Saturday January 1
Platt Street Area Next For Demolition
Rehousing Pledge By Council Under Clearance Order
The Council at its meeting next Thursday will be asked to confirm a resolution of the General Health Committee making the Platt Street, Beatrice Street, Leopold Street area Wallasey’s Clearance Area No. 124.
The Town Clerk will be authorised to serve the appropriate notices and to take steps to secure the confirmation of a Compulsory Purchase Order for the properties involved and other neighbouring properties it is necessary to acquire for the satisfactory development of the area.
The action is being taken on the grounds that the dwelling houses in the area “are unfit for human habitation or are by reason if their bad arrangement of the narrowness or bad arrangement of the streets dangerous or injurious to the health of the inhabitants”; and that the most satisfactory method of dealing with the conditions is the demolition of all the buildings in the area.
The resolution adds that the area has been defined on the map “in such manner as to exclude any buildings which as not unfit for human habitation or dangerous for injurious to health.”
Suitable accommodation for the persons who will be displaced by the clearance is either available now or will be provided in advance of the displacements that will become necessary from time to time as the demolition of buildings proceeds.
The Council will undertake to carry out these rehousing operations within such period as the Minster may consider to be reasonably necessary.
Properties comprising the clearance area are Nos. 3, 5. 7, 6, 8, 10 and 12 Platt Street; No. 2, 4, 6, 5, 7 and 9 Beatrice Street; and Nos. 2, 4, 6 and 10 Leopold Street. Others that will be acquired for the satisfactory development of the area include buildings at the rear of No. 3 Platt Street; No. 4 Platt Street (including contractor’s yard) and 8 Leopold Street.
Tobin Street
Following an inquiry by the Medical Officer of Health whether the Housing Committee would wish to acquire the properties Nos. 6, 8 and 10 Tobin Street which were likely to be included as unfit properties in a Clearance Area Order in the near future, the Housing Committee has made it a reference to the General Health Committee that when clearance action is taken a compulsory purchase order should be made in respect of these properties, and also in respect of an additional and unscheduled property, 224 Brighton Street, the Town Clerk being instructed to make further inquiries whether the owner of the timber yard adjoining these properties would be willing to sell the land to the Corporation.
January 8
What’s The Future Of This House With A Past?
Mother Redcap’s, with a history dating back to 1595, has become a talking point in the town in 1955. The one-time haunt of smugglers and wreckers is the centre of a Council controversy.
There are those who want it pulled down to make way for a block of flats. There are those who want it preserving as a place of historical interest.
In between the two are thousands of townspeople who have a sentimental affection for the quaint, part-timbered building that has always been a picturesque feature of the Promenade.
Little of the original building is left. It was added to and altered over the years. But the old legends remain.
A rip-roaring tavern in the days when Wallasey was young … a hiding place for rogues who dealt in contraband (and worse) … a refuge from the press gangs… a place of secret passage and – some say – of buried treasure…
Fact or lively fiction? Today, it doesn’t matter very much. The old house above the sands makes a pretty picture on a bright day.
January 8
Work Starts On The Pavilion’s
£55,000 Face Lift
Work has started on the £55,000 dace-lift for the Floral Pavilion, New Brighton. It is hoped that the new-look building will be ready for use Whit Saturday, May 28 – the official opening of the resort’s summer season.
At the Town Hall on January 21 a meeting, called by the Town Council’s Publicity and Entertainment Committee, will invite the views of amateur stage societies, and other interested bodies in the town, on future – and fuller – uses of the theatre.
The Borough Architect (Mr. W.P. Clayton) will outline the nature of the improvements now being made to the 50-year-old building on the sea-front.
The building will be given a modern façade fronting on to the promenade. There will be new seating accommodation for over 1,000 people.
Other features will include spacious scenery wings and decks, new heating and lighting systems, and large new dressing rooms.
The plans provide for the replacement of the glass roof and sides of the building with material of a permanent nature.
There will be a complete redecoration of the auditorium.
January 15
For Sale Or For Scrap?
New Brighton Promenade Pier is in the red and in the news. It is losing £4,000 a year – and is in need of repair. It has been offered for sale – and nobody wants it.
There are members of the Council who are advocating that if private enterprise doesn’t take it over, the structure be dismantled and sold for scrap.
If the Council does not sell the pier it will have to spend a total of £35,000 on repairs and maintenance in the next five years.
Currently it is a nobody’s sweetheart by the seaside. But it still offers a bracing walk for a few hundred yards above the Mersey and makes a pretty picture on a bright day.
January 15
Ceremonial Start On New Tunnel
‘Soil Broken’ At Liverpool And Seacombe Ends
January 12, 1966, will go down in the history of Wallasey as a new era in the Borough’s communication with the rest of Merseyside. It was then that the Mayor of Wallasey (Alderman C.G. Tomkins) and the Lord Mayor of Liverpool (Alderman David Cowley) on their respective sides of the river inaugurated work on the second Mersey road tunnel, costing £20,000,000, by ceremoniously breaking the soil with a drill.
The Wallasey ceremony took place at Tudor Avenue, Seacombe, shortly after a similar ceremony at Waterloo Dock Goods Depot.
The first part of the project is the driving of a 12ft pilot tunnel along the line of the proposed main tunnel.
The purposes of this pilot scheme are both to explore the route as a practical and economic proposition, and to seal fissures in the surrounding rock by grouting from within the pilot.
Marples Ridgway Ltd hold the contract for this undertaking, which will take a year to complete and will cost £741,000.
Mid-River Meeting
A working shaft about 90 feet deep will then be sunk on each side of the river and the pilot tunnel will be driven simultaneously from each shaft to meet near the centre of the river and some 40 feet beneath its bed.
The ends of the pilot tunnel are to be further extended from each working shaft, away from the river, to terminate in blind ends near the proposed portals of the main tunnel. The total length of this pilot tunnel will be about 1½ miles.
The construction of the second tunnel was authorised by the Mersey Tunnel Act, 1965, which received the Royal Assent last August. It will be controlled, as indeed the existing tunnel is, by the Mersey Tunnel Joint Committee, which is an independent authority consisting of representatives of Liverpool, Wallasey and Birkenhead.
£20,000,000 Cost
Estimated cost of the tunnel and approach roads is £20,000,000, including the purchase if land, and it should be ready by the autumn of 1970.
It will have two traffic lanes, with five-lane approach roads. This will enable a large number of vehicles to be marshalled on the tunnel approaches, instead of causing congestion in the surrounding streets.
There will be two ventilating and pumping stations, one at Seacombe Promenade and the other at Waterloo Road, Liverpool.
When it is completed, traffic will enter the tunnel from a large junction to be constructed on land already partly cleared in the Scotland Road area of Liverpool. It will flow under Scotland Road and, through a deep cutting, enter the tunnel at a portal situated adjacent to Charters Street.
In Wallasey the tunnel portal will be in the disused railway cutting behind the recreation ground halfway along St. Paul’s Road.
Traffic will proceed along the cutting to toll booths, for traffic in both directions, which will be situated about half-a-mile from Gorsey Lane bridge.
Other traffic will proceed under the bridge and follow the course of the old Seacombe – Wrexham railway line and connect eventually with the proposed mid-Wirral motorway.
The consulting engineers for the project are Messrs. Mott, Hay & Anderson, of London, which is the same firm that was engaged at the construction of the first Mersey road tunnel over thirty years ago.
Including its approach roads, the tunnel will be approximately 5½ miles long. The diameter of the main tunnel will be about 30 feet and will run at a depth below the river varying at between 20 feet and 40 feet.
It will have two lanes, each 12 feet wide, a headroom of 16 feet, and a maximum gradient of 1 in 25.
The invitation to perform Wednesday’s drilling ceremony at Waterloo goods depot was made to the Lord Mayor by Alderman William Sefton (chairman of the Mersey Tunnel Joint Committee). Watched by the Lady Mayoress (Mrs. Cowley), Mayor of Birkenhead (Councillor W. Gardner) and their wives, he did so wearing a yellow industrial safety helmet and amid cheers from the civic party and onlookers.
It was then over to Tudor Avenue, where a similar ceremony was performed by the Mayor of Wallasey.
22 January
The Dirt, The Noise, The Clouds Of Dust, The Plague Of Children
As Demolition Gangs Move Into Tudor Avenue
As progress comes to Tudor Avenue – with pick-axe and bulldozer, and the sound of and fury of houses crumbling at their onslaught – clouds of dust and grit settle on those homes that have been spared the first sacrifice for the new tunnel.
Those residents who have not had to move out and seek sanctuary elsewhere, while appreciating the need for a new tunnel, are finding much to complain about in the activities of their new neighbours, the demolition gangs. The dirt and the din of demolition, the grit, the noise of heavy lorries and crashing walls, the plague of children, and of scavengers.
‘Great Inconvenience’
“We have lived here for thirty-eight years. I know progress can’t be stopped but it’s a great inconvenience,” Mrs. Jean Miller told a “News” reporter this week as she watched the workings on the ventilation shaft.
Mrs. Miller, who lives with her husband, and 17 year old son at 13 Tudor Avenue, said; “We haven’t been told anything officially. Some say we will be down within two or three years bur meanwhile we must learn to live with a big workings at the bottom of the road.
“Children think that our houses have also been dispossessed and throw stones at the windows. I have to leave the electric light burning all night.”
‘Dirt Settles Everywhere’
Mrs. Mary Galvia, who has two small children and has lived at 8 Tudor Avenue for four years, said: “We get all the dirt from the workings. It settles everywhere on the furniture and walls, even on the baby’s clothes while they are airing.
“It will probably get worse once the houses are pulled down, as there will be dirt from the river.
“Of an evening we are plagued by children playing amongst the rubble of the demolished houses.”
Mrs. Margaret Walker lives at 19 Tudor Avenue with two children, a boy aged 5 and a girl aged 2. She said: “The tunnel is a good idea but the workings are causing us much inconvenience.
“We have lived here for over five years and were thinking of selling the house but can’t do so now. We have been offered no compensation, not even a reduction in rates.”
‘Disgusting’
Mrs Joyce Abbott has a one-year-old son and has lived at 11 Tudor Avenue for three years. “The tunnel is all right but the dirt and noise we are expected to put up with is disgusting.
“It is not even peaceful at night, with children breaking windows and scavengers routing about in the rubble.
“We have been told very little, officially, about the future.”
Mrs. Joseph Smith, a retired grocer, who has lived at 31 Tudor Avenue for three years, and formed an action committee to oppose the building of the ventilation shaft, commented; “It is a shame what they are pulling down. Good houses are demolished while shabby property is allowed to remain. I think it is disgusting.
“There is dirt and dust everywhere and I suppose work will go on for years.”
Miss Joyce Hatton, aged 17, a telephonist with the G.P.O. in Liverpool, who lives at 29 Tudor Avenue said: “I have lived in Tudor Avenue all my life and it’s upsetting to see so much of it coming down. Why couldn’t they have pulled down some of the houses on the promenade?
“There is dirt everywhere and my mother is kept busy with dusting. It even gets on to my tape recordings.
29 January
Start Of £20,000,000 Project
Guess what? And what for? And where? And how deep?
It’s the massive hole that is the start of what has been christened the “Mersey Mousehole” – the £20,000,000 second Mersey road tunnel that will link Wallasey with Liverpool.
Down at Tudor Avenue in Seacombe, the drills, excavators and mobile cranes are busy at the job of sinking a working shaft 90 feet deep. From it a pilot tunnel will be driven to a similar shaft at Waterloo Dock, Liverpool.
The pilot tunnel will be just over 1½ miles long. It will lie some 40 feet beneath the river bed.
Work began on January 12. It will take a year to complete, will cost £741,000. The Wallasey-Liverpool link that will follow it should be ready by 1970.
This hole, with its ladders and shorings, its cranes and mechanical diggers, is the start of it all.
| 29 January Brrh! – “On a winter’s day in the morning…” Picture taken of frozen Central Park lake this week. Keepers had to break the ice to allow the park’s colony of wildfowl to swim. |
5 February
Making Way For Branch Town Hall
Some of Wallasey’s oldest properties – shops in Brighton Street, Seacombe, have this week been demolished to make way for a new £139,000 annexe to the Town Hall.
It is expected that building will start within the next few months.
The annexe will be complementary to the £130,000 ‘branch town Hall’, on the other side of the Town Hall, opened in 1964.
“Developments in local government services have been so tremendous in the last few years that the existing Town Hall, even with various departments housed outside, is now quite inadequate for present day needs” the NEWS was told this week.
“The proposed new annexe will be of three-storeys. With the annexe in the other side of the Town Hall, it will form a compact civic centre.”
19 February
Face-Lift For A Theatre
Workmen at New Brighton have this week-end reached the half way mark in the £55,000 face-lift for the Floral Pavilion. And when it re-opens for the summer season on Whit Saturday, May 28, it may be a new-look theatre with a new name. Residents of the town are being invited to land a hand in its re-christening.
“It is felt that a new name should be given to a building that will virtually be a new theatre”, the ‘NEWS’ was told this week. “’Floral Pavilion’ seems to many people to be just a bit old-fashioned nowadays”.
It was just over two months ago, after weeks of stormy debates in the Town Council, that work started on the 50-year-old building.
The photograph shows the theatre is being completely altered. It will have a modern façade fronting onto the promenade.
There will be new seating accommodation for over 1,000 people, and other features will include spacious scenery wings and decks, new heating and lighting systems, and large new dressing rooms.
The plans provide for the replacement of the glass roof and sides of the building with material of a permanent nature. There will be a complete re-decoration of the auditorium.
Chairman of the Publicity & Entertainments Committee, Cllr. A. Noel Owens, says: “The improvements will give the theatre an extra 30 years’ life.
“It is hoped that it will become the town’s entertainments centre, and that its facilities will be widely used outside the summer season by amateur stage societies.”
5 March
The Skyscraper At Seacombe
Mersey Court, Seacombe’s first skyscraper, now towers above the workings for the new Mersey Tunnel. Over 100 feet high, it is one of the big developments that has changed the face of Seacombe – and given Wallasey a new ‘front door’.
This colour picture of the new-look Seacombe was taken from the top of the ferry tower.
Mersey Court, an 11-storey cliff of concrete and glass, dwarfs the scores of maisonettes about it.
To the right is the Seacombe Ferry Hotel, and round the corner from it is the beginning of the £20,000,000 second Mersey crossing.
23 April
Getting Ready For Summer
Up in Liscard, surrounded by concrete, asphalt, the bustle of a shopping centre and an unending stream of traffic, two men are preparing for summer and a show of shrubs and flowers.
Corporation workmen are making ready the island site at Liscard Roundabout for the blaze of scented colour it will wear in June, July and August.
Thousands of bulbs and plants go into the town's parks and gardens every springtime. Several hundred of them brighten the hub of Liscard.
To the left in the colour picture is the Wellington Hotel. Beyond is Seaview Road.
7 May
A Stone Is Laid - And History Made
Church history was made when the Bishop of Chester, the Rt. Rev. G.A. Ellison, laid the foundation stone of the new £40,000 Church of St. Chad, Leasowe, on Sunday.
Few people have seen their parish church being built, because most parish boundaries were established centuries ago. But Leasowe is a new parish, and the 400 people who attended the ceremony were at a unique occasion.
The service was conducted by the vicar, the Rev. R.N. Jeacock. Also present was the Rev. J.R. Andress, rural dean of Wallasey.
Over £38,000 towards the cost of the church has been raised by the Bishop of Chester's Appeal Fund and the St. Chad's Building Fund. It is hoped that the appeal, by the Parochial Church Council for regular contributions, will raise the estimated £5,000 needed to complete the church and lay out the grounds.
The Church should be completed in about a year. The main hall has already been built and this will be linked with two other structures containing a chapel, vestry, warden's room and choir room.
An urgent need of the new church is a bell. It should be about 20 inches in diameter and the vicar, the Rev. Jeacock, would be pleased to hear from anybody who knows of such a bell lying about.
18 June
The Back-Garden Boat Builder
Schoolteacher Cyril Brace, of 8 Thorncliffe Road, Wallasey, built a boat - and a problem - in his back garden.
Top>>>
He had to get the 17 feet long Lysander yacht, weighing over 8 cwts., over three tall garden walls and on to the road so it could be taken to the sea.
Scaffolding, ropes 20 strong friends and a 'big' lift were needed. A trestle was built across the walls and the yacht dragged along the structure to the road where it was loaded into a furniture van.
The whole job took 2½ hours of heaving and puffing - and about 40 cups of tea.
Mr.Bruce, aged 25, is a teacher at Withensfield Secondary School, Manor Road.
He has been building boats as a hobby since he was aged 15, but the Lysander is the biggest boat he has tackled.
It took him, and his wife Sheila, 15 months and nearly £200 to build.
It is now being rigged out at New Brighton before being sings off the Welsh coast.
20 August
Pennies From The Past
Rare Find By Workmen
Looking bright, shiny and new in the 1966 daylight are these coins, bearing the head of the young Victoria, after being hidden away for almost a century. Among them in a 1½d. piece.
They were retrieved this week from within the walls of the Welsh Church (the White Church) in Liscard Road which is in the process of demolition.
When the foundation stone was removed contractor Mr. Tom Carroll found a lead casket which had been put there by the founders of the church.
Old Papers
It contained, in addition to the coins, a small collection of paper fragments - all that remained of any letters that had been left - and a copy of the Liverpool Mercury dated June 3rd, 1876 (in a fragile condition).
The picture show the workmen engaged on pulling down the building looking on as Mr. Carroll uncovers the casket, and the coins it contained.
They are a silver halfcrown, shilling, sixpence, threepenny piece and 1½d. piece and a copper penny, halfpenny and farthing.
20 August
A Look Down At Leasowe
With the fast-growing £1 million plus Squibb's pharmaceutical factory in the foreground - it will be employing nearly 800 people in a few months' time - this aerial picture of Leasowe shows the vastness of the estates and the wide roads that have spread over fields and marshland in the last few years.
Spot the landmarks? There are no prizes, but the game can be fun.
Reeds Lane cuts across the centre of the picture. To the right is the direction to Leasowe Road.
Top left is Hoylake Road, leading to the centre of Moreton.
The large block in the open green space just left of centre shows the scale of the new flats development.
Eastway Schools are at the top centre. Work your way round from there!
27 August
Seacombe Church To Close Tomorrow
Over 100 Years Of Services
For over 100 years Brighton Street Methodist Church has been a focal point in the Seacombe Parish, but after tomorrow's service the minister, the Rev. Edward W.R. Lloyd, will close the doors for the last time. The final service will have been held in one of Seacombe's oldest place of worship.
The closure of Brighton Street Methodist Church come with the loss of congregation, and with the deterioration of the building through dry rot.
It follows the recent closure of the Welsh Church, the Congregational Church, Liscard Road, and the Society of Friends Meeting house in Clarendon Road.
Built in 1859, with seating for 700, Brighton Street was the 'Mother Church' of Methodism in Wallasey. It was the first of seven churches built in the Borough in subsequent years.
No Funds
But as the town extended its boundaries westward, and a new church was built in Pasture Road, Moreton, there was a movement of many homes into that area from Seacombe.
There was gradual loss of congregational and the trustees, who for years had fought against dry rot, could no longer find the funds to affect repair.
The beginning of the end for Brighton Street Methodist Church came with the transfer of services' from the main hall into the schoolroom at the rear of the building.
Valedictory
It was obvious the church had served its useful purpose, lived its life, and must close.
Tomorrow's Valedictory Service at 3.p.m. will be conducted by the Superintendent Minister, the Rev. John Batson and the Rev. Lloyd.
10 September
Over And Under The Mersey
The new Mersey Tunnel and the new Seacombe are taking shape together. The change and the progress are shown in this picture from the air.
The pilot tunnel for the £20,000,000 second river crossing has been cut to a distance of over 900 feet outwards from Seacombe to Liverpool. Workers on the other side are tunnelling towards it from Waterloo Dock.
Part of the crane equipment at Seacombe can be seen jutting out over the promenade in this colour view. To the right of it, almost in the centre of the picture, is Mersey Court, the skyscraper block of flats that brought the Manhattan touch to the south end of the town.
Bang in the centre is Seacombe Ferry, with its long lines of parked buses. Take your bearings from there, and, if you live in Seacombe, trace your way home.
Beyond the sprawling streets stretches the broad ribbon of the Mersey, and beyond the river are the docks and warehouses of the waterfront of Liverpool.
Just out of the picture, beyond the bottom left hand corner, at a point just past the recreation ground in St. Paul's Road, is where the second Mersey Tunnel will eventually emerge.
The dotted line across the river shows the track the tunnel will take between Seacombe and Liverpool.
17 September
Blaze After An Explosion Destroys The Ghost Train
Fire In Tower Fun House
Flames 50 feet high wrecked two amusement houses and caused thousands of pounds worth of damage in New Brighton Tower Grounds on Monday night.
An explosion at about 9.15 pm in one of the oldest rides in the fairground – the Ghost Train – started the outbreak and it quickly spread to the Fun House.
A wall of the building housing the train was blown out and house windows 300 yards away were shattered.
Both the buildings involved were made mostly from wood, steel and plastic, and giant flames caused sparks and clouds of smoke surrounding side-shows.
Thirty firemen under Mr Frank Fradley, Wallasey deputy chief fire officer, poured thousands of gallons of water into the area, and limited the fire’s spread.
After about half-an-hour the flames were beaten down and the firemen neared the seat of the outbreak. But then parts of the house and train circuit fell, causing more flames, and it was not until after 10 pm that the fire was completely under control.
The manager of the ghost train, Mr Stanley Crighton, aged 54, of Rowson Street, Wallasey, was in the Floral Pavilion when the fire broke out.
He dashed to the fairground and guided firemen, showing them where electricity points were located.
Mr Crighton said he had been working until early evening on the train, preparing if for the weekend. When he left he turned all the lights off and took the fuses out of the socket. He switched off all the electricity.
On Wednesday morning detectives and firemen were in the area carrying out investigations into what caused the explosion and fire.
September 24
‘No Road’ For Ten Weeks
The Four Bridges – one of the three cross-dock road links between Wallasey and Birkenhead – went ‘off’ on Monday. The ‘No Road’ and ‘Closed’ signs will be in position for nearly three months.
Photographer Keith Medley yesterday took this picture of work in progress – work that will put the bridges out of bounds to commuters and that will send them to either Duke Street or Poulton Bridge crossings.
The closure came into operation at 10 am on Monday, and those wanting to get in or out of the town have all week been complaining angrily of delays and queues of traffic.
Police direction of traffic has been introduced at morning and evening peak periods, but for the remainder of each day the picture on the alternative routes over the docks has been one of snaking lines of vehicles and hold-ups.
The matter is to be raised again at the next meeting of Wallasey Town Council – which has already been urged to seek Parliamentary powers in an effort to prove cross-dock traffic facilities.
September 24
Talk On The Boats … by Ian Roth
171,000 Books From A Place Built For Beer
That £45,000 plan for a new public library centre for Seacombe has been put back. The national freeze has sent it into cold storage.
Originally it was hoped that building might start towards the end of this year. Now it is “likely to be quite sometimes” before the scheme gets the go-ahead.
It was something Seacombe was looking forward to. It was something for which Seacombe had waited a long time.
Library-wise, the south corner of the town has had a raw deal right the way along the line. It has always had to ‘make do’.
The present library building, in Borough Road, is hopelessly out of date. It had outlived its usefulness – not that it ever amounted to much.
The building is unsuitable and inconvenient: It is all stairs and shadows.
Originally built as a public house its first owners neglected the little matter of making sure if a licence – it was taken over by the Town Council and opened as a library in 1925.
It has been adapted, chopped and changed, but it has never been satisfactory. It is still a hotch-potch of a place.
It is the ‘poor relation’ of the local Libraries Committee, has described it as “a perfect disgrace”. It is – despite some recent coats of paint.
The pity is that it is to go on ‘doing’ for Seacombe – where over 171,000 books are issued every year – for what looks like a long time yet.
Bulldozers Are Busy
Liscard’s proud ‘White Church’. Terraces in Seacombe. And now a cluster of cottages in Poulton.
A lot of old Wallasey has come tumbling down in the last few weeks. The bulldozers are busy.
The cottages in Poulton are a particular loss. They were built in 1812, and until recently were a picturesque feature of the corner of Poulton Bridge Road.
New road widening schemes will mean sweeping changes in the coming months. Much that is old and interesting is to fall beneath the hammers of the demolition men.
It is inevitable, of course, but nevertheless rather sad. The town is the poorer without these bricks and mortar links with its past.
It is disappointing that the local authority is apparently making no effort to obtain a record of all it is sweeping away.
15 October
Wallasey Store Is Unique
One of the Birkenhead Co-op stores is unique. It was opened just two years ago, and in the usual principles of Co-op shopping were added others. The unique stone is at Liscard, Wallasey. The Co-op research team noted that expanding Wallasey had become one of the largest residential areas on Wirral. Yet Wallasey’s shops, our own included, had not kept pace with the expansion.
The result: Wallasey folk were taking train or ferry to Liverpool or even risking closed bridges and the Mersey Tunnel to do their shopping. And many were coming to our own central store in Birkenhead.
It needed little reasoning for the Co-op backroom boys to conclude that Wallasey should have a quality shopping outlet of its own. Out of the reasoning came the Birkenhead Co-op department store in
Liscard.
New Image
The reasoning went further. “This is a brand new shop where quality and value are the first considerations, regardless of price.”
The thought was turned into a policy. A policy that was adopted for the Wallasey store. In some respects it is the most expensive store for miles – but only when the quality justifies the price.
To emphasise the unique nature of the Wallasey store its management has been divorced from that of the Birkenhead Co-op’s other department stores.
Its Own Idea
The Wallasey store has its own policy. Its own day-to-day management, its own buyers, its own ideas, in display, and selling.
The plan was to create a store that would challenge comparison with any departmental store on either side of the Mersey. Says Mr Kenneth Cresswell, who had managed the Wallasey store through its successful inaugural years. “We didn’t set out just to give Wallasey a new Co-op store. We wanted to create THE new store of the town. Our buyers concentrated on stocking a large proportion of famous name branded merchandise. We set out to attract non-members just as much as Co-op members.”
Shoppers come to Liscard from Hoylake, West Kirby, Heswall and areas which used to look to Liverpool for their shopping outlets.
Fashion Shows
The new store’s buyers were told the fashion department must be second to none on Merseyside. Evening fashion shows were one successful innovation. The food and drinks departments got smartly in on the act by putting on wine and cheese tasting events after the fashion shows.
The verdict on these promotions is in the level of sales that was built up. It is a high and rising level.
The Birkenhead Co-op outpost in Wallasey is the first example on Merseyside of the conception that a shopping centre should not necessarily be “in the centre” – in the midst of the hustle and bustle of traffic – but in an off-centre area where a car is an aid to shopping, not a hindrance.
The conception came from the United States where no one will ever again put a busy departmental store in the centre of a bustling area.
The Wallasey “off-centre” conception will spread still further.
12 November
£2½ Million Housing Plan For New Brighton
Biggest Project Ever Mooted For The Town
It will cost over £2,5000,000. It will be the biggest project ever embarked upon at New Brighton. It will be the ultra-modern look on the sea front.
The site, which covers about 27 acres from Sea Road to Harrison Drive, will be fashioned into a compact self-contained estate with 635 units of accommodation in houses, maisonettes, flats and a
tower block which may house 200 families.
The Scheme: A model of the proposed development between Sea Road and Harrison Drive |
Mr Norman Kingham, J.P., who was present with several other members of the Maritime Group, said that his associates wanted to develop the area in a way that a private developer or perhaps a local authority could not.
The Government backed Housing Association scheme would be able to provide houses and flats for sale, for renting or for co-ownership.
The King’s Parade site would be bounded to the North by a solid wall of houses forming a shield from the sea winds. Another screen of buildings would cut off the railway lines forming the southern boundary.
Vehicular traffic will be by a main road from the southern side giving onto a loop road which will serve the whole estate. A footpath to Harrison Drive will enable residents to get to Grove Road station easily.
The development will have its own pub and restaurant and its own shopping centre. Garages or parking space will be provided for each dwelling and some of the houses will have provision for two cars.
“We want the development to be as avant-garde as possible,” Mr Kingham said. Architecturally and communally the focal point of the scheme will be the central tower block.
“It will stand out like a beacon rather like a lighthouse,” he said. He envisaged the whole development as “an oasis in a no-mans’s land by the sea.”
Mr Brian Calvert, who will have responsibility for marketing the development, said it would be different from any other scheme in the north of England with its varying forms of tenure.
The location had much to commend it, he said. A magnificent view, a golf course, cricket club and sailing at hand and direct access to the second Mersey Tunnel.
The development would provide accommodation for a complete cross-section of people, he said, from elderly, retired folk to young families.
The scheme has now been referred to the Town Planning Committee.
19 November
Giant Waves Brought Big Damage
Fire Brigade Out On Over 100 Calls
Gale force winds at over 70 mph which swept Wallasey this week brought Wallasey Fire Brigade over one hundred calls in two days. The big storm left a trail of damage. Roofs, chimney, walls and trees were among its victims.
The first whispers of the gale came on Monday. The Fire Brigade got the first of the calls that were to make the week one of its busiest for years.
Most of the incidents involved collapsed chimneys, television aerials, and dangerous slates. At one stage nearly a score of calls were awaiting attention.
At Seacombe a section of roof and wall collapsed at Hunter’s furniture shop in Borough Road.
Giant Waves
At New Brighton a van overturned on the promenade near the bathing pool.
In Breck Road a garden wall collapsed, partly blocking the road.
High tides brought giant waves crashing on to the promenades at New Brighton, Egremont and Seacombe, causing damage to stonework, scattering sets, and soaking pedestrians.
Rough seas caused some delays on Wallasey ferries, but peak-hour schedules were maintained, and only one trip was cancelled.
Picture by Medley & Bird shows the storm scene on Sandon Promenade. In the background, the Town Hall.
3 December
'Danger' Church Will Soon Be Down
The state in which the “White Church” – the old Welsh Presbyterian church in Liscard Road – had been left by the contractor who had started its demolition, impelled reader Maurice Kilgallon to write to the “News” recently with a warning about its possible danger to local children who had adopted it as an unofficial “adventure playground”.
So the “News” had a picture taken of it, by Bob Bird, as it then was. Since when, events have been batching up.
At its meeting on Thursday evening, the Borough Council had before it a minute from its Housing Committee: “The Borough Architect reported that the contractor had failed to clear this site in the agreed time of four weeks and that the Chairman approved an alternative quotation of £100 submitted by G.T.B. Demolition to complete the work. Resolved – That the Chairman’s action be approved and the Town Clerk be authorised to terminate the present contract”.
The “News” understands that the whole of the remaining structure will have been demolished and the site cleared within the next fortnight.
Just as well. The letter from Mr Kilgallon, of 8 Withington Road, had drawn attention to “the potential killer lurking in Liscard Road, Seacombe – the partly demolished Welsh Church facing Brougham Road”. He wrote:
“I understand that the demolition firm concerned ceased operations several weeks ago. Since then the unfenced and unguarded site has been used as an ‘adventure playground’ by the local children many of them under school age.
“The partly dismantled steeple and entrance porch, and parts of the outside walls remain standing – teetering might be a better description, as they are completely unsupported”.
“Action is needed now”, added Mr Kilgallon, who stressed that it was Wallasey Corporation’s “moral responsibility to take the required action to guard the lives of the children of this community”.
Reader Kilgallon, and possibly others, will be glad to know that action has been taken, as speedily as the legal niceties of the situation allowed, and, as speedily as the progress of the work allows, the children of the neighbourhood will have lost their potentially dangerous, if attractive, “playground”.
17 December
The Magic Roundabout!
For these three little children a touch of fairyland came to Liscard this week. The myriad coloured lights on the 50-foot high coloured Christmas tree pierced through the darkness and the rain. |