Bidston Diphtheria Rooms of the Dead.

Unfortunately i wasn't too sure what to call this topic,
as the description i was given was The holding rooms
for the dead children that died of Diphtheria and
such like diseases, they were used to keep them separate
from ordinary dead body's.

Back in the 20's - 30's when disease was a common place,
when a person, but mainly children died of Diphtheria they
wouldn't go straight to the morgue they would be held in these
rooms where they would be for a word processed then cremated.

The Horse and Cart as a Hurst would bring the dead up the
back path to the Morgue for sorting, back then there was
a huge church and crematorium in Old Flay brick cemetery.

They would come around the side, and through cuttings in the
rock to deliver the dead.

So the pictures below show what is one of the other buildings
which we assumed would also be used for the same sorting
but can not be sure. But the one where it happened for sure
has been rubbed out, its actually on the hill, maybe the
entrance was behind the main gates now welded shut.

First let me show you what it looks like now,
the building that could have been a holding place too.



And some pictures from just inside, basically
holding the camera low and clicking with the flash on.



And



There believed to only be rooms, and not Tunnels as some
have thought. Maybe a trip inside will help.

Now where is it?

At Old Flay brick Cemetery in Bidston,
You need to come around the side of the Nann's to get in.



Number 5 Shows you the way through the fence.



Once your at the top of the hill where the picture is
taken from follow Arrow 3 and stay to the wall and
you will see the hole. It looks like its visited regularly.

Where i have marked 1 & 2 is where i was told the "Real"
holding rooms were for the children with Diphtheria,
as the "Fever" Hospital for Mersey side was just over the way.

But the "Real" one seems to be either covered over or Rubbed out,
but all the ground around the base of the hill we were standing
on seems a good 6ft higher than days gone by, like the spoil
from the new housing estate has been used to cover / bury
over things from the past.

There could how ever be an entrance to the left of the main gate
but we couldn't get to it as we were running out of time.



Number 2 shows where that entrance may be??
In the rock faces, facing towards the path behind the gate.
Purley speculation as we dont know what's happended to the
building. Number 1 shows where you used to be able to have
a drink from a lions head, but its been broken and gone.

arrows are confusing me!!!

whats arrows 3 and 4 for on the first picture???

There was a hostpital called St James hostpital i think it was for skin disorders the Play Ground on tollymache road is the site wonder if theres any basements or sub basements in there and wonder if theres any link to this...

Yeh soundlads posted what i meant too with 3 & 4
that's the direction of the hospital.

They the houses near tollymache road mark ?? (3 + 4) ???

Looking at this, turn to your left.
The front of the estate goes on to Tollymache Road
But these ones are towards the back of the estate.

got in behind the fence yesterday but didnt really find much apart from broken head stones ,but gonna go back sat and lok around the whole area again

The only way to get on the top is though the black railing,
but when i was last past there they were closed up,
as the kids use a car jack to open them.

The head stones you can get to them from flay bricks main
entrance on tollimache road, and just go in and turn right
at the old crematorium and eventually you will get to the
bottom of the cemetery.

But your cant get out so you have to go all the way back.
I think you know what i mean, but its really interesting
in the day time.

https://www.wikiwirral.co.uk/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showgallery/Number/174568

we actually got through a fence inside the cem,there are enough jemmied holes ,im a big lad so some of them were a bit of a squeeze,lol,but thats what i take the wife for ,where i cant go she can... do you think that this was the main purpose of the road/path or may be it was the possible bricked entrance further down the path.and are they all linked to the infectious disease hospital.there seems to be confusion where the hosp actually used to be ,some records mention flaybrick road and some mention tollemache rd so my natural reasoning is the corner of both, which would tie in with all that we think was up there and the locations in proximity to the cem ..

ST James Hospital was a STD hospital I used to go to Tolly school and never saw anybody go in or out of the place.I bet nobody will come on, who did go there with a rash

ok ok now i am lost, can onwe of u whizzkids do and ariel shot of this and show where the hell we are on abou as i have not got a clue, i vaugly remember the cem that you guys posted pics of just off tolly road especially the building but as for this i know there was a place on the left of tolly from where u crossed from mercer heading toward town

[youtube]jLiR8aQPxeE[/youtube]

Being a slim chappy i managed to squeeze into the old
fever hospital area we visited last year.

But to my surprise, the whole area has been cleared,
and backfilled and covered.

an oldish fella in work told me about tunnels that lead from st james hospital to st james church. they were used by the diseased to go to church to pray.

Id love to see the st James church's basement.. cause the church is in such a strange location..

Hmmm I wonder if the tunnels still exist, as they would be pretty long??

sorry, my bad, apparantly the tunnels ran from St James Hospital to St Caths Hospital.

That's a hell of a tunnel then

Thats what I thought, the church to the hospital, maybe, but from one hospital to the other, Im just going to find the salt and take a pinch of it.

i was told last year there were tunnels under the park but have since been filled in i have marked were the entrance would of been but you carnt really make out were it is maybe these were all connected!!!

aye Kyle, I remember this. two sources giving info about a tunnel, must be something in it.

there must be, is st james church still open

bloody long tunnel from st james to st caths in tranmere

Kyle where you have it marked, it was air raid shelters.
They were built and then covered over. (Soil pushed over).
And to access them people would appear to go underground.

There's no Tunnels there from my Source who's still alive
And the old shelters are long gone, hence the new estate.
The had to pile drive to stabilise the land in that area.

Hope that helps.

Fever hospital ?


I snapped this picture at the wirral museum which i'm told
is the Old Nurses Home, but my source cant remember it being
as big at that when he was a child. (Big White Building).

I used to work in St Caths Maint Dept. I have never heard of or looked for any tunnel to the church but I can tell you the interlinking tunnels between buildings are interesting. Small victorian brick in design and more of them than you would imagine plus one of the attics is most definatly haunted... you can feel the change in atmosphere every time you enter it.It was part of the old workhouse.

The tunnels are quite cramped in places...not to the point of crawling but down to 3 to 4ft.......plenty of cockroaches too in the tunnels with the heating pipes in!

I will pay a visit next week and say hello to a few old workmates and see if an exploration could be arranged for a few for a history project?

St Cath Memories

Tunnels,did some one say Tunnels

Nice one phil ,keep us updated I personally would love a wander round st caths

i used to live near st caths just up the road from my house

More info on the workhouse which is know St Caths

Click here

Due to the effects of vandalism the cellars from the original the title of this topic have now been exposed. Below are some photos of the inside as you will see contrary to myth and rumour they don't go anywhere and are just a series of unconnected rooms so unfortunately there isn't much to see or report on.

Nice one! Shame it ent tunnels though.

Notice how i got shoved down the hole

Not far enough, some might say.

lol, love the avatar doc

Hi
I am really fascinated by this find of 'rooms'. I have been speaking to my dad who used to work at St James Hospital in the 60s. He reckons that where you have located these rooms, you are no longer on the hospital site.
The building you refer to as the old nurses home is in fact ward 8 and 9 (cancer patients were treated here in the 60s). Ward 8 and 9 were built to treat patients with TB hence the verandas you can see in the photo - where they would push the patients beds out to get air - believing this would improve their health (this is the method used by most sanatoriums - nothing to do with mental health btw). He says that the majority of buildings there did not have cellars, unless they were in the admin block (which was the last bit to be pulled down (was a nursing home in its final years). But this was situated near the corner of Tollemache and Mercer Roads (this bit still derelict?). I assume the wall you are walking alongside is that which backs onto the gardens of houses in Maplewood Close? If that is the case then are you not in the boundary of the cemetery? My dad also thinks that the buildings nearest to the boundary wall had a door which went directly into the graveyard, possibly for transporting corpses to their resting place. I'm eager to see a map that shows the hospital built and where the boundary lies. I might have to go back the Central Library - if its still open!!

I have a map of this area in 1870. The majority of the cemetery is marked out but that whole area where the hospital stood is in fact quarry, as is the other side of Tollemache - which we know as the top and bottom rec - before they built the new houses. I will attach the map. I actually took a photocopy of it from the archives in Central Library. The reason it looks so stained is because I attacked it with a tea bag to make it look old (lol).

Another thing. There have never been any buildings where the top rec (kids playground) is. I asked my dad about air raid shelters cut into the edge of the rec and he said he can't recall there ever having been air raid shelters or tunnels there. It may be an urban myth (unless of course someone knows somebody who actually went in them).

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/12238492

This is a photo of the map - not the best quality. But it gives you an idea of how the land was being used in 1870. Flaybrick Cemetery opened in 1864 so this may explain why it doesn't stretch as far as it does now. As you can see from the map - the main chapel was split so that dissenters (non-conformists) were held in the mortuary chapel on the left and the CofE people were kept in the right. The RC were kept in the chapel up by the nanny goat gate. These were mortuaries, not crematoriums, crematoriums were only just being built in 1870s as people began to accept it as a means of disposing of the dead. Other interesting points:
- Bidston Avenue is called Bailey Street
- The land where they built Birkenhead Institute was marshy which might explain the excuse they used to demolish it (subsidence...)
- There is a road running through where all the flower avenues now stand (marked 42 .674 on map)
- You can see Tam O'Shanter farm on it (292 1.349)
- There are trees all the way along Tollemache including where Bidston Avenue School stands. Could any of the trees in the playground be original?

I know my nana went to the fever hospital cas she had TB, my aunt and my dad had to go there too for their jabs. And they have told me about the old air raid shelters up on the wreck, they used to be there, they used to get so full that alot of people were left out, my grandad ended up building a shelter in our backyard. When we dug up where it used to be a few weeks ago.. when we got far down we found stone steps too.. that was odd.

Yeah my Nan and aunty got TB and had to stay there for a bit.
Well that's good - we have evidence of air raid shelters from relatives - but I bet they have filled it all in now

Did you find any relics in the shelter?

That was a really good explanation of the origins of the Fever hospital!

Just found this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/52/a5864952.shtml
and http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/27/a2040427.shtml

The 2nd one mentions:
At the back of my memory there is a picture of being put into a brown wooden sided light brown coloured ambulance and taken to a place which had a bed looking into the night. Was it an isolation hospital, and did I really have diptheria?

I wonder if this was St James and he was out on the veranda?

I've just found out there were 3 parts to the hospital.. Births, Burns and Diptheria. There was/is a tunnel going from the hospital to the church in the graveyard. My aunt says she remembers looking over the wall and seeing them taking bodies to the bunkers/tunnels to be taken to be burnt, and one of my great aunts or someone used to work in the Diptheria section of the hospital.

As for the shelters, my dad said if you look at the wall by the wreck you can see a differance in brick work, thats where they bricked them up so no one could use them after the war was over but there used to be 3 bunkers built into that wall behind all the new houses.
Also my nana wasnt treated in the fever hosital for TB, the hospital for TB back then was Clatterbridge, she was told by the fever hospital she had TB, sorry got a bit mixed up lol.

Here's a map - note what looks like a small cutting, possibly natural, running between cemetery and hospital grounds. Maybe this is what was found, with roof strengthened with girders (like cut and fill technique?) Checked 1882 map and the cutting is there then as well, and 1876.

Wow, good work peeps, finding out more all the time

The red dot marks approximately where the location of the cellars pictured earlier in the post are. When we investigated them we saw no evidence of any tunnels . Depending on who you talk to there are lots of stories of tunnels running from the cemetery ,bidston hill or the hospital but other than the shelters, we have found no signs of any.... YET.

Why is St James' in such a weird place? why was it ever on a roundabout? cant although it was better!!. How did people used to get to it? i cant remember and now i have visions of OAP'S dodging traffic and leggin it across the road lol.

I put a pic on another post as I couldnt find this one at the time. Might help with the position of the Hospital if not already clear.

Birkenhead Infectious Diseases

I spent 6weeks in St James' Hospital as a child with diphtheria around 1940. It was also known as the Isolation Hospital. Sounds as though I was fortunate to have survived.