I believe that I lived in Collingwood Street (not sure of the spelling) Birkenhead when I was very young. I cannot find it on any maps. Can anyone help?
Spot on, Derek, I reckon. And St. John's church would have been just to the left of your mark, where what looks like a covered walkway with a bend in the middle is.
I reckon a smidgen further left Derek. When the Precinct was first built Collingwood Street, or what was left of it, ran roughly alongside the west end of Marks & Sparks.
I find this very interesting, on the google map were it says republic to farmfoods that is called milton pavement, which must be were milton street is on the 1912 map.
One of my friends at school (Cole St. Primary) lived in Collingwood Street until they were moved out for demolition. Must have been about 1970?? I think she was near the Borough Road end.
Quite right, that's why it was called Milton Pavement. At the other side of the Precinct, Princes Pavement was so called because it runs roughly along the line of what used to be Prince's Terrace, which you can just make out on the 1912 map.
Top pic is borrowed from the Borough Road thread. You will see a car parked on the right. Looking just above its roof you will notice the righ-hand end of a row of terraced housed. From there to the grey square just slightly to the right is the entrance of Huskisson St (the road that goes around St Johns' Church. Collingwood St is the next street along, but unfortunately can't be seen properly due to the bus stop and the bend in the road.
The terraced houses along the left (north) side of Borough Rd were in two blocks of twelve houses between Vincent St and Coburg St, then two blocks of six houses to Stafford St, then nine houses to Huskisson St. Each of these streets has a lamp post on the corner, as did the ones towards Clifton Crescent. Rather interestingly, it appears that most of the modern lamp posts are in almost exactly the same locations as their predecessors, which began their life as supports for the overhead wires for the trams.
The lower picture is one that perhaps you didn't want to see. It's taken from Huskisson St, and Collingwood St is the closest to the camera, with the gas lamp post still standing on the corner of Howe St, which leads to Nelson St. The bottom of Nelson St is directly opposite the start of the tunnel flyover on Borough Road, just out of shot, to the right. Sussex St and Princes St are the next ones along, with Austin St being adjacent to the walls of the convent. The photo was taken early in 1969, when the flyover was nearing completion (opened July 1969), but before the site huts were built for the Grange Precinct project, which is where the digger and sign board are situated.
The houses in Princes St (if my memory is correct) were three storey high with basement, having basement windows and two or three steps up to the front door. This was quite different to the small terraced houses in the adjoining streets. They were amongst the first to be demolished in that area, and became off-street parking for shoppers in Grange Rd. for a while.
The properties on the south side of Borough Rd, backing onto the Woodlands, were cleared to provide a west-bound carriageway from Central Station alongside the flyover ramp. The white lines in the centre of the ramp align almost exactly with the kerb along this section on the south side of Borough Rd.
The small terraced houses along Borough Rd were the next to be demolished. This was, in part, to allow work to progress on Borough Rd for the flyover work, although the kerb line and a number of lamp posts stayed in the same place long after the flyover openned.
Collingwood St and those next to it were cleared as part of the Grange Precinct project, which commenced after the Tunnel Approach Flyover project had started. The shops in Grange Rd, between Huskisson St and the Convent, lasted a little longer before the whole area became a giant building site.
Good photo can see the houses that used to be at the bottom of Rodney st behind the flyover before they got pulled down Birkenhead just seemed to be a building site when I was growing up.
