Old Chester Road - 1st Nov 2011 1:39pm
Apologies for pinching bits of maps and info from various topics without stating sources
Trying to sort out where it started and ended
Old Chester Road, which was built in 1790 as the main highway between Woodside Ferry and Chester by crossing the Tranmere pool until the construction of Thomas Brassey's New Chester Road; which also had an embankment across the Tranmere Pool in 1839.
At sometime it started from Grange Street (which became Tunnel Road - because of rail tunnels after 1861?) and I think may have been the Chester Steet part from Waterloo Place to by Green Lane Station where it then carried on. I would have presumed it went to chester but can only find on any maps I have it stops by Dacre Hill and a google map now shows it stopping at Bebington Station.
Ive also noticed on one map that Green Lane may have been called Holt Hill Road once
The stream entered Tranmere Pool near the present Central Station. The creek, about 300 yards wide at its mouth, curved inland for about half a mile, forming on its northern side a tongue of land on which the gasworks were built in the 1840s. The Pool could easily be forded at low water, but at high tide its crossing was made at great risk. Very high tides must have come well up the valley, at least as far as the site of St John's Church
Here's some more info on the location of Tranmere Pool, taken from Birkenhead Priory and the Mersey Ferry, by R. Stewart-Brown, published in 1925.
Explaining the siting of the priory on the headland of Birkenhead, he writes: 'On the south, where Abbey Street represents approximately the line of the old river bank, the outlook was over the wide expanse of Birket (Tranmere) Pool, then of far`greater extent, but much curtailed in the last hundred years, particularly in the later period.
'The New Chester Road through Tranmere may be taken as representing the old strand line of the Pool as far as Green Lane Station, about which point the Pool ran inland to the west for nearly a mile, and at high tide most of the land now occupied by the gasworks, railway sidings, the Central and Town stations, was under water.
'The Pool could be forded until about 100 years ago, at low tides in the summer, by stepping stones approximately on the line of New Chester Road between Green Lane and Abbey Street, and probably this method of approaching the Priory was a very ancient one.
'It was not until the spring of 1790 that an embankment to carry the new turnpike road was made at the mouth of Tranmere Pool to a height which rendered it passable for general traffic above the highest spring tides.'
Trying to sort out where it started and ended
Old Chester Road, which was built in 1790 as the main highway between Woodside Ferry and Chester by crossing the Tranmere pool until the construction of Thomas Brassey's New Chester Road; which also had an embankment across the Tranmere Pool in 1839.
At sometime it started from Grange Street (which became Tunnel Road - because of rail tunnels after 1861?) and I think may have been the Chester Steet part from Waterloo Place to by Green Lane Station where it then carried on. I would have presumed it went to chester but can only find on any maps I have it stops by Dacre Hill and a google map now shows it stopping at Bebington Station.
Ive also noticed on one map that Green Lane may have been called Holt Hill Road once
The stream entered Tranmere Pool near the present Central Station. The creek, about 300 yards wide at its mouth, curved inland for about half a mile, forming on its northern side a tongue of land on which the gasworks were built in the 1840s. The Pool could easily be forded at low water, but at high tide its crossing was made at great risk. Very high tides must have come well up the valley, at least as far as the site of St John's Church
Here's some more info on the location of Tranmere Pool, taken from Birkenhead Priory and the Mersey Ferry, by R. Stewart-Brown, published in 1925.
Explaining the siting of the priory on the headland of Birkenhead, he writes: 'On the south, where Abbey Street represents approximately the line of the old river bank, the outlook was over the wide expanse of Birket (Tranmere) Pool, then of far`greater extent, but much curtailed in the last hundred years, particularly in the later period.
'The New Chester Road through Tranmere may be taken as representing the old strand line of the Pool as far as Green Lane Station, about which point the Pool ran inland to the west for nearly a mile, and at high tide most of the land now occupied by the gasworks, railway sidings, the Central and Town stations, was under water.
'The Pool could be forded until about 100 years ago, at low tides in the summer, by stepping stones approximately on the line of New Chester Road between Green Lane and Abbey Street, and probably this method of approaching the Priory was a very ancient one.
'It was not until the spring of 1790 that an embankment to carry the new turnpike road was made at the mouth of Tranmere Pool to a height which rendered it passable for general traffic above the highest spring tides.'