Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral Now and Then Poulton road sweet shop

Does anyone remember this little sweet shop,I used to buy my sweets from there in the 70's,Texan bars were the best.

I think it was a former public toilet turned into a takeaway. Can't remember why it was painted in piano keys, though.

That is disgusting, what kind of idiot turns a former public TOILET into a takeaway?

It was never a takeaway it just sold drinks and sweets,there used to be one the other side of the park on the corner of Liscard road and Church street

The Piano keys could have been from when it was a little recording studio, it may even still be a studio as that is the last thing I knew it to be.

It was not a public toilet it was a police sub station. There was an almost identical one on New Brighton promenade near to the old Floral Pavilion. There was a more modern variety near the Oyster Catcher pub. Some youths removed the plastic letters 'P' and 'O' from that one leaving 'LICE'. A totally different design was on the promenade at the bottom of Tobin Street. It had long since fallen out of use by the early 1960s and the wall panels had been removed leaving the roof and supporting brick pillars and raised base causing some people to believe that it was a band stand.

Why would a police substation need two doors in such a tiny building? The public toilet hypothesis is much more plausible.

Perhaps it was a public toilet before it became a police station?

Here is a 1954 OS map showing it as a police station and the toilets behind it.

Can't see it sorry. I don't have 'permission'. God know who does.

I'm not disputing its existence as police station, but a building that small with two doors strongly implies it was a toilet at some point in its existence.

Perhaps it was upgraded from toilet to copshop and new toilets built behind it?

interestingly, what happened to the houses behind it?
They are not on a 1938 map and not on a 1970 map.
Not a very long life for what looks like large houses.

You can view it here ex
https://www.old-maps.co.uk/#/Map/330742/391131/12/100954

The toilets were built before the police station and have not moved.
The police station was built in front of the toilets.
Here is a 1925 map. https://maps.nls.uk/view/114581068

They were prefabs built at the end of the war and later demolished.

I worry that you think any building with two doors is a toilet! It was built as a police substation and nothing else. How do I know this without relying on Google (as is the custom these days it seems)? Because as a kid I was taken in there by a police constable along with another lad for riding two on a bike. Had he taken two boys in a public toilet that would raise public concerns I am sure.

The door on the left led inside to the police office which as you can imagine was very small. The other door? Well in those days police officers either walked or rode bicycles and the door on the left was access to a small area where the police officer could safely place his bicycle. The public toilets at the back were nothing at all to do with the police substation. Totally unrelated .

Not a very long life for what looks like large houses.[/quote]

They were just the usual prefab size but had very decent gardens. The oval shaped area with two trees on the map was actually quite dense with shrubs and trees and was a favourite place for gangs of youths to hang out and ambush lone boys cutting through from Central Park.

It was definitely a small police station. I used to pass it every day.

You were lucky to get past it! We were cycling towards the Gorsey Lane/Oxton Road junction when there was a sharp whistle and a portly police constable who looked as though he had visited the Rose and Crown too often stood in the left hand doorway. He called us over and brought us inside. To the right was a counter on which rested a large ledger with a piece of sawn- off broom handle as a book mark. Our names were duly entered in the ledger. My friend asked if the piece of broom handle was a truncheon. The police constable removed it and holding it near my friend's face said 'Would you care for a taste of it?'. The days when you did not try and be smart with police officers.