Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History Spital Dam

follow the water from by levers u can see some sort of lock!

Fantasic pics,would`nt even like to hazard a guess when they were taken.

I don't suppose anyone has any pictures of the old Station Masters' house that used to be there?? It was where the car park is now I think. They've built new houses on that site.

Thanks.

When sunlight factory was built, a railway cutting was dug out that runs parallel to Bromborough Road, then parallel to Mill Road, then parallel to Magazine Lane. It starts at about Port Sunlight Station and ends up at the mersey.

From Spital Dam to Thermal Road, it is a true cutting in solid sandstone, the width of the cutting vary from about 20 feet to about 50 feet. At spital dam a tunnel was built to take the water under the cutting.

These pictures are taken from the same spot.

The sandstone ridge at Spital Dam must have finshed very rapidly, the end of the cutting is about 90ft above the dam, but before the tunnel was built the river used to flow across her on its path??? That is a lot of earth that has been piled up.

Time to get my dinghy out the shed and in2 that tunnel armed with my super bright torch

I can sort the super tunnel torch lol If you have a dinghy lol

How deep is that water any one know ??

how long would it take to get to that tunnel from australia in a dinghy..cos thats where his location says he is lol

i was jokin, but it would be good to see inside that tunnel, but it would take a very long time from down under to birkenhead by dinghy via the mersey

Got my snorkel, see what I can do over the next couple of days. As there is a sewage treatment works there, better start taking my antibiotics now!!!

we will keep away from you mate for a bit

The photo can't be 1903 because the wind mill was demolished in 1878 after being there since 1777.
I, too, was wondering how the boat got near the mill.
Here's another fair-sized boat just below the dam.

The railway embankment for the line to Price's Candle Works, etc., was built in 1910 but before that the River Dibben would have had a clear run down to the Mersey, apart from the Dam, which provided the head of water for the mill.

The high view with the car (bull-nosed Morris?) would have been from the railway level.

The early maps show that the river was tidal, way up into Brotherton Park, presumably at extreme high tides. The mill race bypassed the dam but I assume the boat could have got up that way, so it may have over-topped the Dam at one of the high tides, assuming the railings weren't there.

The other boat is in what would have been the normally tidal part, before Bromborough Dock was completed in 1930.

I lived at the other end of Bromborough Road, Lower Bebington, up to the 1960s and well remember the awful smell and the yellow oily water below the Dam. They dumped chemicals from the factory further down stream apparently but the river flow was not sufficient to keep the water 'sweet'!

Try to imagine the rural scene before any of the industry got there. Lever chose the Dibben inlet from the Mersey to have water access for the import of the soap ingredients and packaging and the export of his products to the rest of the world. The River Dibben was never the same again! Most of it below the Dam seems to be hidden in pipes now?

Bri

1903 picture - I scanned the picture in and it was definately dated 1903. Was the windmill destroyed by wind in 1878 meaning the sails were destroyed and then it may have been repaired.

I am not sure if I read somewhere that the water-mill was a tidal mill!

The Bromborough Society published an account of the mills at Bromborough in 2000, in this they state:


I haven't found any supporting evidence for this.

The Bromborough Watermill was tidal powered, this meant it could only operate for four hours every tide. In about 1860 it was converted to steam power.

The other factor that concerned me is, effectively saying that every picture of that windmill was taken before 1878, whilst not impossible - the quality and quantity of photographs would suggest otherwise.

Thanks Upton for the confirmation of the tidal mill and additional information. I should have realised there is a chimney there ... doh!

Also I realise now that I may not have scanned the "1903" picture after all, thought it was one of a batch, but it wasn't.

I can't see any advantage in blowing up the windmill, it was by a hill side, the debris would end up everywhere. Explosive demolition in those days wasn't very refined. Structure like that were sometimes brought down by undercutting the structure (removing some of the bottom layer of brick) then a team of horses would be roped up to pull the remaining key pieces out. This was supposed to be a spectacular sight with teams of 16 horses not uncommon.

Spot the difference ....

These photos are identical except that sometime in the 130+ years since the original was taken, someone has 'improved' the image by painting out the debris and piles of building material and replacing them with a smooth water surface.
The retouched image is the one which is usually seen in the history books.
And this was done before Photoshop existed!