Three air raid shelters were built in New Ferry Park to house 948 people between them. They have been covered up but were still extent. The Council had considered opening one of them up for school education programmes but this never came to fruition.
When I went there the other night on one of my routine re-visits, we discovered that the kids play area has now extended onto the air raid shelters, it was very dark but it looked like one had been flattened, and at least one of the others had been re-shaped to become some sort of pathway. Also some heavy machinery had been driven over the remaining shelters.
Here are some pictures of the shelters from last year.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
Really? O remember playing I a pipe that was dug unto one of the mounds.
With an average of 316 people per shelter, they will have had vent pipes. Some of the concrete was visible when I was there last year - I don't think it is still visible but I haven't seen them in daylight recently.
I also am wondering if the "lumps" may have been just entrances leading down to subterranean shelters, the lumps looked a bit small for the number of people.
There is a signpost in the park somewhere, that mentioned/s the shelters (there's piccies of the sign somewhere on t'internet).
The shelters were open in the 1960s/70s.
There is/was a fourth smaller lump nearer the old play area but that was not a shelter - but may have been something else.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
i don't remember them ever being open, infact i don't remember ever seeing them, it was only a few years ago that i found they were there,i never knew untill then,i always thought those mounds were the excess soil from when the park was altered, i remember when it was the old park with the golf course and the blind garden.
Here are two aerial photographs, one from 1971(ish) and one from 1997
From these I believe it shows that the entrance and ventpipes (possibly emergency exit as well) were at surface level, the shelters are probably subterranean.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
It was New Ferry Regeneration Action Group who campaigned for the money that was supposed to be spent renovating the play area at Onslow Road 3 years ago to be used on more play equipment - but for older kids. Onslow Road residents did not want the play area reinstated so close to their homes, so the Council eventually agreed to let the money be spent in New Ferry Park.
In the discussions we had with the Council, although they said they were going to put the new equipment "between the air raid shelters", it was my understanding that the air raid shelters would not be disturbed. However, I now realise that I should have asked the question.
Since the work started, I have not been over to have a closer look at it, but I would be upset if the shelters have been demolished.
Indeed, I did put the possibility of opening up the shelters (for at least one occasion) onto the suggested plan for the refurbishment of the park which NFRAG drew up 2 years ago. However, nobody took me seriously and there were other far more pressing things in the park to get sorted.
According to older residents I have spoken to over the years, the shelters were still "exposed" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and residents "played inside them" when they were children. Some time in the 1970s the council did indeed put some concrete pipes on them as play features for kids - this practice was quite common in the 1970s = cheap play things for kids were those big concrete drain pipes.
Coincidentally, for anyone who does not know, those air raid shelters were indeed needed during the WWII blitz! Luftwaffe bombs hit some houses near the Esplanade, and also fell onto a row of terraced houses in Egerton Road, New Ferry. The terrace had only been built 25 years or so previously. One couple who lived there were half way through paying their mortgage when their house was destroyed. They didn't have any home insurance in those days, so they still had to keep paying the mortgage after the war even though the house was gone. (A resident in the street told me this many years ago).
Garages were built where the houses once stood. These were demolished a few years ago and the new red-bricked houses stand on the site today.
Went there today, all three shelters are still there but the one nearest the side road has been interfered with and partly built on.
Thanks for that. Didn't have time to go today - was busily chasing up people re impending demolition of the Great Eastern.
By the way, the second of your photos above, when hovering over it with the mouse, appears to be labelled "1997". I came to live in New Ferry in 1988, and I think the tarmac kickabout area had already been built on the site of the former bowling green at that time. So I think the photo is at least a decade earlier.
