Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request The Bonks of Birkenhead park?

Now now, settle down. Before this turns into Carry On Birkenhead I was just wondering if anybody knew anything about the burial mounds in Birkenhead Park. They were called the Bonks and were supposed to have been used as a boundary between Claughton and Birkenhead.

Any ideas? Any thoughts? Sid James cackle not compulsory...



Pea

Part 2 Chapter 1 - Third Manx ScrapbookIt may be noted, however, that children used to roll Easter eggs on Easter Monday down the Bonks, two prehistoric burial mounds in Birkenhead Park. ...
www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/scrap3/ch21.htm - 67k - Cached - Similar pages

Cheers for that Bert.

Weird how there seems to be so little about them. I wonder why no one has ever excavated them?

Darent google 'bonks' ! Whereabouts are they?

According to Hilda Gamlin's book "Memories of Birknhead" c1890, the Bonks were grassy mounds inside the railings in Ashville Road. The hillocks proved such a popular playground that the grass was destroyed, they became unsightly and were levelled. There is no mention of them being burial mounds. There was a bronze age axe head found when the park was built.

Most accounts refer the area as being a "foul smelling marsh" before the park was built and that the mounds where built from the spoil taken out when the lakes were dug.

I will see if I can find any more information on the burials.

Hmmm, I've a feeling that these are just soil mounds. Shame though. Imagine if we had our own "Calderstones" to unearth in Birkenhead Park!

Its a huge wonder why nobody continued the search for a bronze age settlement.. "Me thinks get tony robinson on the case" could find something very intresting underneath Birkenhead Park

Interesting. I've never heard of these "Bonks", but I thought that the word itself was local to the Black Country, where it means a bank or hill, so it seems to have the same meaning here.

It's such a pity most finds of that era ended up in storage in places like Liverpool and Chester or worse discarded as rubbish because anything pre-Roman wasn't considered "history".
Because of the bombings of Liverpool library etc during the war so much of Wirral history has been lost and due the expansion of urban areas since the war I think we'd be lucky to find anything else.

read in same book about smugglers cave that there was an area in Heswall or Neston/Parkgate known as the Bonks