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Does anyone have information about the stone-face water fountain on Poulton Hall Road?

There is about 3 tons mix of soil with concrete blocks on the pavement against the wall of the Boode Memorial, is this a bad case of fly tipping or some work is to take place?. The memorial has been cleared recently but the wall doesn't show any obvious weakness unless the base of the wall is frail.

I will take your word for it

More meat on the bone,

William Platt married Rebecca Kemp, 1898, Wirral.
William born 1871 and died 1947.

Occupations,
1911, Colliery Under Manager.
1921, Colliery Proprietor.
1939, Director, Platt Bros, Coal Merchants.

In 1945 the first of the Phoenix Bungalows (Pre-Fabs) appeared, designed by Yorkshireman Mr Jack W Gibson, Civil Engineer, who also helped build the Mulberry Port, (D-Day)

They were designated for bombed out families and returning ex servicemen, they cost £700 each and the first were placed on the land heavily bombed between Park Station and Price Street. The site was expected to hold 60 to 80 bungalows and Birkenhead expected to have about 300 in total.

On Tuesday evening the 13th of May, my family and I were driving past Brackenwood Lane and there were 6/7 Police cars and a Police van; I wonder what was going on there!

Hi diggingdeeper, thank you for your reply and the helpful information.
Kind regards

In June 1940 the Emergency committee decided that all park railings would go during the upcoming Scrap Iron week and encouraged local residents who still had railings behind hedges to come forward and have them removed.

Prior to this the local natives were angry that it appeared their railings etc were removed and anything the corporation were responsible for were still intact.

Allotment holders were upset as they felt there would be a free for all, no protection from theft.

Peter Sullivan has been released after 38 years, his conviction for the murder of Diane Sindall was overturned. There should be a fast track release system where overwhelming scientific or other absolute comes to light, this was known about before November last year and could have been found many years earlier.

His compensation claim could be in the region of £3M+ if he uses representation.

Hi Bert 1. here is more first hand knowledge. When war was declared the first sign we had was some Royal welsh soldiers turning up on Cannon Hill in the park and pointing two twin Vickers machine guns at the sky .Planes would have to fly very low to be hit it was more of a moral booster perhaps. They soon moved on and where replaced by a Balloon crew which were mostly W.A.A.F.S. They managed to lose the balloon one day it took off into the sky and came down somewhere around Patten st. The cannons on Cannon hill were taken away for scrap to help the war effort along with all the park railings

The wirral waters site was equally uninformative.

It seems the plan is to hide what they are up to until its built and then claim we didn't disagree with it at the planning stage.

One of the many committees debated a proposal put forward that any house or dwelling demolished by bombing should be rebuilt on the same site and the occupier given preference to move back in and live in their own community.

There was opposition to this, an example given, if we rebuild a 3/4 bedroom house and it previously had a single occupancy and we have families that are homeless who would fill it, they should have priority. It was decided it would be looked at on a case by case basis.

There are a few projects under way around West Float, the Finsa warehousing and the automotive parts specialist business centre is still on the cards I think. Peel as owners of the land are the ones to look at under the Wirral Waters project.

https://www.wirralwaters.co.uk/industrial/

In April 1918 Mr W Webb Shennan, Birkett Scheme engineer reported fourteen and a half miles of river, main drains and ditches had been cleared and deepened.
250 prisoners had carried out the work and owing to the recent heavy rainfall which has been a good test, the project has been successful.

What is planned here?

The ground has been cleared and pile drivers have appeared so I suspect it won't be just a load of 2/3 bedroom houses. Apartments again maybe? Or even ofice blocks?

If the local council's vile planning website were not to user brutal I'd look myself, but I feel I'm too old for the stress.

Wild guess but despite there being no shortage of steam shovels and dragline cranes in industrial east Wirral I can't see prisoners-of war in the WW1 having access to them.

140 men is quite a large task force but as they did their own support services (cooking, washing, supervision etc) it may account for only one yard per man per day which doesn't sound much for what is essentially forced labour. Also they may have been disposing of waste some distance, I can't imagine they would risk much of it flowing into the Great Culvert.

Thanks for that DD, I forgot about it being a sewer. It must have been very unpleasant labour, perhaps it was thought no more than they deserve. I wonder if they had some sort of a Jurassic JCB or in you go boys start digging.

This was while the Birkett still flowed into the Great Culvert which was a combined river and sewage tunnel to divert sewage away from the docks, both the Fender and the Birkett were open sewers. The Birkett had been channelised around when the Great Culvert was built in 1846 although for some time there was still an outflow at Poulton, this underwent further changes when Bidston Dock was built around 1933.

By 1999 the Birkett was no longer a sewer (other than overflows) and was diverted back to its former route going into the West Float dock system with the assistance of a lift pump. The Great Culvert then became a sewage and surface water tunnel feeding the new treatment works at Morpeth Dock.

In 1917 the government had plans to lay down another 3 million acres to corn. The Wirral Wartime Agricultural sub committee realised 2,000 acres had diminished productivity along the course of the River Birkett due to weeds, rush grass and silt. It fell in to this state because private landowners had never done anything about it. The committee applied to the government for German prisoners of war to do the clearing of the Birkett. The government obliged and about 140 prisoners were sent, the majority had been captured at Vimy Ridge. Initially they were going to be kept in huts at Moreton, the Army having looked around decided to billet them at Leasowe Castle.

Work started near to Bidston Station and the prisoners wore their own uniforms, on the front left trouser leg and the back right trouser leg red patches were sewn, overcoats were provided by the government and had a blue patch sewn on the back. They were guarded by 8 armed British soldiers. They were kept in order by their own NCO's. No trouble was reported and they cleared about 150 yards a day.

Now doing a trial on collecting recycling clean flexible plastics like bags etc. This is while heavy items like microwave ovens, computers and other metal items have no collection facility and routinely go to landfill.

A recycling company would probably pay the Council to be licensed to collect items like computers, microwaves and metals placed beside bins on collection day.

Thanks Joney, handy to have first hand knowledge.

I was reading about a shop damaged by the bombing in Chester St, 1941. The shopkeeper had to vacate, children effectively broke in and one particular lad went back twice. They were caught and the parents had to pay compensation to the shop owner. The lad who went in twice got 6 strokes of the birch.

I remember when shop windows were broken they were boarded up and a glass panel left in the middle so people could still look in. There was not enough glass to repair them properly.

If he had his windows blown in, The Electricity Committee in 1941 decided if the windows were boarded up and artificial light was being used during the day the rate would be 1d per unit as opposed to the usual rate of 3-3/4d per unit.

Dad's house in Wallasey had a bomb land in his garden. He was away . Not sure when, probably the May blitz.
33, Penkett Road.

Liverpool Echo,

New facts now disclosed, 1944.

Up to 1944 £600,000 spent on repairs to moderately damaged houses and still a large number of houses beyond first aid repairs.

In 1939 Birkenhead had 37,727 houses, flats and shops, 2,079 demolished by enemy action and over 26,000 damaged.
25,000 have received first aid repairs. These do not include properties that have suffered broken windows.
It is estimated 1,000,000 square feet of glass has been used since November 1941.