings and legendary achievements of Coco Chanel while providing insight and advice on everything from embracing the moment to living life on your own terms.

Further reading

Davis, Mary. "Chanel, Stravinsky, and Musical Chic". Fashion Theory 10, no. 4 (December 2006): 431–60.

Morand, Paul. L’Allure de Chanel. Paris: Hermann, 1976. Nouv. éd. du texte original, Paris: Hermann, 1996. ISBN 2705663169. Reprinted, [Paris]: Gallimard, 2009. ISBN 9782070396559. English as The Allure of Chanel, translated by Euan Cameron. London: Pushkin Press, 2008. ISBN 9781901285987 (pbk). Special illustrated ed. London: Pushkin, 2009. ISBN 9781906548100 (pbk).

Picardie, Justine. Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life, New York: HarperCollins, 2010, ISBN 9780061963858.

References

External links

Official Site of Chanel

Coco Chanel in the Art Deco Era

Category:1883 births Category:1971 deaths Category:People from Saumur Category:French fashion designers Category:Bisexual people Category:People from Paris Category:Ballet designers