Hoylake Allotment Association (website) need your help in finding old maps of Hoylake.
Rose Chandler has been in touch and asks:
I was chatting to a couple of plot-holders a while ago and they told me that in the late 1950′s or early 1960′s they were working for the Council and they demolished some allotments on what is now the football field. As you probably know we have a waiting list of nearly 80 and we are trying to get the Council to give us more land. If we could find some evidence that these allotments existed it might help. I have been to the Wirral Archive and couldn’t find anything. I suspect that a lot of documents have been misplaced when the Hoylake and West Kirby Urban District Council disappeared.
So, do you have a map of Hoylake from around that time and can you see allotments on what is now a football pitch opposite Manor Road train station? If you have some information then please contact Rose at HoylakeAllotment@aol.com.
Oh, if you’d like to follow the progress of one of the plot holders growing his own then have a look at this allotment blog by Ian Hazlehurst.
After getting my Allotment my sister (who now lives in Leeds) told me our Dad had an Allotment, but she thought it was down Carr Lane, where the Trading Estate is now, over the railway line from Hoylake Station. But I’m too young to remember.
My Uncle John had an allotment over the track from Manor Road, I remember helping him dig it over and try to remove couch grass which spreads under the soil with agressive roots.
I just looked on Google earth and they still seem to be there, you cross at Sandringham Avenue and go straight ahead with the footy field on your right, at the end of the field the road continues through the hedge and the allotments are on your right.
This would have been in the 1950s. The footy field looks exactly the same size as I remember. Maybe some space was used during WWII for food and returned to leisure use in the 40s? However I have no proof of that.
The comment from Ian P, refers to the current Allotments where mine is situated and have not changed much in 30yrs or more.
Thanks Ian, probably 60 years with no change then! I do remember a tin hut between the two goals and Manor Road station, in the middle of a clump of trees. I guess that was demolished some time due to safety, hygeine and other reasons.
There was a cup for the best allotment presented to the council by Councillor R G Morton in 1943 (year of my birth!). The cup was awarded to the best allotment in Hoylake Urban District. My father won it in 1970 and it was presented to him by chairman Geoffrey Weed! Geoffry wondered if he was the appropriate person to present a gardening award. My father replied “A weed is only a plant out of place” Needless to say everyone in the council chamber were creased up at this, and it was reported in the Liverpool Echo 6th August.
Hi to Ian H and Ian P
The two men who worked for the Council are adamant that it was the late 50s or early 60s. Ian H, I wonder if the tin hut is that horrible thing that is by our shed?
Ian P, I knew that there was a Morton Cup but I did not know why it was called Morton, so that is interesting. I think someone in Hoylake still has it.
The Carr Lane site was part of Hoylake Allotment Association and was given up because it was constantly vandalised and there were few tenants on there. There were only 14 plots but you can still see where it was and it is a good place to go scrumping in the autumn for apples and blackberries.
Rose