I think the building on top right used to be a picture house, then it was a bingo i think. there used to be a cinema on the other side also and one just round the corner on argyle street.
From left to right they were called Meliden Gardens, Sidney Gardens, Hadlow Gardens and Hillside Court. The other block on Sidney Road was Norbury Gardens, just out of shot on the left.
Aerial view of New Chester Road before The British Leather was burnt down 1994 and Rock Retail Park built
I would be interested if anyone could get a similar pic of it nowadays
This pic must have been taken before 1987 as Green Lane Junction signal box (the white building near to the W in the bottom right corner) was closed in December 1986 and burnt down a couple of months later.
To think that schoolchildren were taken to the leather works as career guidance/education! The stench lingers still!
Sometime between 1958 and 1962 I went with the school to a launching at Cammell Lairds and on the way back to school we passed an open doorway in the tannery where I saw a worker iwearing an apron and wellies dipping large pieces of leather into a large wooden container full of brown liquid and I thought I wouldn't like to work there. Guess what? When I left school I got a job there as Trainee Transport Manager and was the only job I had until 1993 when it closed. You got used to the smell of leather except maybe once a month when they stirred the tanning pits which where nearest to the main road, but the worst smell (like rotten eggs) came from Thomson Bros next door.
Whole families often worked there and besides those jobs that handled the wet hides there were typists,joiners, fitters, mechanics and stacker truck and lorry drivers and apprenticeships to these. I think the wages were above the average going rate in Birkenhead
Indeed, seen during the period as decent work and as you say with a regular, not to be sniffed at wage. The other job options that schools presented included, Prices Candles,Lever Brothers, and was it British Aerospace (Hawker Siddley) out Chester way? Ah and Shotton steelworks, talk about Hades
