WIRRAL TIME TRAVEL
BY ANDREW WOOD
ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC WELLS
FLAT WATER, STRONG WINDS.
The Marine Lake is a distinctive feature of West Kirby,
unthinkingly accepted by most residents of Wirral as part of
the landscape, which is probably the most frequent subject
of readers' photographs publish in our local free newspapers.
Of course most of us know that it is not a natural but a man-
made salt-water lake, but how many of us could put a date
on its construction or, for that matter, say when West Kirby
Sailing Club, which is based there, was founded?
To put the origins of the lake in context, it was not until the
last quarter of the 19th century that West Kirby, and its near
neighbour Hoylake, were anything more than fishing villages.
In 1871, the two places together had no more than 2,118
residents, most of them in Hoylake. On the First Edition of
the Ordnance Survey (OS) map, West Kirby consisted of only
four or five buildings at the junction of Grange Road and Dee
Lane. Thirty years later, however, the combined population of
West Kirby and Hoylake had reached 10,991. By the time the
Second Edition of the OS was published in 1897, the layout of
West Kirby south of Grange Road was more or less as it appears
today, and by 1900 the shops on the north side of the road had
been built.
The cause of this explosive growth was the arrival of the
railway. The first railway along the northern end of the Wirral
peninsula had been the Hoylake Railway, opened in 1866, but
it did not reach as far as West Kirby. Not surprisingly, it was
not a financial success since the area it served was, at that time,
mostly scarcely populated marshland and sand dunes. Within
four years the railway company was in the hands of bailiffs.
However, in 1872 the line was bought by the Hoylake and
Birkenhead Railway Company, newly formed for the purpose,
which extended it to West Kirby in 1878.
Developers finally recognised the potential of West Kirby's
location, and the place grew out of all recognition. The railway
offered the possibility of working in Birkenhead or Liverpool
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and escaping to the clean air and peaceful surroundings in the
evenings and at weekends – commuting was born. In addition,
and with the railway company's encouragement, those residents
of Liverpool who could not afford to live on Wirral could at
least take day trips or holidays “over the water”, and lodging
houses and hotels sprang up to cater for them.
One of the biggest of these was the large and imposing
Hydropathic Hotel, built round about 1890 and further
extended in 1896. Popularly known as 'the Hydro', the hotel
advertised baths including 'Turkish, Russian, Electric, Nauheim,
Seaweed, Salt Water Plunge, etc''; one wonders about the health-
giving properties, not to say the method of operation of the
Electric Bath!
By June 1895, there was talk of building a marine lake, like
those that had already been built at Southport and Rhyl.
In September the same year the West Kirby Improvement
Association had been set up, and a year later a Bill was
introduced in Parliament to authorise the building of a
continuous promenade from Hoylake to West Kirby, deepening
the Hoyle Lake and building a marine lake at West Kirby. The
Bill became law in March 1897 and construction began shortly
afterwards.
The original plan was for a marine lake three-quarters of a mile
(1.2 kilometres) long and 150 yards (137 metres) wide. Design
and construction of both the promenade and the lake was
entrusted to the Borough Engineer, Thomas Foster. His original
estimate for the cost of the lake's construction had been £2,500.
Because of changes demanded by the Council it actually cost
£3,500, for which Foster was heavily criticised in some quarters,
although even its final cost was about a tenth of what the lake
at Southport had cost. It was fortunate, also, that although both
Hoylake and West Kirby got their promenades the intervening
section was never built.