WIRRAL TIME TRAVEL
BY ANDREW WOOD
BEBINGTON BELOW THE SKIN
With precious few exceptions Wirral is singularly lacking
in imposing examples or ancient or even moderately old
architecture. In the case of Bebington the most imposing
exception is St Andrew’s parish church, which dates from
the 14th and 16th centuries and stands on the site of a Saxon
church.
If we are to connect with and envision our shared past, we
must treasure the few remaining examples of modest, domestic
buildings and both the natural shape and man-made features of
the landscape. What kindled my desire to connect on a deeper
level with the place where I live was the largely unremarked and
unresisted destruction of Church Farm in Bromborough Road,
Bebington.
The farm probably took its name because it occupied glebe
lands which were associated with St Andrew’s. The farmhouse
and yard had survived long after the farmland had been built
on. Within living memory it had been used as a coal yard. For
some years the two-storey house had been left empty and the
yard overgrown. The two-storey house was not attractive to
look at. However, when its demolition began, to make way for
yet another high-density apartment development, the farm
house’s grey pebble-dash fell away revealing the original Keuper
Sandstone, that had probably come from Storeton Quarry. By
then it was too late, if anyone had cared, to save another part of
our heritage from destruction.
For millenia, the Wirral was completely rural; soft, productive
farmland punctuated by scattered farmsteads and small
settlements. No more than six churches - at Wallasey,
Overchurch, West Kirby, Woodchurch and Bebington - were
required to provide for the spiritual needs of its pre-Conquest
population. Some 500 years later, John Speed’s 1610 map of
Cheshire records only one additional church, at Thursaston.
The heavily built-up Wirral of today dates back no further than
the second half of the 19th century and its development only
really got into its stride after the Great War, as evidenced by the
considerable number of semi-detached houses on the ‘Sunshine
House’ model, so called because, with windows front and back
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and on one side, they provide much greater amounts of daylight
than terraced houses.
One hundred and fifty years is only two or three generations
yet, with Church Farm gone there are no more than twenty
buildings of that age or older left in the village. In addition to
St Andrew’s, they include the much-photographed ‘Willow
Cottage’ in Bebington Road, ‘Heath Cottage’ (the oldest part
of which dates to 1750 or even earlier) at the bottom of Heath
Road, and the “Rose & Crown” inn and the charming ‘Parkview’
terrace (1832) in The Village. The slightly disjointed row of
houses in Toleman Avenue comes into this age group, as do the
four houses in the unadopted dead-end lane off The Grove.
The owner of the nearest of the houses to The Grove told the
author that its sandstone walled cellar and ground floor pre-
date the upper floors. Across in Acres Road, where it bends
sharply left then right, the two single-storey cottages and
the adjoining two-storey house (occupied at one time by the
schoolmaster of the original St Andrew’s School, which stood
where Acreville Road is now) are all over 170 years old. In
the short length of The Village before it becomes Bebington
Road, the “Wellington Inn” and the rear parts of the invaluable
Tapley’s art and craft shop (No.6 The Village) and the adjoining
cottage (No.4) are of similar vintage.
All of these buildings are marked on the Tithe Map of 1844.
There were, at that time, only about seventy buildings in
the whole of Lower Bebington, (sometimes called Nether
Bebington). The church was isolated to the south-east of the
core of the village, which clustered around the junction of
Heath Road and The Village. It has been speculated that the
Heath was common land on which animals were grazed. The
boundaries of the settlement were effectively Townsend Lane
to the east, Richmond Hill to the north, Green Lane to the west
and the junction of Church Road and Bromborough Road to
the south.
Among the vanished buildings of the village are ‘Oaklands’,
which lay on the north side of Richmond Hill, and bequeathed
its name to Oaklands Drive, and ‘The Acres’ which, conversely,