there is one on the bromborough road down at spital dam. go along the bromborough road travelling past the brown cow and as you go down the hill to spital dam the pillbox is on the left before you get to the mini rounderbout
Ships that pass in the night, seldom seen and soon forgoten
There used to be a line of old pill boxes alongside Bidston Village, near where Fender Way now is. When we were kids, for a day out we'd get the bus from Birkenhead and get off in Bidston Village. We'd turn left off the main road (I think there was a sweet shop nearby) and walk through a farmyard and along a tree-lined track on to open fields, with Bidston Hill on our left. Dotted along this track were two or three perfectly intact concrete pill boxes (we called them machine-gun posts, because that's what our Dads called them) which were sunk into the earth and had long been abandoned. The big attraction for us kids was that the open outer parts of the pill boxes, where the steps led down to the entrance, were flooded and full of massive frogs that hadn't been disturbed since the war - we used to catch these and take them home. Then we'd have races with them, but most ended up squashed under car wheels after hopping out into the road. The pill boxes were there certainly into the late 50s-early 60s, but the whole area is now built over by what I think became the Ford Estate. I've often wondered why they were sited in such an obscure backwater with no obvious military significance and wonder if they could have been guarding Bidston Observatory, which I believe was used for secret wartime research, including calculating the tides for the D-Day beaches. Does anyone else remember these pill boxes?
I think the track that you're describing was the "7 Styles" that the pub was named after - the start of it remains as the alley opposite St Oswold's church in the village today.
I don't remember them - too young! But you are correct that Bidston Observatory played a role in the war - the story that I've heard is that one of the "go / no go" decisions on D-Day was made based on the weather and tidal reports from Bidston.
I think that one of these boxes still remains marooned between the M53 and the railway - or I may of dreamt that!
Thanks for jogging my memory, AR One. You're dead right - there WAS a string of stiles along the path and there could well have been seven of them. I remember because they were quite a novelty to us townie kids, who didn't know that you were actually allowed to climb over them. Hopefully I can get down there some time and check out if any pill boxes remain. There might even be some frogs left.