Apparently this was taken on the day that John Lennon later met Paul McCartney and the rest, they say, is history...
Both my grandfathers were too old to be called up for service in WW2, so they ended up as firemen during the blitz and onwards to the end of the war - they could easily have been one of these guys in the photo.
We actually had the exact same carpet on our stairs in our 1st home back in 1974 just after we married. I think certain substances may have been responsible...