What was it like being the first curator of John Lennon's former Liverpool home? Peter Elson reports.
 WHEN Matthew Whitfield saw a pair of women's legs sticking out through the toilet doorway in John Lennon's childhood home, a mixture of emotions ran through his head as he climbed the stairs. As the first custodian of Mendips, one of the National Trust's smallest but highest profile properties, he was used to a wide range of visitors from around the world and their responses to being on this hallowed ground. Closer inspection showed she was on her hands and knees with her arms hugging the toilet pedestal. Firmly, he asked her to disentangle herself and remove herself from the smallest room, which is permanently roped-off. "She was visibly emotional, her face was puffy and red. She'd obviously been crying," he recalls, "I was very surprised, but also relieved as she wasn't laid out because of a heart attack. "She pulled herself together and I reminded her that visitors were not allowed there. But I didn't shatter her illusions. This isn't the original toilet that John Lennon used." Why on earth did she feel the need to commune with the Lennon spirit in such a bizarre way? Matthew, a kindly soul, remains bemused. As if a mitigating circumstance, he adds: "Well, she was Canadian." Matthew (pictured above) adds: "We state that the house has been returned to the condition it would have been in during the 1950s. Since then, the bathroom and toilet fittings were replaced with modern versions and so what's there now is not the Lennon originals. "Generally, once or twice a week somebody would be visibly moved; there is this slightly intense minority. It was never full of wailing, insane people, but there was always a handful of people who cried. "About the most famous visitor was the guy who plays Dev the corner shopkeeper in Coronation Street. He arrived with a girlfriend while we were closed for lunch and said, 'Hi, I've come all the way from Manchester' which was a bit conceited as we get people from Australia and Japan. I didn't let him in as the opening times are agreed with the neighbours." MATTHEW, 23, from Huyton, read history at Liverpool University and received an MA in gallery and museum studies from Manchester University, before becoming the first custodian at Mendips a year ago. Now Matthew has moved on to the new Cube Gallery, in Wood Street, Liverpool, and the National Trust is hunting for his successor for this year's new season. | 
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