W HISTORY
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seems to have taken its name from the pre-existing Acres Road.
‘Greenbank’, another large and attractive house, which used to
stand in the part of Meyer Park through which Townfield Lane
runs, has left more solid evidence in the form of the miniscule
Lodge on the south side of The Grove, and a raised area in the
park where its tennis court once stood.
The land climbs from Bebington village towards the Storeton
ridge, which is over 164 feet (50 metres) above sea level, a rise
of some 66 feet in 1,640 yards (20 metres in 1.5 kilometres).
Historically, it appears that before the Enclosure Acts the Town
Field, the second of the large open fields related to the village
would have stretched over at least the area now occupied by
the Cemetery and the Cricket Ground, Higher Bebington
Recreation Ground and Bebington High Sports College.
While the Town Field could have supported crops, it is more
likely that the Heath Field, at a higher elevation, more exposed
to the weather and largely clay, would have been used for
grazing. By 1844, however, as a result of the enclosures the
village was surrounded by a counterpane of relatively small
hedged fields.
In the opposite direction from the junction with The Village,
Bebington Road curved eastward, passing an isolated group
of houses at Primrose Hill (where Duke of York Cottages now
stand) on its way to The Pasture, as New Ferry was called
until the pier and ferry service were opened in 1865. George
Stephenson’s Birkenhead and Chester railway is shown on
the Tithe Map, having been opened four years earlier. It is
interesting to note that, as this map was principally concerned
with the ownership and acreage of land, the area of land
occupied by the railway is marked, but not the tracks or the
bridge that carries them over Bebington Road. The Storeton
tramway, opened in 1838, that carried sandstone from the
Storeton quarries to a quay on Bromborough Pool, is given its
original name of ‘Sir W S M Stanley’s Railway’. We can infer that
a stream shown running parallel to Old Chester Road before
disappearing under Bebington Road and emerging south of
Primrose Hill as a tributary of Bromborough Pool, is the Ash
Brook which gives its name to ‘Ashbrook Terrace’ not far from
the station.
By the time the NW Quarter of the ‘Denbigh and Wirral’
map in the 1” to 1 mile Ordnance Survey map was revised in
1859, Thomas Brassey’s arrow-straight New Chester Road had
appeared to the east of the Birkenhead and Chester railway, but
Lower Bebington had grown little since the Tithe Map had been
surveyed. However, the Second Edition OS map of 1899 shows
that, by then, Bebington had acquired a number of large houses
surrounded by generous gardens.
The incumbent of St Andrew’s had been provided with a new
Rectory opposite the church and had moved out of Bebington
Hall (which was purchased by Bebington Urban District
Council for use as offices and finally demolished in the 1950s).
In addition, there were a number of semi-detached villas in
Higher Bebington Road, Church Road, Bromborough Road and
Wellington Road. The middle class had arrived in the village.
On the 1899 OS map it is impossible to miss, to the east of
the Chester railway, William Lever’s Sunlight Soap Works,
Gladstone Hall and the first phase of Port Sunlight village
between the factory and Bolton Road. Although the Storeton
Tramway, which ran parallel to the imposing facade of the
factory offices, was already marked as ‘disused’ on the 1899
map, it would be another thirteen years before Lord Leverhulme
succeeded in buying and removing it.
It is often noted that Bebington is not mentioned in
the Domesday Book and, oddly enough, Map 38 in the
Barthomew’s Touring Atlas of the British Isles, published in
1900, names Port Sunlight and even Trafalgar at the bottom
of Quarry Road East, yet the name Bebington is omitted
altogether. Within another forty years, however, Bebington
would be sufficiently enlarged with new housing that it would
be impossible for any map-maker to ignore.
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