IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Buccleuch Street, BIRKENHEAD, CH41 8HX

Looking halfway to Birkenhead Park station. Underneath, nearest, Ilchester Road, Buccleuch Street &, furthest, Lincoln Street girder road bridges. Formerly known as 'bomb alley' to train drivers, due to the nature of having to travel underneath the bridges, in one of the roughest parts of Birkenhead, before the River Street houses were demolished. The redbrick tunnel archway, barely visible in the distance, goes beneath Corporation Road.

As seen from Birkenhead North railway station.

The view from the Ilchester Road overbridge, looking down the line towards West Kirby and New Brighton. In the 49 years since Ben Brooksbank's historic photo http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1802063 the through line on the right has been removed along with the semaphore signals, telegraph poles and canopy to the footbridge. Perhaps the most noticeable change between the two photos (taken in the same month) is the encroachment of trees and shrubs on both banks of the cutting. All the houses to the right have been demolished and those in the distance have been replaced by the Bidston Moss recycling centre.

Viewed from the opposite side of the rarely-used line to platform 1, though otherwise the same as Image

Looking south from the forecourt of Birkenhead North Station, this church, which lies unfortunately just outside the same gridsquare, is a prominent landmark.

Signals ML566 and ML568 are at the eastern end of the island platform.

St James Church (on the church notice board it is described thus, with no apostrophe) is one of the great slum churches of Birkenhead, familiarly known as Jimmy's or "the Holy Doughnut", reflecting its former position on a traffic island at the junction of Laird Street and Hoylake Road. The architect C.E. Lang designed it in 1845 to minister to the workers in his nearby dockers' cottages, then at the very edge of the built-up area adjoining Bidston Moss. But work stalled, and a contemporary journal records that for many years the incomplete shell was occupied by poultry and even a wild goat. Walter Scott completed the building in 1858. This is the southern elevation from Ilchester Road.

Viewed from Birkenhead North station footbridge.