Holt hill
I do believe the ship being built is HMS Ark Royal.

Every time i see this photo the Ark gets whiter and whiter, I wasn't down the yard at that time and I'm pretty sure no white paint went near her, I'll stand corrected if it did, all the Navel vessels i have seen and worked on started off with many coats of red lead, many coats of grey undercoat and finished with battleship grey, which also adorned many fences, front doors and windows throughout Birkenhead. I even had a friend who had a old van painted in Battleship grey,thanks very much, HMS Liverpool.

great photo of holt hill!!

"This photograph shows the HMS Ark Royal, taken from the top of Holt Hill in Birkenhead. The ship had just been painted white, as part of preparations for its launch from the Cammell Laird shipyard by the Queen Mother"


http://www.mersey-gateway.org/server.php?show=ConNarrative.200&chapterId=1591

Is that you off to get your hovis Bert?

I used to walk up and down that hill four times a day, never did get any easier.

For your info that photo was taken by Chambre Hardman's

You can visit his old house and studio on Rodney Street Liverpool.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/northwest/series6/chambre-hardman/index.shtml

The lost city of liverpool can be seen here

http://www.gorgeoux.com/2010/03/chambre-hardman-and-lost-city-of.html

ta

Pace

Please can someone put up a google map or satellite pic of where it was built - which dock or basin as I want to compare the view
with a pic in Tranmere Pool topic

Derek, it would have been built on the slipway, i assume pic1, which was a lot bigger before the construction hall was built, pic2 is Holt hill and slipways.

It was built on No 5 slipway, there where 6 slipways in the south yard prior to the yard been altered in the mid 60s when the 60 and 100 tons crains where put up.

I always thought this Hardman photo was some kind of composite of the big ship added to small Holt Hill. Adding to bert's post above, and using Street View, I was so wrong! That was a big ship in big shipyard!

A little bit of useless information. I was up in the Lake District a number of years back and got talking to some guy who lived there. He made models of various ships to a very high standard.

He was building a model of Ark Royal (Thirties one) and said he had written to Lairds to try and obtain some plans. He was told that the information was classified yet the ship had lain sunk in the Med since the second world war.

Perhaps they just couldn't be bothered? I doubt anything was classified after all that time unless I am missing something!

What i tried to do yesterday was superimpose the old photo over a street view photo of Holt Hill and get some idea of scale and size, it was a bugger to line up, perhaps someone with the ability and tools to do it can have a go. I can't find the height of the Ark Royal but it looks as if it would tower above the present day construction hall which is 107m high, 351 feet in old money.

Another picture of cammel lairds sheds.

Not quite sure about your figures there Bert. I know the Cammell Laird website says the Construction Hall is 145m(L)x107m(H)x50m(W), but this is clearly a typo: it should read 145m(L)x107m(W)x50m(H)! The height is actually 50 metres, about 164 feet in old money. For comparison, the height of the Ark Royal from baseline (ie bottom of keel) to flightdeck was, based on my measurement of a set of plans, 87 feet 4 inches (about 26.5m for you youngsters out there); given that the ways she was sitting on were about 5 feet high, that would give a total overall height at launch of about 92 feet (just over 28m).

Edward Chambre Hardman used to travel along Holt Hill every day on his way to his Liverpool studios from his home in Heswall and over weeks and months saw the Ark Royal slowly rising from the slipways at Laird's.

He took his famous picture, called The Birth of the Ark Royal, when he saw the ship had been given its white coat of paint, making it stand out so dramatically in the distance. I don't think it was painted white for the sake of the Queen Mother, but the white was just the undercoat for the final grey topcoat.

He retouched bits of the original photo to give the final image greater effect. The gable end of the house on the left was in reality whitewashed. But Hardman realised this would distract from the main focus of the picture - the white Ark Royal. So he used a dye to darken the gable end.

He used a telephoto lens to bring foreground and background closer together, painted out an unwanted lamp-post and retouched one of the schoolboy's socks to bring it up to the same height as the other.

It all added up to what I think is one of the greatest pictures you'll see of Birkenhead - when we were still a powerhouse of shipbuilding.

A visit to the Chambre Hardman studios in Rodney Street, Liverpool, is highly recommended.

The house is on my list of places to visit.

Holt Hill doesn't seem to be on a logical route from Heswall to Liverpool. Was he perhaps driving & parked his car at Green Lane station?

Thanks for the correction, i did indeed get the measurements from the website and had no way of correcting them, only memories, Always liked the photo but at the same time always thought it had been interfered with.

my effort at overlay of photos

Chris,

You're right about Holt Hill not being a logical way from Heswall to Liverpool - straight down Borough Road to the tunnel would be the obvious route. Unless, as you say, he parked his car at Green Lane.

That story about him driving along Holt Hill is one I recall after visiting the Chambre Hardman studio a few years ago and I may have got it a bit mixed up.

Perhaps he occasionally diverted from his normal route to have a look at how the Ark Royal was progressing. I think he must have had the picture in mind for some time before he judged the conditions were right to take it.

Also, my recollection about him altering the boy's socks doesn't tally with the picture - because, looking at the picture, the socks seem not to line up! Sorry for any confusion there.

As I mentioned, it's best to visit the studio, where they give a full (and accurate!) account of how he came to take the picture.

Good effort, thats probably more like it, differcult to imagine though.

thanks I tried to get house sizes right

rock ferry primary got to go and stand outside the fence, only time I saw a ship being launched.