IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Scythia Close, WIRRAL, CH62 1HH

Information board at the site of The Great Eastern Hotel. There are now houses built on the site.

Built in 1862 to serve Liverpool daytrippers from New Ferry pier this inn was located at the junction of New Ferry Road with Shorefields. The SS Great Eastern was a ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the public house was named to celebrate its launch. She was the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the world without refuelling. She was broken up for scrap on the shore at adjacent Rock Ferry in 1889–1890 and many items from the ship were bought by the then landlord and displayed in the pub. The mast was floated across the Mersey to Liverpool from where it was hauled up Everton Valley by a team of four horses and put in place at the Kemlyn Road corner of the Kop stands at Anfield where it stood for many years as a flagpole. The pub closed soon after this photograph was taken in 2007 and despite a local campaign to get the building listed, it was demolished in 2010 and houses built on the site.

This is the United Utilities' wastewater treatment plant in New Ferry, website: http://www.unitedutilities.com/ The local tip is in the background - hard to believe it was once at sea-level!

In the foreground is new marshland - this was previously mudflats. All the land further on has been reclaimed. It has a retaining bank of rocks, and the entire area was filled in with silt. Since then, it has been used as a landfill site and is quite enormous now.

The bay window on the right is part of the annexe of the hotel which can be seen here https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/314871 . The bus is former Wallasey Corporation 67, by this stage in Merseyside PTE livery, and based in Birkenhead, probably at the New Ferry garage. It is still fitted with its original Wallasey Corporation destination blinds which would not have had all the necessary local Birkenhead variants, which is why it is displaying 'Woodside via Woodside'. The terminal 'Woodside' shows a particular Wallasey feature, not shown at its best in monochrome. It is actually red lettering on a white background, which would denote that the destination is not the regular one for the service. In practice Wallasey buses did not normally serve Woodside. Also of interest is the sign attached to the lamppost which highlights a feature of both Birkenhead and Wallasey buses, whereby passengers could purchase through return tickets to Liverpool using the Corporations' own ferries. These were known as 'Bus and Boat Returns' and could be purchased both on buses and at the ferry terminals when coming from Liverpool. The sign reads, in full: 'Route 64 Bus & Boat Return fare from this point 3/1. - Excess fare on 2/1 Bus & Boat tickets used from this terminus is 1/-' (3/1 = 3 shillings 1 penny, (15p) etc.) . This ensured that anyone who had travelled outward beyond the validity of the lower fare had to pay the excess for both outward and return journeys when making the latter. This is one of a series of views featuring buses in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=137652761