Does anyone remember the prefabs on the Shorefields in New Ferry?
I remember going past these to get to the shore.....the shore was nice then with lovely sand!..........there was a path that ran down the side of the prefabs to get there, when i think back now it reminded me of a shanty town!
When they all became empty we used to play in them and rip the paper off the walls,that was our vandalisim of the day! just harmless!!
i don't remember them being pulled down, well i was quite young at the time!! mum always told me not to go down to the shore because there were bad men down there!! but we still went,and i never saw any bad men!!!!
and new ferry baths....we used to bunk in there through the side gate that went round and round, when we got in we would run like hell to the park area incase someone saw us!!
the smallpox hospital was behind the baths, it was closed then,you could see into the part that backed onto the baths,must of been the kitchens because you could see dish's pilled up in the window's.
anyone else have memeories of this??
Chris.

I remember prefabs in a few places but don't remember them around new ferry, any chance of telling me where they were in relation to what is there now, please.

hi dd the prefabs in new ferry were on shorefields.

shorefields is the grass thats still there now just before the housing estate that is built on the site of new ferry baths, the prefabs were there in the 50s till early 60s

if you go down New Ferry Rd towards the Great Eastern pub...which is now closed....then turn right, there is a big field..shorefields...that's were they were.

Thanks for that, I thought it might have been to left of the pub. The name shorefields and mayfields referred to different parts of that area but I always get mixed up which is which. What do they call the sports field these days?

Hello, I've only just found this forum whilst looking for period images and stories about New Ferry where I live. I am currently building a new website for the community to replace the old one which we had. The new site is at www.newferryonline.org.uk

Since I live at Shorefields, the field is a particular facination of mine. I first came to live here in 1988, so the pre fabs had long gone. Last week, I spoke to a resident in Merseybank Road, Joyce Wharton, who was a child living there during the war years.

She told me that Polish soldiers manned the anti aircraft guns on Shorefields, and she remembers the barracks which housed them. She and her friends used to go to talk to the Poles. She also remembers the barrage balloons which were tethered from the field (and more around the entrance to Bromborough Dock nearby). The last Luftwaffe air raid on Merseyside was in January 1942, so by the end of the year when the threat of attacks had subsided, the guns and the soldiers left. The barrack buildings were then turned into temporary accommodation for people who had been bombed out. By the time the war ended, pre fabs had been erected on the field to make more homes for bombed families. She sent me a photo of the VE day celebrations in Merseybank Road which runs behind Shorefields.

On our new website, you can also see some more memories about the swimming baths, and the full story about them.

Could I please have your permission to use your memories about the prefabs and the pool as quoted on this thread on our website? Many thanks.

Walked the dog there this morning after reading your thread. Met two old boys that live there & they remember playing footie with Polish POW's who were only guarded by a couple of soldiers. Also took some photos of the area including the shore & the remains of the isolation hospital. Thanks for the idea!

Polish POWs????? I think they are mistaken!!! Poland was our ally, not our enemy. The Poles were soldiers who managed to escape Europe to get to Britain. They pitched in and helped our own forces defend this country. As at Shorefields, the Poles manned the guns - probably with some British soldiers supporting them. There was a squadron of Polish pilots stationed at Speke who flew Hurricanes and shot down attacking Luftwaffe bombers. I think your old boys must be a little confused, or else you must have misunderstood what they were saying. Shorefields was never a POW camp, the military records can verify that.

I am sure they were confused as I always the Poles were "goodies" but I did not want to confuse them any more as they were nice old guys.

Polish PoW's !!!

They were on our side, unlike some other nearby countries that were not quite sure.

I think the confusion is probably because some German PoW camps were re-used to accommodate Polish displaced persons after the war, certainly this was the case at Weston, near Crewe ( Weston PoW Camp ) - which is well worth a visit because it's still there, very intact.

During the war we used to holiday in Engelsea Brook which was about a mile from the camp. Some of the local farmers had help from the German POW's; I remember seeing them at work.

Was it? Does anyone know how the pier part has gotten so rocky and muddy since?

Some years ago, I was told that it was the building of the silting ponds at the mouth of the River Dibbin/Bromborough Pool in the 1930s (since used as the Bromborough Landfill) that caused the sand to disappear from the New Ferry shoreline and be replaced with the mud that is there now. The silting ponds/landfill area jutting out into the river had an effect on the water flows along the shoreline, depositing mud brought downriver from higher up the estuary and from the Manchester Ship Canal.

As for all the brick rubble strewn around the mudflats today - I was told there used to be a brick wall along the top of the cliffs at Shorefields. This was demolished in the latter half of the last century, and the bricks thrown down the cliffs. However, I think it is more likely that they were discarded along the shoreline when the New Ferry brickworks were operating for over half a century. They were roughly where the water treatment works are now next to Mayfields, New Ferry. Before the silting ponds were built in the 1930s, there was a brick works on the shoreline and ships used to come up to the side of the river to export the bricks over to Liverpool for building purposes.

The concrete blocks and other rubble have come from unscrupulous individuals and some local companies dumping them over the cliffs for the last 20 years or so.

There is a super site at http://maps.cheshire.gov.uk/tithemaps/Default.aspx. In the postcode box, type in my postcode CH62 1BS and then navigate the map in a south/south east direction and you will see the brickworks showing very clearly on the 1910 map against the former shoreline.

I was told by my grandad that they had to move the three big guns (anti aircraft guns) off shorefields as they where causing the clifs to crumble into the mersey and causing damage to the local homes (windows braking each time they fired) he also said that they replaced them with 'dummy guns' (as he put it) incase anyone flew over, they would still think they where real.

Hmm, The huts on the shorefields were first used to house the troops who manned the AA guns, then the last year of the war they were used to house the Italian prisoners of war, then they were later used as by the local council for people who were on the waiting list for council houses, ( my Aunt and uncle and 2 cousins lived in them for a short time).

I was chatting to my mother who was a teenager living in New Ferry towards the end of the war, having moved from liverpool after their house was bombed, but those germans followed them and bombed a house a few doors up from them in Napier rd
( I remember the place at the bottom of Napier rd , and every bonfire night they had a masive bonfire on that waste land).

Also my mother told me that some of the local girls married the Italian pow's after the war.

OH btw does anyone know the story of Wallases pit, it was to the left of the bridge where the bypass is now.. looking towards the toll bar....

its a spooky tale ;-)

OH btw does anyone know the story of Wallases pit, it was to the left of the bridge where the bypass is now.. looking towards the toll bar....

its a spooky tale ;-)


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know i dont do tell

Hi Sue,
I wouldnt do it justice from what I remember of it, so I will pop round and have a chat with my mum at the weekend.

ok, look forward to hearing the story

i've never heard of it either!! waiting to hear about it!!

Wallases pit!

On a dark foggy winters night, you could hear the sound of the fog horns in the distance coming from the river.
other than that there was a deadly silence,
the fog was so thick that you could only see 2 foot ahead of you.

Then the sound of a horse and cart could just be heard crossing the back field near Wallases Pit,
there was a a sceech of a horse in terror! then silence!

This was the story told to some of the kids living in New Ferry in the winter of 1940,
weather it was told to keep the kids away from the deep black pond that was between the Nursery and Salsbury drive,
its not known but my mothers Uncle told her that the pond was so deep they never found the horse and cart.

The Nursery school was setup to look after children while their parents were working in the factories for the War effort,
Then after the war it became the Sea cadet huts, and in the 60's the Bebington youth club was built to the rear of the Huts.

The area of Wallases pit has now gone when the bypass was built,
so i guess we will never know! but if your coming home accross that bridge after a drink or two in the ferry on a dark winters night,
and the fog starts coming in !
Well i would run like sh&t and bolt the door when i got home..

Interesting story, thanks for that. I had never heard of wallases pit , anybody know of it or got any old maps, DD or Derek.

Wallases pit appears to be a clay pit that was dug at sometime between 1882 and 1900, on the 1875 maps there is a house called Derby Villa on a corner of the site, here are some maps from 1920, 1938 and 1954 respectively.

Thanks DD, that was quick . Knew could rely on you .

Still searching for info, I am trying to find the name of the different brickworks around there, if one was called Wallase or Wallace it would tie in nicely.

There was a prominent person called John Wallace seemed to be involved in the openings of new buildings such as churches.

Hi Dd,
Thanks for the Maps,

Not too sure how the name was spelt , as its been passed down by word of mouth.
would it be possible to see more of the top map as i have been told a veg and flower trader lived to the north of the map, on the corner of Napier rd, its thought he used a horse and cart for his wares, and was a hawker.

Btw: where can get a copy of the top map ?

@genlock - I made a mistake, the top map is about 1912 not 1920, I will open a new thread for Napier Road, this one is already getting a bit variegated.

If you want to pay a visit then PM me.

Whilst helping out with the exhibition and talks about the Bromborough Ju88 incident of 8th October 1940 at Fort Perch Rock the other week, I met a lady who used to live at Pollitt Square during the 1940s. She has confirmed that Poles manned the guns on Shorefields during the early 1940s and during the blitz. By 1943 when the threat of bombing by the Luftwaffe had long since receded, the guns were taken away.

At the end of the war, some GERMAN pow's were housed in the barracks on the site. Since the war was over, the barracks were not surrounded with barbed wire, and the POWs were allowed out into the community during the daytime and evening as long as they reported back to the barracks by a certain curfew time. They often went to help out on local farms etc (this was quite common with POWs across the country in the latter years of the war). Many German POWs were kept in this country until the early 1950s, in many cases because they did not want to return to what was then Soviet-controlled East Germany.

The lady from Pollitt Square told how one of the young German fellows actually asked her older sister out on a date one evening in 1946. Her mother "agreed" to it - because he seemed so polite - and after bringing her safely back home, the fellow even wrote to the mother complimenting her daughter's manners. The lady says she still has that letter he sent to her mother stored somewhere in her current home in Wallasey.

The German POWs were welcomed in their home the following christmas and shared christmas dinner with them. They stayed in New Ferry until the end of 1947 and eventually were sent elsewhere, probably back home.

It was after this that the barrack huts were subsequently used to temporarily house families who had lost their homes in the bombing. Residents have told me that the buildings were eventually demolished in the early 1970s, and replaced with the grass that is there today.

Genlock, I am wondering about my previous post (above). You mention Italian POWs, but the lady I met said they were Germans. I wonder if she was mistaken. Or, were various types of Axis prisoners kept there? Could have been both. An interesting conundrum