1844: Plan of Docks and Warehouses, Birkenhead

This is a map from the Boston Public Library. There they have high quality scans of all sorts of documents and photos, and the collection focusses on items with no known copyright. Therefore they’re free to download and use – like I’ve done here! This is the Plan of docks and warehouses proposed to be made at Birkenhead, in the County of Chester.

There are few maps of Birkenhead on this site, so I thought it only right to add this wonderfully detailed one. It’s from a time in the town’s history before it had built up, but when ambition was high. You can see this by the huge number of streets laid out but not yet built up.

Birkenhead Docks

The subjects of the map are the docks themselves. Like Liverpool’s Old Dock, the Great Float developed from a natural stream running into the Mersey. Then, dry docks were built off the Float, and these are labelled here as Stanley, Egerton and Westminster Docks. They are bounded on each side with Cotton Stores – warehouses like their cousins across the Mersey.

A railway serves the docks, with a line from Chester, Manchester, Birmingham and London splitting in two. The branches serve the Steam Packet Wharf by the river and the rest of the docks inland.

Birkenhead town

In the centre of Birkenhead the grand Hamilton Square is already laid out and built up. It was completed in 1847, and given the maiden name of shipbuilder William Laird’s wife Mary. As this map was published in 1844, we must assume the map builder was confident of its future success! The Town Hall, centrepiece of the square today, was not begun until 1883.

In fact, as this map is partly titled ‘Proposed to be made’ (in relation to the docks) then we might see much of what is here as speculative, or optimistic. Even ‘The Park’ (Birkenhead Park) is drawn in, and this didn’t open until three years after this map.

It always strikes me that Victorian builders could certainly get on with things. So perhaps it’s not surprising that map-makers could gamble on what was coming – it wouldn’t be long til they were proven right!

Mersey ferries

Along with the docks, the other characteristic feature shown on this map are the ferry slipways. They are at New Ferry, Rock Ferry, Birkenhead, Monk’s Ferry, Woodside, Seacombe and Egremont. The ferry routes from Liverpool all seem to be there-and-back, as opposed to boats running down the coast. A further route is marked running off the map to New Brighton.

It seems that William Laird was largely responsible for the development of Birkenhead. He has founded a boiler works in Wallasey in 1824, expanding to shipbuilding in Birkenhead and expanding the town’s population massively. It was he who provided the impetus to develop the town to reflect its civic pride and to thrive in the shadow of its huge neighbour across the water. And even this map can’t escape Liverpool’s influence: many of the docks are shown and named. The Town Hall and Customs house are too, as are a handful of the roads. Perhaps this map’s intended audience were the Liverpool merchants who would see the burgeoning town on the horizon, to attract their investment.

Interestingly, some of the southern docks are seen in ‘double’, with narrow dry docks overlaid by larger ones at Harrington and Herculaneum. If you compare this map to Jesse Hartley’s 1846 Plan of the Liverpool Docks then you can see that the larger docks were in the process of replacing the smaller ones.