Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request Wirral ship canal

Some time back, there was a mention in one of the history threads of the ship canal that was proposed in the 1820s to cross Wirral from West Kirby to Wallasey Pool. I can’t remember in which thread this was mentioned. Can anyone help?

I think Nightwalker said he was doing some research on it. It was originally a scheme by Thomas Telford, if I'm not mistaken, and funded by John Tobin & William Laird. A survey was conducted for it but it never went ahead.

I believe that one of the original options / plans for the Manchester Ship Canal was for it to come across the Wirral and come into the Dee Estuary.

W.R.S McIntrye published a detailed article on the scheme in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lanc.& Cheshire (1972). Available for just a quid if you're interested.

Visit the society's website.

I think I asked whether there had been a topic on the canal a few months ago. Apparently there hasn’t been so I started doing a bit of digging and have found a surprising amount of info about a project which never happened.

Basically, the plans were drawn up by Thomas Telford in 1828 to build a canal between Wallasey Pool and the River Dee at West Kirby roughly following the course of the River Birket. The plans included the building of a dock complex at the Wallasey/Birkenhead end. If the proposals had been implemented the canal would have completely transformed the topography and history of North Wirral. When Liverpool Corporation found out about the plans they realised that they would have a detrimental effect on their own docks and immediately started buying up land around Wallasey Pool to scupper the plans of Telford and his partners. This in turn affected Birkenhead’s history as the land lay undeveloped until money was found to build the Birkenhead dock system (first part opened in 1847).

I plan to put an article about it on wiki but if there’s anything particular that you’re interested in, let me know.

Wish I'd known that, geekus, I could have saved myself a lot of effort!!

They'll have it in the reference library at Earlston Rd., Wallasey, or Borough Rd., Birkenhead if you ask. It's got a few maps/plans if you're interested.

this may be of interest

Great map but it's from an earlier scheme. This one's unrelated to the scheme outlined by Nightwalker.

Think the date of 1820 is an error.

The map above actually dates from the 1790's, not 1820.

I know very little of the Wirral canal and look forward to learning more, i seem to remember reading that its intentions was to allow safer passage from the Dee to the Mersey without having to navigate dangerous sandbanks by going around, was the introduction of steam also a reason for not carrying out such a scheme.

The original canal scheme was more to do with people on the Cheshire coast not wanting to pay the hefty port duties imposed on shipping by the Liverpool authorities.

Thanks for all the responses so far - it's an interesting topic.

Why not just build a port on this side of the river, why would they need a canal to achieve that?