History nov 2015

Periodical No 19 November 2015 compiled by the History Group of the Oxton Society

free to members

OXTON HISTORY Duck Pond Lane:

It is perhaps today thought of as being just a footpath, but it was once a country lane proper, with hedges and fences to either side, leading from the top of Holm Lane into ancient fields with names such as Mill Heys, reminding us that there was once a windmill here about, and The Arno – further reminding us of the probable 10th century Hiberno-Norse settlement in this part of Oxton. It is now the last remaining country lane in Oxton, and this photograph of its duck pond (probably early 1920’s given the young girl’s dress) clearly explains why it was so named. Many older Oxton residents will remember a duck pond just to the right of this photograph (where Sainsbury’s car wash is today), but that pond was a part of a poultry farm operated by Fred Adams – a member of the same family who still have Oxton’s oldest family butcher’s shop on

Rose Mount. The original duck pond had long gone by WW2, but after a particularly rainy day its former location can easily be found. Go into Duck Pond Lane from Sainsbury’s car park, and just beyond the Children’s Play Area you will discover the old duck pond desperately trying to re-establish itself. But Duck Pond Lane might have been lost to us forever. In the closing years of WW2 the post war re-development of Birkenhead (including Oxton, and with consideration for both war damage and the future needs of the whole borough) was presented in a work titled “An Outline Plan for the County Borough of Birkenhead: Prepared by Professor Sir Charles Reilly & N. J. Aslan (1947)”. In that work, a number

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of quite radical changes to Oxton’s road systems were proposed, but fortunately not one of them was ever brought to being. In so far as Duck Pond Lane was concerned, it was proposed that Talbot Road should be extended from the top of Holm Lane, first into Duck Pond Lane and then across the Storeton Road fields to the Half Way House junction of Storeton Road and Woodchurch Road. That new road was thought to be necessary, in part, if a new Borough Hospital should be built within the grounds of nearby Mere Hall in Noctorum, and in order to provide ease of access to the new hospital for the expected increasingly high volume of road vehicles that would need to go there. The new Borough Hospital was never built at Mere Hall of course (but at Arrowe Park many years later) and so Duck Pond Lane survived as we know it today.

OXTON HISTORY Novemeber 2015

Flatt Lane: Most of Oxton’s country lanes were built along in modern times, and all that remains of them today is perhaps their ancient routes but, thankfully, their names. Holm Lane was the first to lose its country lane appearance in modern times, and Townfield Lane is now just a road through a modern 1970’s housing estate. Flatt Lane is perhaps the lesser known of Oxton’s country lanes. It ran from the bottom of Holm Lane to the bottom of Townfield Lane at which point there was a stile over which a footpath led first through a field, then under a railway bridge and over a small footbridge across the River Fender and on to Woodchurch even into the late 1960’s.

From Townfield Lane, Flatt Lane then became Noctorum Lane. The original Flatt Lane is now, in part, Oulton Close, but there is a Flatt Lane still in Oxton. It is a residential side road off Townfield Lane and just below Oxton Cricket Club’s field, but whilst it does not follow the old lane’s original route, at least it remembers its name. Flatt (Old Norse Flatr) simply meant flat, and it was commonly used to describe fields that were “on the flat” – that is to say rather than on a slope - and therefore more easy to plough. Fields with that name can be found in many of the various mid 19th century Tithe Apportionments of the parishes within The Hundred of Wirral. Locally to Oxton, they can be found at Raby (Flatt Hey), Storeton (Flatbutts), and Noctorum (Flat). The naming of Oxton’s Flatt Lane, although perhaps never formally given, was in common use and still is today by Oxton’s oldest residents – but many of them still refer to that whole area of Oxton as The Flat Lanes!

Now and then Many parts of Oxton – perhaps, even, most of it - have changed little over time. These photographs of Poplar Road, taken a hundred years apart, are a good example. The area around Poplar Road was part of the very early 19th century residential development of Oxton, and it is probably safe to say that those who first came to live there would hardly notice the difference if they came back to visit today. There has been some modern development here, but not enough to change Poplar Road. It is today still, mostly, as it ever was.

PS: If there are any particular “now and then” images that you would like to see, please contact the History Goup

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OXTON HISTORY November 2015

Medieval Oxton:

Roger de Haselwell and Robert Bernard were attached to answer Hugh son of Cecily of Oxton for taking an ox at Oxton on 21st June last, and detaining the same at Prenton till the 25th. Robert did not come because he was in the king’s service in Wales. Roger said that he did not take the ox in Oxton. The sheriff to bring a jury to next Court on Tuesday after St Bartholomew’s Day, 15 Edward I [26th August, 1287]. Source: Cheshire County Court Rolls (transcribed by The Camden Society).

Lillian May Johnson (Lily) Born at Bromborough in 1893, her family moved to live in Oxton in the closing years of the 19th century. Here, her father easily found employment as the head gardener in one or more of the grand houses of Oxton and Noctorum. Lily would have attended the original St Saviour’s

who had been in the Royal Navy during WWI, and was present at the Battle of Jutland. Charles died in 1944, and Lily died in 1952. As a young girl of seven or eight years old, and until she first married, her family home was in one of these brick built terraced cottages on Hughes Lane.

Fernleigh

School on Storeton Road, and after her formal education (and still no more than a child by modern standards) she went into service first with the Webster family who lived at The Willows – which stood at the junction of Rose Mount and Village Road, and in the grounds of which was built the HSBC Bank in modern times (but now no longer). She was also in service for a time at the family home of Edmund Taylor at Wirral Lodge on Mount Pleasant (then known locally as ‘The Big House’).

When she was 18 years old, she married Thomas Smith from Birkenhead. Thomas was killed in action in France in 1916, but Lily married again in August 1919, at St Saviour’s parish church, Charles Samson,

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One of the families living for some time at Fernleigh on Poplar Road was that of Thomas Loud Pelling. He was a Sussex man, born in 1829, and privately educated in France and Belgium. Of course his later business interests would bring him to Liverpool in the mid 19th century and of course then to Oxton to live when his business had become well established. In 1857 he co-founded (and was the senior partner in) Pelling Stanley & Co. based in Liverpool. In the main, their business involved importing dried fruit and

OXTON HISTORY November 2015

canned food (which at the time was something of a novelty) but they became aware that a man whose business was on the west coast of America had invented an automat-

ed filling method for canning salmon – and, out of season, other fish. Pelling Stanley & Co. were importing American salmon from this cannery in Oregon by 1879, but in 1888 they decided to purchase the right to exclusively use the name of the American canning company – and the name of that company was John West. And so John West Foods became a major employer in Liverpool and something of a national institution even today. John West himself was something of a man of his times. Born in Scotland in 1809, he emigrated first to Canada as a young man (to Quebec) and trained as a millwright there before heading off into the Californian gold-fields in the 1849 gold rush. As an original forty-niner, he was one of the unlucky ones in that he didn’t find his fortune there, but he did later established a lumber company and saw-mill in Oregon on the banks of the Columbia River and then his fish cannery there. John West died in 1888 – a date significant with regard to the purchase by Pelling Stanley & Co. of the right to use his name as the brand name for their new imported product.

The Shippen A now little used alley-way that runs up from Hughes Lane into Newburns Lane alongside the Queen’s Arms. Its name is of Old English origin and simply means “a place where cows are kept”. It reminds us that the Hughes family – the original owners of the Queen’s Arms were first cow keepers and milk sellers in Oxton in the early 19th century before they became beer sellers and owners of that particular Oxton landmark. Hughes Lane was in part once owned by them, and then named after them. Just beyond The Shippen, and at the point where the lane meets Storeton Road, it was until just after WW2, gated. But the wooden gate was taken down and burned as household fuel by a local family. Clearly, the Hughes family came to believe that there was more to be made from selling beer than selling milk in Oxton, and so the Queen’s Arms became established - but the passage-way to their shippen remains until today.

notice board House for Sale: TO BE SOLD, a Detached HOUSE, at

Oxton, in the centre of a garden walled round; the situation is not surpassed in Cheshire for beauty and salubrity; two parlours, kitchen, scullery, wash-house, four bedrooms, large closet, cellar, green-house, other out-buildings, and a quarter of a Cheshire acre of land, richly covered with fruit trees. Leasehold. Rent £40 [per annum]. Price £750. H.P Priest. Market Street, Birkenhead. [Advertisement in the Liverpool Mercury, October 31st 1855]

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Correction: In Periodical 18, the address of the Curwen family was given as 32 Beresford Road, but should have read 39 Beresford Road. For further information about the History Group, or anything else that you are interested in or would like to know about Oxton’s history, contact Bob Knowles at: history@oxtonsociety.org.uk

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