While looking for something completely different I came across this article written by David Hoey for the HSLC in 1967. Mainly about the barn and bit technical but interesting...
"The Old House in Poulton, Wallasey, is an interesting example of the type built by the more comfortable, if smaller, yeoman farmer of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century in Wirral. The house bears the date 1697 and is attributed to William Bird.
Bird's barn, which was demolished early in 1965, was the one surviving out-building of The Old House. The barn was 52 feet long and 20 feet wide and the walls were built of local sandstone, with minor repairs in brick. Both the north and the east walls were completely re-constructed in 1704 and presented a regular appearance. The north wall had two doors—one, which had a massive plain stone lintel and was blocked up some time after the reconstruction, was at ground level and the other gave access to the loft. The stone lintel above the latter door carried a recessed shield which contained the letters B. W. M. and the year of the reconstruction, 1704.
The north wall was 2 feet thick, while on average the remain¬ing walls of the barn were 18 inches thick. The east wall had a small window placed just over halfway along its length. The west wall of the building was of irregular construction and had two small doors with wooden lintels and stone door steps; two larger openings had been made in this wall prior to the date of demolition. The south wall of the barn was simply a pair of crucks with associated tie-beam, collar-beam, wall plates and further wooden bracing. The bracing below the tie-beam had been removed and replaced by stone infill. There were three surviving pairs of crucks, each 17 feet 6 inches apart supporting the main timbers of the roof. The crucks are lettered A-F on the ground plan. On the back of each cruck was placed a principal rafter these rafters had their lower ends sunk into the tie-beam and their upper ends tapered against the cruck. There were two wind-braces strengthening this arrangement at crucks A, B, E and F. The ends of each wind-brace were pegged together onto the principal rafter and the other ends were sunk into the purlin on either side of the cruck. (See detail of roof construction.)
One other pair of crucks had been replaced at the north end of the barn during the reconstruction of 1704 and the sockets to take the missing wind-braces were visible on the purlins adjacent to the north wall. It was noted that the collar-beams on crucks A, F and B, E were placed much higher than the collar-beam on the south end of the barn (crucks C, D). Crucks A. F and B, E were very much larger in cross-section than crucks C, D.
The loft extended from the north end of the barn to between crucks B, E and its height from ground level was 7 feet. The tie-beam between crucks A, F had been removed to give room for the loft. Access to the loft was by hatch and ladder. There were two dividing walls within the building—one between crucks B, E, 6 feet high supporting the tie-beams and having a small door set halfway along its length. The other wall was immediately to the right of crucks A, F. It was 4 feet 3 inches high surmounted by wooden shuttering, and provided further support for the loft floor. The barn, prior to the date of demolition, had been roofed with slate."
I assume the photos were taken shortly before demolition.
I think there's a thread trying to identify whether the date the house was built was 1697 or 1627 but I can't find it so I'll add my two pennorth here!!
If Hoey is right about the work on the barn taking place in 1704 and William Bird(presumably)putting that date on the door lintel, perhaps the 1697 date on the house is also the date of when he carried out reconstruction work on the house and not the date it was built.
Ok I have just read all 94 posts and reckon this is fantastic. I will be coming home in October only for a holiday and would love to have a butchers at this amazing house. So what is the address please??
Wonderful info about that barn! Fascinating. However... does anyone have a way of getting in touch with Roger? His private message box is not accepting messages (or I'm not doing it right) so I thought someone who had been in the house work party might have a way of getting in touch with him. I passed the house today and there's a big road sign that has been pushed askew and is leaning against the outer wall by the roadside going up the hill from the roundabout - the bit that's near the kitchen extension, with an infilled window in, like it was an outhouse at some point. There's already a crack in that wall, and this isn't going to help at all. Thought he should know so he can chase the Highways dept to get it shifted.
Wonderful info about that barn! Fascinating. However... does anyone have a way of getting in touch with Roger? His private message box is not accepting messages (or I'm not doing it right) so I thought someone who had been in the house work party might have a way of getting in touch with him. I passed the house today and there's a big road sign that has been pushed askew and is leaning against the outer wall by the roadside going up the hill from the roundabout - the bit that's near the kitchen extension, with an infilled window in, like it was an outhouse at some point. There's already a crack in that wall, and this isn't going to help at all. Thought he should know so he can chase the Highways dept to get it shifted.
I think there's a thread trying to identify whether the date the house was built was 1697 or 1627 but I can't find it so I'll add my two pennorth here!!
If Hoey is right about the work on the barn taking place in 1704 and William Bird(presumably)putting that date on the door lintel, perhaps the 1697 date on the house is also the date of when he carried out reconstruction work on the house and not the date it was built.
Really intresting Nightwalker, thanks for posting this information!
I thought that the new owner of the house was an architect, if so can't he date the building himself from it's remaining architectural characteristics?
Perhaps it gets mentioned in Pevsner's guide to the buildings of Cheshire?
Hi Folks. Re: Date for Bird's House. The following is English Heritage findings in 1952. I wonder why we have not come across it before, or maybe I have missed it.
British Listed BuildingsHistory in StructureHome
The Old House, Wallasey Description: The Old House
Grade: II Date Listed: 20 May 1952 English Heritage Building ID: 444453
OS Grid Reference: SJ3019091020 OS Grid Coordinates: 330190, 391020 Latitude/Longitude: 53.4114, -3.0517
Locality: Wallasey Local Authority: Wirral County: Merseyside Country: England Postcode: CH44 5SP
Incorrect location/postcode? Submit a correction!
Listing Text Google Map/Street View OS Map Bing Map/Birds Eye View Comments Photos
Listing Text SJ 39 SW WALLASEY LIMEKILN LANE (west side)
3/48 The Old House 20.5.52 - II
B House. Lintel inscribed: "W M/1627" (William and Mary Bird). Stone with slate roof. 2 storeys with attic, 3 bays. Coped gables with kneelers. Single-chamfered- mullioned windows of 3 and 5-lights with label moulds to ground floor, 3:2 + 2:1-light windows to 1st floor. 2 gabled 2-light dormers. Entrance has large inscribed lintel with label mould. Returns and rear similar. Rear has brick, but that to right partly of stone. Interior not inspected but described in E. Mercer, English Vernacular Houses, pp 142.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle
As far as I know, apart from the datestone, the only evidence to directly connect William Bird with Bird’s House in the 17th century is the Vyner Estate Survey, which you mentioned in one of your earlier posts. The Survey was drawn up in 1665 by Thomas Taylor and details the Manor of Bidston and properties in other townships that belonged to the Manor, complete with details of field names and tenants. The three photos below show the relevant details.
The first photo shows an enlarged section of the main survey map which is actually dated 1656, but as all the other maps in the book are clearly dated 1665 it’s assumed that this was simply a mistake on the artist’s part. This shows Poulton-cum-Seacombe, with Bird’s House in the centre, next to what appears to be a small brook emanating from a spring and running downhill into Wallasey Pool.
The second photo is from the larger scale map of Poulton later in the book, which is orientated with east roughly at the top and shows Bird’s House top centre in a parcel of land clearly marked ‘Williamson’s Croft’. (Apologies for the quality of this image, but the colour photocopy of the Survey I had access to is so blurred at this point as to be totally useless; I had to resort to a copy from an old black-and-white slide.)
The third photo shows the accompanying ‘table of reference’ which clearly records that Bird’s House and the nine parcels of land in Poulton that belonged to Bidston Manor were all in the tenancy of Robert Williamso[n] in 1665. At some later date, the name of William Bird has been added below that of Robert Williamson in a different hand, whilst the last three parcels of land have been separated off by a dividing line and the name of Ja[me]s Gordon written alongside them in yet another hand. The exact significance of all this is not 100% clear, but it suggests that the original nine parcels were, at some point after 1665, divided into two holdings, one consisting of the house and four fields held by William Bird, the other consisting of three fields held by James Gordon. Whilst this doesn’t preclude the possibility of a William Bird being associated with Bird’s House in the 1620s – there appears to be no surviving evidence from that period – it seems to suggest that the association of the Bird family with the property postdates 1665.
The fourth picture shows the drawings of the two datestones from the house and barn as they appear in Woods & Brown’s The Rise and Progress of Wallasey. The sketches were done by the artist Harold Hopps (see the recently-published book Hopps around Wallasey) and are pretty rudimentary, but they do suggest that the carvings were essentially in the same style, and were probably therefore done not too many years apart. My money’s still on 1691 and 1704; certainly 1627 is, I think, out of the question for the first one, whatever English Heritage might think.
I think that your assessment is spot on. The Bird family may well have had a long association with the history of Poulton but that does not necessarily mean that they were only ever living at this particular house. Put within the context of how turbulent a period of history we are dealing with (the English Civil War, etc) and that many changes in property ownership occurred at this time, it is very likely that the Bird family's tenancy of this property does postdate 1665.
Perhaps some other clues could be gleaned from the names appearing on records for local taxes?
Just an after-thought, but the chances are that most pre-1665 properties in Wallasey would have been timber framed & thatched. The house featured on the 1665 survey may well have been completely replaced. How many tenant farmers in a relatively poor settlement like Poulton would have lived in a high status stone-built property prior to 1650?
The Bird family may well have had a long association with the history of Poulton but that does not necessarily mean that they were only ever living at this particular house.
Quite true. I've certainly seen evidence in map form from the early to mid-1800s showing a 'William Bird' living at at least two other properties in Poulton
As far as tax records are concerned, in my experience documents such as Hearth Tax Returns consist of little more than lists of tenants names, and unless there are a few distinctively large houses in the area assessed it's very difficult to associate individual names with specific properties.
If Bird's House stood as a stone-built property prior to 1665 it must have been quite prestigious, don't you think?
The thing that puzzles me is that if the Bird family were only tenants (as the Vyner survey seems to suggest) why would they put their names on datestones for rebuilding a property which they did not actually own?
