I was looking (unsuccesfully) for Bidston Aerodrome on OS maps when I spotted two airshafts. These were located between the junction of Compton Rd and Wildbrook Drive (was Mason Avenue) and the Bidston Link Road (or School lane as was)
Anyone any ideas what these were for?
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
I know the scale is well out but if you try to compare both maps it looks like one of them could be lost in the building of Hoylake road, do you have a date for the map but the ones at the bottom of Lennox lane still look accessible..good find
It all makes perfect sense expressed in dollars and cents ,pound shillings and pence
I always forget to put the year - 1956. Hoylake road already exists but Bidston Link doesn't. To give you a better idea of scale, Bidston station is the building at the very top left hand corner of the picture.
I reckon the left hand airshaft is beside the roundabout or maybe underneath it, the right hand one is in open space.
Just realised that School lane is the station approach road not Bidston Link as I stated above.
It is also strange that this land has not been built on.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
This any clue? I've tried to roughly overlap where they'd be. They look like they're more likely to be the tiny dots rather than the big thing so I've put those in orange to help (somewhat) with identification.
Bad news, had a rummage around the site today, the left hand shaft (by roundabout) is probably under a 20ft earth embankment. The rest of the "field" looks very much like it has been covered with at least top soil in recent years judging from soil quality and age and types of plants. Possibly when they levelled Tesco car park. It is much more overgrown in places than I thought, the area by the roundabout is just about inaccessible, the area around the right hand shaft needs quite a bit of flattening, perhaps late Autumn I might go with a probing rod. I strongly suspect under the top soil will be a layer of waste (rubble etc) of some sorts.
It sprung to mind as to what happened to Conway Park Station debris when they dug that out?
I took a couple of photos but they don't show anything so haven't bothered putting them up.
I've put the spade away, back to map searching, it was a nice hour out in the open anyway.
Last edited by diggingdeeper; 24th Jul 20083:59pm.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
Interesting stuff there, know the area quite well and it does seem from a first glance that those vent points would be under years of filled in soil. Didn't know about those points though, though I know they did have decoy buildings by Bidston station where fires would be lit to divert bombers from bombing the nearby Bidston docks, remains of the buildings were there 1992-3 but I think it got so overgrown there and it's a bit of a hzard being marshland.