A key to Sir Paul McCartney’s Liverpool childhood home is heading to auction, giving Beatles collectors a chance to own an unusual piece of the city’s music history.
The key is connected to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, the modest terraced house where McCartney spent part of his formative teenage years before The Beatles became one of the world’s biggest bands.
It is expected to fetch between £2,000 and £3,000 when Dominic Winter Auctioneers offers it on Wednesday, 7 October 2026.
A key with an extraordinary story
American Beatles fan Kathleen “Kathy” Salt, formerly Duffy, has kept the key for more than six decades.
As a 13-year-old living in New York, Kathy wrote a letter simply addressed to the occupant of 20 Forthlin Road in Liverpool.
By that point, the property was no longer the McCartney family’s home, but the letter reached the resident, Ashley Jones.
Months later, Kathy received a handwritten three-page reply from Jones – along with a key to the house.
Jones explained that he had been given two original keys to 20 Forthlin Road and believed the one he sent to Kathy could previously have belonged to Paul McCartney.
The key has remained in her collection ever since.
The Liverpool home where music history was made
The McCartney family moved into 20 Forthlin Road in 1955, when Paul was still at school.
Paul lived in the house with his parents, Jim and Mary McCartney, and his younger brother Mike. His mother, Mary, died in 1956, leaving Jim to bring up the two boys.
It was during his years at Forthlin Road that music became an increasingly important part of Paul’s life.
The house later became a significant setting in the early story of The Beatles, where John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote and rehearsed music.
Songs associated with the house include I Saw Her Standing There, She Loves You and Love Me Do.
Today, the National Trust cares for 20 Forthlin Road alongside John Lennon’s childhood home, Mendips, in Woolton.
The property is also a Grade II-listed building, recognising its importance as McCartney’s childhood home and its place in British cultural history.
More Beatles memorabilia heading to auction
The Forthlin Road key isn’t the only piece of Beatles history from Kathy Salt’s collection going under the hammer.
Her father, Frank Duffy, worked on security during The Beatles’ first American tour in 1964 and managed to obtain autographs from the group for his daughter.
Those signatures, along with photographs and other memorabilia connected to the band’s arrival in America, are also being offered at the October sale and are estimated at £3,000 to £5,000.
Kathy also collected concert and cinema ticket stubs from the 1960s, along with memorabilia linked to The Beatles’ time in America.
For Beatles fans around the world, however, the Forthlin Road key provides a particularly unusual connection to Liverpool and the ordinary family home where part of an extraordinary musical story began.
The Photographs, Posters & Postcards, Autographs & Historical Documents auction takes place at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on Wednesday, 7 October 2026.
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