Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request Leasowe Road - Solar Campus/Heyes Drive

Does anyone have information or pics regarding the area on which Heyes Drive, the Solar Campus, Links View Garage and the surrounding fields (all just off Leasowe Road) used to be? I've had a good scout around your site (seriously addictive I must admit) but haven't had any luck finding anything. If there's stuff on here that I've somehow managed to miss can someone please direct me towards it.

I believe it was a brickworks at some point, all the crap I've dug up in my garden is testament to this but I want to know more.

Thanks

hi m8,on a map dated 1898 it has a brick works marked on it.hard to say where it was exactly but looks like where the solar campus is,hope thats of use to you.

I concur... Wallasey Brickworks was where Solar Campus is.

I'm going to take a guess and say the links view fields have always been fields... sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong though!

Maps of the area circa 1842, 1875, 1910 and modern. Credit for the maps goes to Cheshire Records Office and their Tithe Map website.

I've just been studying the maps from the Cheshire Records Office (cheers greasby_lad) and on the Ariel view from 1970 it looks as though the brickworks, or at least the remainder of the brickworks, was still present. The entrance to Heyes Drive looks to be the entrance to the Brickworks, which is between the houses on Leasowe Road that are still there today. I believe the houses on Heyes Drive were built in the early 70's but can't be certain.

Also interesting to see in the surrounding areas on the OS c1910 map is the Isolation Hospital. This may sound like a soft question but what was that?

I've also noticed that two wells existed on and near the site of the church and primary school just off Gardenside. Interesting stuff.

back in the 90's or early "noughties", there were some cast iron posts in the overgrown bit next to the link road - not sure if they're still there though....

I could be wrong on this - I presume that the Isolation Hospital on the 1910 map was the Leasowe Open Air Hospital for tuberculosis patients (TB was known as 'consumption' although this may have been only in its later stages).

Cheers bazzoh. I'm going to have a mooch around the area hopefully tomorrow, if I can get an early dart from work, and see if I can find owt.

I must compliment you on the pictures on your Flickr page, especially those of the fire at the Twenty Row (The pub I met my missus) and some excellent pictures of the buildings around Liverpool. Thanks again.

I may also be wrong but I think that's the Open Air Hospital, which was situated further down Leasowe Road opposite Moreton Common.

i agree, i think this is the one near to reeds lane - another building destroyed by fire after being refused (initially) planning permission....thats another thread though!

baz

ps thanks for the comments on the picies!

I can't find any other hospitals in Leasowe on the maps.

There's already a thread on Leasowe Hospital with an artist's impression of how the architect intended it to look.

I'm glad that I started my earlier entry with "I could be wrong about this ..." I've now found the Leasowe TB Hospital at SJ261915 and this aerial view from the 1970s -

The brickworks was Barker & Jones. Their main "brand" of brick was called Autumntint. Many Wallasey houses were built with that brick, including mine in 1955. It was a c**p brick. Either the clay was poor or the firing process was wrong because the bricks lack strength and are very prone to frost damage if they became damp ie the patterned face falls off. Look at many of the garden walls around the area and you will see what I mean. I think the brickworks closed in the early 60s and I remember being told (by one of the Jones side of the business) that it was because the clay had run out.

As a lad I remember being warned never to go near the lime pits that were somewhere in the area of that brickworks - but of course we did because it was fun throwing old bricks into the sloppy slated lime

Snod

There were lime pits behind the Black Horse in Wallasey Village, my Nan remembered a boy from her school falling in and dieing.

The Brickworks were run by Barker and Briscoe and production stopped there in 1970. The factory inside literally looked as though they had just stopped everything and walked out. There was one watchman and my Dad got friendly with him and he used to let my Dad bring us in to look around. I don't know his name but he had lost a hand in the war and it was the only job he could get. Eventually they demolished the brickworks and started building Hayes Drive in 1971. the road into Hayes Drive is the actual entrance to the brickworks. There was a pit on the field behind where they had once dug clay. It was filled with water and was about the area of a football pitch and was know locally as "the Oily". This was filled in shortly after work started on Hayes Drive. There also used to be pits where the field is along Leasowe Road as far as where the church is now, but these were filled in in the 50's.

The isolation hospital which stood on the school field (before the school was there) was built to attempt to cope with the massive outbreak of venereal disease at the end of the 19th century. With Liverpool being a seaport, VD was rife on Merseydside even more so than poor areas in places like Manchester. The isolation hospital was built to house suffers (a lot of them seafarers) in an attempt to cure them and also to stop them spreading disease further. The iron gate posts sticking up by the Birket (there used to be 2 sets) were the back gates of the hospital. If I can dig out the piece on the hospital I will post it.