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A secret upper floor room in a Liverpool church has revealed a set of children’s toys not used since the wartime Blitz.

The first floor room at Liverpool Parish Church of Our Lady and St Nicholas can only be reached by two sets of step ladders via the top of a wardrobe and a trap door about 15ft above the ground.

It is believed the room was used as a play area for small children, but was made inaccessible after a gallery which led to its entrance door was destroyed in the Blitz on December 20, 1940.

The church was burned out by incendiary bombs, but the tower, dating from 1815, and the rooms either side including this one, survived the fire.

One of the toys left in the room is a small model of a Spitfire fighter plane, introduced in mid-1938, which means the items to the two and a half years between then and late 1940.

Among the toys are a small model of the Imperial Airways flying boat Cambria, jigsaws, a gun, train, lorry, board games and a badly decayed rag doll. There is also a Cadbury’s Drinking Chocolate carton and a Capstan Navy Cut cigarette tin - albeit empty.

Elsewhere in the room are elderly numerous parish hymn and prayer books, including an 1696 Annotations of the Holy Bible.

This is one of many books from St Peter’s Church, Church Street, which shared the title of Liverpool Parish Church with St Nick’s, but was demolished in the 1920s after its services were transferred to the new Cathedral.

Rev Dr Crispin Pailing, Rector of Liverpool, said: “When I first became Rector a few months ago I was told about the room and have been keen to get up there and have a look.

“It’s not unusual to have a room at the end of gallery in this position, but what’s really odd is that no proper access was created to it when the church was rebuilt after the Blitz in 1952.

“But instead we have items from 75 years ago which is now interesting. These toys could have been played with up until the Sunday before the Blitz.

“It was always known that the room was here, but the reality is that generations walked back and forth with no thought about what was above.

“Some stuff was brought down around the late 1970s in the time of my predecessor Donald Gray and the rest was just left there. Probably no more than half a dozen people have been up there since the war.

“It would be a great idea to use it as a muniment room as we have a huge archive of material which is stored in various locations, but installing a proper staircase is a major cost.”