The old Tithe map of Hoose shows an area of land bounded by the sea and what we now call Lake Place to the south, and Newton Road to the north. The main road then, as now, was Market Street.
The tithe Map predates the 1871 Cencus, by which time there were more buildings around, particularly on Market Street. It is not until we reach the 1901 Cencus that house numbers are used, so before that names of places were used by the enumerators.
The running order of properties on a typical Cencus sheet for Hoose goes like this:-
Market Street Shaw's Yard Booths Alley Market Street Anchor Inn Market Street Meadows Yard Bird's Yard Garden Cottage Lee's Yard Lighthouse Inn... End of Town
The enumerator then crosses over the road to the Congregational Church and Chappel Cottages, working his way back.
I've established that Shaw's Yard was on the north corner of Elm Road, and that Meadows Yard was on the south corner of Waverley Road and Market St. In between is the (Blue) Anchor Inn. The Lighthouse Inn stood where the Car Park entrance is, next but one to the old school building.
Each of these 'yards' contained a number of premises, usually of fishermen or farm workers and their families. There a lot of 'old' Hoylake family names amongst them, and it's not unusual to see the same surnames crop up living next to each other in other premises in the Township.
Note that the licencee of The Anchor was once called Meadows, the present building at 80 Market St has 'Jessies Yard' on it and according to the Tithe Map, Mr Meadows was a landowner, and possibly Lee, too. But who were Shaw and Bird?
So where are the missing Yards and Alleys? Can we put a modern house number or location to them?
I've compiled a map based on the 1911 OS, showing what I think was there. The green areas are outside the boundarys of Hoose, and are mainly meadow and farm land. The yellow represents the sand dunes. The pink indicates the roads that were marked (in pink) on the Tithe Maps.
Use ctrl + several times to enlarge, as the detail is there in the map. ctrl 0 restores to normal viewing.
Bird was Jessie Bird he stabled the horses that dragged out the life boat at 'jessies yard'. The birds where a large family of fishermen and sea farers.There are a lot of birds still living locally.
The lighthouse inn was a Birkenhead house and the landlady was my great aunt {ma Barlow} was her title by all the regulers of the pub. She was the landlady pre war and through up till arround the early 50s when she retired. I spent ever summer there on my hoildays from during the war years up till 1950. Was there at VJ day and there where bonfires on the sand dunes and lots of ships distress rockets set of during the celebrations.
Ships that pass in the night, seldom seen and soon forgoten
