Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request tranmere pool or Birkenhead pool location

Tranmere Pool fascinates me as well . I was going to refer to Sidelights on Tranmere but you beat me to it . There is a great book showing the paintings
of Herdman and he did one of Tranmere Pool with the tide out. My copy of this book has gone missing in my house somewhere !
The first tanneries in Birkenhead grew up alongside the Tran Pool where the Gas
works were later built. The 1st Welsh Courts were built here also-this is according to the book Byegone Birkenhead by J.Kaighan,written in 1925 . I am guessing that Welsh drovers brought cattle into the growing town in the 1820s/30s . Tidal pool must have been great for washing hides and cleaning skins etc but the stink left behind must have been awful when tide went out !

I've enquired about having a map site on Wiki before but am told that it's not really possible. It would be a logistical nightmare and use up tons of space for one thing. There are also concerns about copyright etc., for anything less than 70 years old.

A guy called Ainsworth went wandering round Birkenhead in 1850 and wasn't too complimentary about Tranmere Pool:

"Returning up Price-street, which is another of "the grand streets," I found shops and houses unoccupied, with some unfinished and going to ruin. At the upper end there are indeed about thirty respectable houses occupied and in good condition, which looks quite remarkable here. On passing along I perceived a most villanous odour, something like gas—but much worse; and on asking my companion what abomination there was in that street to cause it, was informed it did not arise from anything in that street or near, but from a place called Tranmere Pool, nearly a mile off; and that the nearer I approached the nuisance, the more offensive I should find it, and that it pervaded at times the whole town, varying in intensity of stench according to the direction of the wind. On going to my friend's house, he gave me a report to read as to the sanitary condition of Birkenhead : from it I annex an extract,* and can only add, that from my own experience the effect produced by this “monster nuisance" is not overdrawn.

* One monster nuisance, Tranmere Pool, I regret to say, is not at all likely to be abated, the opinion of the authorities being that it is of too great a magnitude to come under the Nuisance Removal Act; this said nuisance (in extent upwards of a quarter of a mile in length), nearly the whole of which is one continued mass of abomination, consisting of all sorts of decomposed animal and vegetable matter, and sending forth an effluvia of so offensive and deleterious a nature as often to make the houses in the neighbourhood, particularly in Clifton Park, almost uninhabitable. Unless the Nuisance or some other Act can strike at this fearful seat of pestilence, Birkenhead can never be considered as being in a proper sanitary state.—Extract from Report of Dr. Hunter Robertson on the Sanitary State of Birkenhead. 1848."

There's some wonderfully descriptive words in there - you can almost smell it!

Rough estimate of where Birkenhead Ferry and Tranmere Ferry were present day?

In 1905 Mr J C Paterson (one of his descendants Owen Paterson - now Secretary of State for Northern Ireland)established the British Leather Co in its present form (now burnt down and demolished 1993) I was always told there was a well there at one time, fed by a stream running down Chamberlain st

Not another mysterious stream - more sleepless nights for geekus! I seem to remember that when the factory burnt down the area was covered by a fallout of asbestos ash and there was a big court case brought by residents who were affected.

...starting to feel queasy already nightwalker. Hope it's not Weil's disease!

By the way, there's an interesting article on public health and Wallasey Pool during the 1840's. It's in Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire, vol.150. Devastating effects of the Cholera outbreak in 1848-9, etc. People used to chuck all sorts of things in these rivers and pools, which was okay when they were tidal, but once the docks started getting built and it stopped the tides things started getting a bit nasty.

Must go. Need to get tablets....

Here's some more info on the location of Tranmere Pool, taken from Birkenhead Priory and the Mersey Ferry, by R. Stewart-Brown, published in 1925.
Explaining the siting of the priory on the headland of Birkenhead, he writes: 'On the south, where Abbey Street represents approximately the line of the old river bank, the outlook was over the wide expanse of Birket (Tranmere) Pool, then of far`greater extent, but much curtailed in the last hundred years, particularly in the later period.
'The New Chester Road through Tranmere may be taken as representing the old strand line of the Pool as far as Green Lane Station, about which point the Pool ran inland to the west for nearly a mile, and at high tide most of the land now occupied by the gasworks, railway sidings, the Central and Town stations, was under water.
'The Pool could be forded until about 100 years ago, at low tides in the summer, by stepping stones approximately on the line of New Chester Road between Green Lane and Abbey Street, and probably this method of approaching the Priory was a very ancient one.
'It was not until the spring of 1790 that an embankment to carry the new turnpike road was made at the mouth of Tranmere Pool to a height which rendered it passable for general traffic above the highest spring tides.'
.... The shockingly polluted state of the Pool in the 19th century, which Nightwalker, Littlestan and Geekus have pointed out, contrasts sharply with the way it was at the time of the Priory - when it was the site of fishyards, with the monks claiming the right to some of the catches.

Wikipedia strikes again, this time inventing a phantom 'illegal railway'! Monks Ferry did indeed start operating in 1838, but only as a ferry service - there was no railway station. The railway extension to Monks Ferry wasn't started until October 1843, the first train running in October 1844 (at least that bit in Wikipedia is right).

You're dead right, of course. I should have checked out the 'facts' on Wikipedia before posting them.

What were the Welsh Courts - were they the tenements around Back Chester street which became bad slums?
Would like to see the pics of Herdman - would there be any in the museum?

There are a lot of William Herdman prints of Liverpool in the Lancashire Gallery HERE

HERE is his picture of St Mary's tower looking across tranmere pool

When was Borough Road Birkenhead built.
I've just been reading a couple of pdfs and was wandering if when they built the embankments for the Old and New chester Roads did they then cut off the tidal flow of the Tranmere Pool and what happened to the Happy Valley stream.
It appears it may have been diverted into open sewers

Anyone know which name for it was referred to the earliest?
the Pool
Birkett Pool
Tranmere Pool
Birkenhead Pool

"Sidelights of Tranmere" refers to it as Birkett Pool 1659

also
In the painting you can see Green Lane and the railway bridge
no sign of the station, the Brittannia or the Queens nor does it look like New Chester Road had been built