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STORETON TRAMWAY
BY ANDREW WOOD
In 1837-38, the railway engineer Thomas Brassey created a gravity
tramway for Sir Thomas Massey Stanley of Hooton Park, to take the
fine red sandstone from the Storeton quarries to Bromborough Pool
where it could be loaded on to barges. The route of the tramway was
surveyed by a Mr Henry Hayes (who was probably a Cheshire man),
and the earthworks were carried out by the contractor Mr Joseph
Jones of Liverpool.
During the 1820’s, Brassey had met George Stephenson, who was then
building the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and Stevenson had
decided to use Storeton sandstone in the construction of the Sankey
Viaduct at Newton-le-Willows. This structure was a major engineering
challenge, requiring a durable sandstone with high compressive and
shear strengths. It seems possible that Stephenson told Brassey that he
was intending to replace the original iron rails of the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway, as they were not strong enough for busy, regular
traffic, and that Brassey offered to buy them to use for the tramway.
At the 40 foot (12 metres) deep North Quarry, which was leased by a
Mr Walker, a tramway line ran along the bottom of the quarry. After
being loaded with blocks of sandstone by crane, the wagons would join
the tramway’s main line, using a turntable, before being hitched to two
horses and heading off along an embankment some 300 yards (274.3
metres) long towards a crossing at Rest Hill Road, where the crossing
keeper would swing wooden gates across the road to allow the train of
wagons to pass.
The tramway then ran through a cutting in Hancock’s Wood and
through the 60 yards (54.8 metres) long Mount Road tunnel, the
biggest engineering construction on the tramway. After the tunnel,
the line ran past the Jackie’s Wood quarry. There, at a passing loop,
the horses were unhitched before the wagons descended by gravity
to the quay at Bromborough Pool. On the first edition (1910) 1 inch
Ordnance Survey map, Jackie’s Wood Quarry is labelled simply
as ‘Brown and White Stone Quarries’ but whether this is purely
descriptive or a record of the quarry’s legal name is not clear. Today,
the infilled site of the quarry can be identified as an area of open
grassland beyond another wall of Storeton stone, to the east of Mount
Road and north of Bunker’s Hill. Trains from the quarries were
probably no more than four wagons. Roger Jermy in his 1981 book
‘The Storeton Tramway’ described two types of wagon, each 7 feet 6
inches (2.28 metres) long and 6 feet (1.82 metres) wide, flat decked for
carrying large slabs of stone, and ‘cauldron like’ for crushed stone or
small blocks. To this day if you walk along the dead-straight path on
the west side of the north wood (where the tramway ran) you can see
the remains of sandstone slabs which fell off wagons when they slid off
a wagon where the tramway curved sharply to approach the tunnel.
Today the north wood is owned by the Woodland Trust.
78 wirrallife.com
The tramway ran through green fields (which would all be built on
in the 20th century) in a sweeping curve towards Bromborough. At
Bracken Lane there was another gated crossing with the gatekeepers
cottage on the south side of the road. The third gated crossing was at
Cross Lane, Bebington. From here onward much of the route of the
tramway can no longer be seen as it has been obliterated by housing.
The final crossing, at Church Road, had no gates but a crossing keeper
was employed to warn pedestrians and carts if a train was coming. The
present Quarry Road and Quarry Road East in Bromborough are so
named because they follow the alignment of the tramway. The original
tunnel under the Chester to Birkenhead railway line is still in use as a
footpath opposite the end of Quarry Road East.
By 1906, the Bebington White Freestone Quarry was leased by a
Mr Charles Wells, of whom nothing is known. In 2012, while site
preparation for a new building was going on at Bebington Boys
Grammar School, a sharp-eyed boy discovered that some of the
tramway’s rails and sleepers had been unearthed by the builders, who
had not realised what they were. They were some of the original ‘fish-
bellied’ rails from the Liverpool and Manchester railway. The rails,
which each weighed 35 pounds (15.87 kilograms) and were 4 feet 2
inches (1.3 metres) long, would have been bedded on square stone
blocks with four iron spikes driven into oak pegs inserted in holes
drilled in the stone. Two of the rails have been sited on the alignment
in Scott’s Wood at the point where the tramway curved round to pass
through the original tunnel under Mount Road.
Quarrying at North Quarry had finished by the 1890’s and the tramway
was removed, but the South Quarry and Jackie’s Wood Quarry on the
other side of Mount Road continued in use. The last wagon to use the
line was in 1905, after which the tramway was abandoned although the
rails remained in place. The disused South Quarry was filled-in in the
1920’s using material excavated during the building of the Birkenhead
Mersey Tunnel. The rock also went to reclaim the foreshore and create
a promenade at Otterspool on the Liverpool side of the Mersey.
Jackie’s Wood Quarry remained until it and Scott’s Quarry were filled,
this time with stone from the construction of the Wallasey Mersey
Tunnel. During the Second World War the Mount Road tunnel was
converted, apparently on his own initiative by a Mr Jacques, a local
man, who fitted it out with bunks and a protective door. Also during
the May Blitz of 1941, the Liverpool Customs House, built of sandstone
from Storeton, was heavily damaged by German fire bombs which
gutted the interior and destroyed its dome. Sa dly, the badly damaged
building was demolished shortly after the end of the War. Some rubble
from blitzed buildings in Liverpool is believed to have been tipped
into the quarry so, ironically, it is possible that stone originally from
Storeton may have been returned there as rubble.