Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History SHAME ON YOU, WIRRAL COUNCIL

To set the record straight, not rendered in Bidston, ALL chiselled, the bit in the pics is whitewashed/painted! Trust me, only ever seen steel sheeting in bidston!

Got it, my last piccie was a the start of a corrrugated steel section, they infilled/encapped the start of these the same as at tranmere.

I am still a bit curious about the brickwork going beyond the ceiling in the forground of the picture.

Thanks for input hoseman.

That picture is interesting. Would be good to look at it full-size, as the point you make about the junction of the wall/roof is a valid one. I can see what Hoseman is saying about steel sheets & infill, but the roof in the foreground looks as if it's been rendered. If whoever took this pic. could post it full size, it would be interesting.

Cheers, Chris.

In side bidston maybe this might help you

Thanks, Robbo, but it's that particular picture I wanted.

witch 1 i might have 1 similar to it

This is the original

The first 1 is better i hope this will help you

hows those too dude better 4 you bigger pics

Thanks, Robbo; the second one of those pics is the same as the earlier picture, the first is of a different location.
I can see now that what looked as if it might be render, was in fact just the white sandstone. It seems as though they took a lot of trouble cutting in the brickwork to the roof as well.
The first pic. shows that the concrete roof arch was constructed using timber formwork, not, as I had suspected, corrugated iron sheets backfilled. I guess they must have found some sandstone which was too soft or unstable; we know that these tunnels were never completed owing to the nature of the ground they encountered.

cool nice to help dude

Thanks Robbo - yes Chris, I'll go with that, some scouse brickies performing magic there, it really looked like it was undercut/overlapped. Also the concrete certainly looks like pure cement base and not asbestos.

I had seen the asbestos quote for Tranmere Tunnels elsewhere, but looks like it is only in a small section as the article said which is good news all round.

That sandstone must be very hard, looks like a similar finish to granite tunnels. Around me there is a lot of sandstone but it's more like a bag of wet flour!

So if we had a choice of which tunnel to open to the public first, which one would it be? I would probably vote for Tranmere, especially with the Cammel Lairds name being back in the horizon this could be a strong association to help promote and finance.

Maybe not with new houses being built ontop of them?

As I undrstood it, I thought there was more than one entrance to them?

I'd go with Tranmere Tunnels aswell personally, from the pictures we saw of them, they seem much more intact than the Bidston Tunnels, although I have no idea of how big they are in terms of scale by comparisson.

True it would be better to open bidston at the back entrance would be safer


This 1

Yes, there are 3 perfectly viable entrances to Tranmere tunnels. They are somewhat bigger than the Bidston ones; a total of 1.25 miles of tunnel with a capacity for over 6000. Condition-wise, I think there's not much to choose, since both have been extensively vandalised over the years.
The fact that housing is now built over the Tranmere tunnels hardly matters, since the tunnels are about 80 feet below. The tunnels were built under existing houses in the first place.
The Laird's connection might prove useful, if the current owners of Laird's were reminded how many of their workers took refuge there during the war.

Who's going to go & thump on some council desk???

Cheers, Chris.