SUGGEST PIC OF GOODISON PARK

HAVE EMAILED PICS OF SOME OF THE STUFF IN THE EXHIBITION MENTIONED TO PHOTOGRAPHIC

AN exhibition of Egyptian artefacts has shed light on the lives of a Lake District couple with one of the most famous names in the Premier League - but who most people will never have heard of.

Of the millions of Cumbrian football fans, few will realise the link between the name of Everton FC's ground and a sewerage engineer who lived in Coniston more than 100 years ago.

In the 19th century civil engineer George Goodison designed the network of trenches for the sewerage system beneath a housing development near Bootle, Liverpool.

He did such a good job that the road at the centre of the development was named Goodison Road, leading to the adjacent football ground being named Goodison Park when it was opened in 1892.

The prosperous Mr Goodison and wife Anne moved to Coniston from Liverpool in the 1870s, where they lived next door to writer John Ruskin and Mrs Goodison pursued her career as an Egyptologist.

This month an exhibition of the artefacts she collected went on display at the Atkinson Gallery in Southport, Merseyside, for the first time in 40 years.

Jo Chamberlain, documentation officer at the gallery, said recent refurbishments meant it could now put up to 300 items from Mrs Goodison’s 1,000 piece collection on permanent display.

“Egyptology was her life and obsession, to the point where she would spend eight hours a day teaching herself hieroglyphics,” she said.

“It is an amazing collection and it normally bowls any academics over.”

The collection was originally given to Bootle Museum in 1906, after Mr Goodison sold the collection for £400 shortly after his wife died aged 61. Mrs Goodison is buried in the churchyard at Thornton-in-Lonsdale, near Ingleton, where the couple also lived for a time.

Included in the collection is a Greek-Cypriot pot given to Mrs Goodison as a present by John Ruskin.

Tony Onslow, a lifelong Everton FC supporter and author of two books about the history of his team, uncovered much of what is known about the Goodisons when he became interested in how his team’s stadium got its name.

Mr Onslow, from Great Sankey, Warrington, said he pieced together their history by studying census records, newspaper archives and other historical material.

After Anne Goodison died, Mr Onslow said Mr Goodison married his former servant and was recorded as living in Stratton, Gloucestershire, in 1911.

Goodison Park was much in the news in the years preceding his death in 1913, staging an FA Cup final replay in 1909 and the international between England and Scotland in 1911.

Mr Onslow said: “It was a very prominent ground and you can imagine him reading about it in the newspapers and thinking of how he had given it its name.”