written by Kenneth Burnley and
reproduced with permission
Gayton -— Parkgate — Neston
GAYTON today wears an air of peace and self-assurance which
belies its turbulent past; read the words of this piece of verse
written some 180 years ago:
Up rose the sun, the sky was
clear, And gently ebbed the Dee; The winds of heaven were
fast asleep, Though Gayton all was glee. The lads of Wirral
came in crowds, The nyrnphlets neat and trim; To stay at
home on such a day Is very near a sin. And love, who never
missed a Wake, Brought quivers filled with darts; He’d
much to do on all such days, And wound a world of hearts.
And Cambria’s youth from Edwin’s shores, An annual voyage
take, What lass would stay on that side of Dee, When
Love’s at Gayton Wake? Youth, manhood, age, even childhood
came, To share this jocund day; The hedges shone with
gaudy shops, And Gayton all was gay. Dwarfs, giants,
players, learned pig With other creatures odd. The Dee
brought cargoes rich And with them Mary Dodd. When Mary
first approached the place, To get on shore was trying,
That she was there, on every voice, Through all the Wake was
flying. A crowd collected — bought her cakes, And gazed
till they were weary, And they who’d of the mammoth read,
Concluded it Was Mary. From Hoylake Hall to Gayton came
Fine ladies — gentlemen; They come, my friends to look at you
And you may look at them. _ The day wax’d short — the Wake
grew thin, Some sail’d adown the Dee, Whilst others tugg’d
against the tide, And row’d to Hilburee.
This description in verse (can we call
it poetry?) of the annual Wake at Gayton is by Richard Llwyd, a
Welsh poet. More than anything else, perhaps, the poem gives us
some idea of the importance of Gayton in times past. We can
picture the scene: a fine day dawns, lads and lasses, ladies and
gentlemen, young and old, converge on Gayton from all corners of
Wirral. The ferry brings more merry-makers from North Wales
across the placid waters of the Dee. As the visitors arrive, the
sideshows spring into life with all kinds of wonderful
entertainments. There is a man who eats glass bottles and
stones; a dancing-bear; human oddities of all kinds, giants and
dwarfs, fat ladies and thin men. The place resounds to the
playing of pipers and fiddlers. Dancing-booths are set up. There
are races and competitions for the more energetic: ducking for
apples in a barrel of ale; a sack jumping match; catching a pig
by its tail; grinning through a horse collar; races for everyone
- men, women, children, dogs and ponies.
The arrival of Mary Dodd, a huge fat
woman from Chester, is obviously something of a highlight in the
proceedings, but whether for her own sake or for her cakes is
not known! The afternoon wears on, the sun sinks behind the
Welsh hills; lovers arm in arm leave to walk the field-paths
home. The Dee is specked with small boats rowing their tired but
happy passengers across to the Welsh side. The Wake is over for
another year. But for how many more years did the Wakes
continue? This is not known, but probably into the early years
of the nineteenth century. The passing of this annual, harmless
reverie surely left Wirral a poorer place, and Gayton passed
into relative insignificance. Surprisingly, perhaps, the name
Gayton has its roots not in the gay bonhomie of the place, but
in its position as “the farmstead on the gate or road” that is,
the main road along the Dee side from Chester to West Kirby.
This is still true today, for at Gayton roundabout the incoming
traveller from Chester has to choose between one of four roads
which fan out to different parts of Wirral. The original village
of Gayton lay nearer the river. For 600 years there was a ferry
crossing from here to Flintshire on the Welsh coast; Edward I is
believed to have crossed from here in 1277 on his way to the
invasion of Wales. The old Ferry House, now called Gayton
Cottage, still stands at the foot of the lane, looking out
across the lonely marshes of the Dee. The five-mile crossing must
have been a fair enough trip in calm weather, but a hazardous
joumey when the Dee was rough.
The greater part of Gayton
is now well-to-do suburbia. The seventeenth century Hall,
however, facing the broad estuary in its charming setting down a
narrow cobbled lane, is one of the fine old halls of Wirral. It
was originally the home of the Glegg family, one of the oldest
Wirral families with connections dating back to the year 1380,
and whose name is perpetuated in the popular Glegg Arms Inn at
Gayton roundabout. Gayton Hall, like so many other Wirral
halls, has been altered and added to many times over the years.
It was a place of hospitality for travellers en route to Ireland
in the days when Parkgate was an important sea port. King
William III stayed here in 1689 while on his way to the Battle
of the Boyne in Ireland; and he was apparently so pleased with
his overnight reception that he knighted his host, William
Glegg, who subsequently planted two fir trees in front of the
Hall to commemorate the occasion. They became known as William
and Mary, and stood as prominent reminders of the Royal visit
for nearly 250 years. One was blown down during a gale in 1936,
and the other had to be felled shortly after. The flat roof of
the Hall is said to have been used by smugglers as a hide-out
during the eighteenth century.
In the grounds of the Hall (which was
originally protected by a deep moat) stands a fine octagonal
dovecot. Built of brick in 1663, this is one of only two
dovecots or columbaria in Wirral, the other being at Puddington
Old Hall. The keeping of pigeons in the Middle Ages was a
pastime with a practical end, as they formed a much-needed part
of manorial diet during the winter months when other food was
scarce. There were often 500 or more pigeons to one dovecot.
They reared their young, all the year round, in rows of niches
built into the walls, a bit like a primitive chicken battery.
Dovecots fell into disuse about two hundred years ago when the
introduction of turnip fields meant that sheep and cattle could
be grazed all the year round, giving fresh meat even in the
depths of winter. The peasantry hated the dovecots, as not only
were they the sole property of the lord of the manor, but the
pigeons tended to eat the villagers’ crops and grain supplies.
There were once some 25,000 dovecots in Britain, about two to
each parish, so the two Wirral examples are indeed important.
Before leaving Gayton, mention must be made of Gayton Mill, a
red sandstone building at the side of the main road to Heswall.
Now a private dwelling, the mill is believed to be the oldest on
the west coast outside Anglesey, and it is certainly the oldest
tower mill in Wirral. It bears the date 1735 and was last worked
about 1875. Present day folk trying to bring up a family in
today’s small, modem houses may be interested to note that the
wife of the last miller at Gayton successfully reared a family
of sixteen children within the narrow walls of the nearby
miller’s cottage!
There is a fine footpath from Gayton
along the bank of the Dee to Parkgate. Not that you would
know that the Dee is there, even at high tide the river is far
away across the salt marsh. Only the exceptionally high tides of
spring and autumn cover the marsh and then only to a limited
degree. Less than twenty five years ago it was possible to walk
along this sea wall with the water lapping the stones and the
wind throwing spray up over the top on to the pathway. To the
casual observer the acres of salt marsh stretching away from the
sea wall into the distance may seem bleak and dreary. The marsh
is, however, an important habitat for bird life of every
description. Redshank, oyster-catcher, and lap- wing regularly
breed here, and many other waders feed and roost on the marsh
during the winter months and on passage in spring and autumn.
Heron can often be seen gracefully winging along the gullies and
channels, while many smaller land birds forage for food on the
drier areas. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
recognized the importance of the marsh to the extent that it
last year (1980) purchased some 5,000 acres between here and Burton
from the British Steel Corporation to be set aside as a reserve.
This acquisition is seen by many as one of the most
significant events for bird conservation in Britain for many
years and it is hoped that, with the appointment of a full-time
Reserve Warden, much more may be learned about patterns of bird
life in this part of the estuary which until now has been rather
neglected.Bird lovers from all over the north-west gather along
here on the rare occasions of an exceptionally high tide.
Expectation mounts as the tide creeps ever so slowly higher,
until the water flushes the birds out of the marsh. Clouds of
birds fly towards the land, startled by the sudden rude
washing-out of their hiding-places! But the disturbance is
brief; after half an hour the tide recedes and the birds can
once again settle in peace. In summer the marsh’s edge is bright
with plants and flowers unique to this special environment: sea
aster, sea purslane and scurvy grass grow on the marsh, while
the pretty seaside centaury bedecks the red sandstone blocks of
the old sea wall. A reminder of the days when these parts had
trade links with Ireland can be seen midway between Gayton and
Parkgate.
The slipway here was used by cattle pushed
overboard from the boats to swim ashore. Near here, too, a
footpath cuts across the golf course to the Wirral Way or beyond
to Back- wood Hall, a delightful mansion set up on the slopes
above the Dee. A mile or so further along the sea wall is
Parkgate, with its neighbouring town of Neston. I have at my
side fifteen or twenty books aboutWirral. All of them devote more
space to Parkgate than to almost any other part of Wirral except
Wallasey and Birkenhead. This is not surprising, since these
one-time ports have had the most colourful history of all
Wirral’s townships. Although now seemingly sharing little in
common, the two places 250 years ago were linked together by a
common interest: shipping. Looking out across the vast acres of
marshland today, with scarcely a drop of water in sight, the
visitor might be forgiven for being unable to imagine that,
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Parkgate was
one of the busiest ports in the land. And yet the evidence is
still here in bricks and mortar; a mile or so of inns, shops and
cottages within a stone’s throw of the redundant sea wall, all
looking out across the marshlands of Dee. “All on one side like
Parkgate” is an old Cheshire saying with plenty of meaning still
today.
The story starts, not here at Parkgate, but a mile
and a half up-river where, in the middle of the sixteenth
century, a quay was constructed to cater for the shipping which
had originally used the port of Chester. As we have seen, by the
fifteenth century siltation had begun to cause serious problems
for boats entering Chester: a document dated 1422 states that
“the abundance of sands which had choked the creek” was
lamentably decaying the commerce of the City. Anchorages had
been established on the Dee at Shotwick and Burton, but these
too had been made useless by the relentless march of the grass
and mud. The building of the quay at Neston (originally called
the “New Quay”) brought a vast amount of shipping to this
anchorage during the second half of the sixteenth century and
the early years of the seventeenth century, and was largely
responsible for the rise in importance of Neston during this
time. The New Quay, unfortunately, was never a very satisfactory
anchorage; it provided little shelter from the storms which
regularly sweep up the Dee, and it was not long until silting
caused problems here too.
By the end of the sixteenth
century, the authorities had begun to look elsewhere for the
site of a new anchorage. The river shore by Neston Deer Park
(Leighton Park), a couple of miles down-river from the New Quay,
at a place known as the “parke gate”, had on occasions been used
by boats to unload their goods if they were too large to reach
Chester. The site was not too far distant from Neston, where a
considerable business had evolved in catering for travellers and
the handling of goods, and so it was announced that “the water
bailys of this city [Chester] do immediately demand anchorage at
Parkgate and insist upon the same as this City’s right”. And so
Neston’s New Quay was abandoned and the stones used to form a new
anchorage at Parkgate. The original site at Neston is a
fascinating place today; all that remain are the ruins of the
Old Quay House (which in its time has been used as a “House of
Correction”, a farmhouse, and a private residence), and the
sandstone walls which were constructed to protect the farmland
from the river. A smugglers’ tunnel is supposed to have run from
here to the old Vicarage at Neston. The site is now,
confusingly, called the Old Quay!
The construction of the
new anchorage at the “Parke Gate” at the beginning of the
seventeenth century transformed a sleepy hamlet into a bustling
seaport of national importance. The main catalyst in this
transformation was undoubtedly the introduction of the Dublin
Packet Service, a combined freight and passenger service which
operated on a “demand” basis from its inauguration in 1710 to
1775. For nearly a hundred years the service to Dublin brought
travellers to Parkgate from allover the country. Many were
famous (or at least titled) and most were wealthy poor people
could not afford to travel in those times. The passengers
brought money, and a small town of inns, hotels, coffee houses,
gaming parlours, assembly rooms and even a theatre sprang up to
cater for the demand. But surely, you say, Parkgate was only a
stopping off place, a port of call, a point of embarkation for
the sea journey to Ireland? Yes, but the unpredictable weather
of these parts (and the unpredictable vessels!) meant that the
service was anything but regular. Passengers could wait days,
even weeks, for the weather to change for the better. But if the
passengers fretted at such delays, the local innkeepers rejoiced
at the trade the inclement weather brought their way!
Mention must be made of the many famous people who passed
through Parkgate during this period. Probably the most quoted
was Handel, who came to Parkgate in November 1741 on his way to
Ireland for the first performance of the Messiah. However, the
weather knows no distinction between the famous and the unknown,
and he too was prevented from sailing. Handel, though, made good
use of thedelay. Wanting to try out some last-minute alterations
to the score of his oratorio, he went to Chester where he hired
or borrowed some members of the Cathedral choir. He eventually
sailed from Holyhead in North Wales, a longer overland journey,
but with a sea journey much shorter than that from Parkgate.
Handel did, however, retum via Parkgate. Jonathan (Dean) Swift,
Dean of Dublin and celebrated satirist and author, often passed
through Parkgate. John Wesley, the travelling evangelist,
crossed to and from Ireland more than forty times during his
lifetime of preaching the gospel to the folk of Britain.
He, too, made good use of a delay caused by unfavourable winds;
he preached at “the new chapel at Neston” in April 1762. Many
more names are written in Parkgate’s history, the Lord
Deputies of Ireland; Oliver Cromwell; and Emma, Lady Hamilton.
The diaries and Writings of these and other travellers of the
time give highly descriptive accounts of the voyage across the
Irish Sea. A young girl, Jane Reilly, wrote the following
account of the arrival of her packed boat at Parkgate in 1791:
After sailing close enough to the coast of Cheshire to see
some fine hobut went some part of the way in a small boat and
were carried by the men the rest of the way. '
Accommodation on board varied according to the whim of the
master of the vessel; John Wesley used to take his own chaise on
board in preference to the discomfort of a cabin. Another
traveller, though, commented upon the excellence of the
accommodation being “subjects of praise among the first circles
of the two kingdoms”. Mention has already been made of the
delays in setting sail because of unfavourable weather. Even
when the joumey was under way, however, all was not always
“plain sailing”. Although the voyage could take as little as
thirteen hours, it often took twice that time, and could even
take as long as three days or more. On several occasions ships
approaching Dublin were forced to return to Parkgate without
reaching the safety of harbour:
Being within a few
leagues of Dublin Harbour, a strong wind sprang up, which
obliged the “Murray” to put back and the next day return to
Parkgate, where she now remains. ‘ The passengers on that
occasion were lucky to reach any port safely, for the violent
storms which are common in the Irish Sea claimed many lives from
the Packet ships. Poorly manned, overcrowded vessels with few
navigational aids added to the risk of shipwreck:
At
Parkgate there also came women trembling and waiting for the
packets aboard which were their loved ones, who had set out from
Ireland. Day after day they waited for the overdue vessels;
becoming at last uneasy, then anxious, and at length abandoning
all hope, set out for home, knowing the sea would never give
them back their dead. One of the worst wrecks was that of the
King George in 1806. This vessel, which local people had said
had too sharp a hull for these waters, ran aground on a sandbank
in the Dee estuary,uses we arrived about ten o’clock at
Parkgate, but the tide not being in we could not get close to
the shore, her sharp hull causing her to lie over on one
side. As the tide rose, a gale force wind got up which caught
the boat. Water came pouring into the hold, which was full of
passengers. In the ensuing mélée, some I20 people drowned, the
only survivors being four sailors and a boy.
The poet
Milton lost one of his dearest friends, Edward King, in a
shipwreck on his way from Ireland to Parkgate in 1637. King’s
death was such a blow to the poet that he composed what is now
recognized as one of his best works:
For Lycidas is
dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left
his peer. Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself
to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon his
watery bier Unwept, and Welter to the parching wind,
Without the need of some melodious rear.
As well as the
Packet service to Ireland, a ferry service plied across the Dee
to the Welsh coast for some hundred years between 1750 and 1850.
The ferry brought Liverpool-bound passengers from North Wales
via the ports of Flint and Bagilt, saving them the long detour
through Chester. The trip to Wales also proved popular with day
trippers to Parkgate during the first half of the nineteenth
century.
By the end of the eighteenth century, however,
Parkgate’s days as a first-class port were numbered. As well as
the effects of the spread of the marsh, road travelling had
improved to such a degree that most travellers preferred to
travel through North Wales to Holyhead where a more reliable
service to Ireland could be obtained, as well as a shorter
crossing. Liverpool too was by this time a thriving port, and
poor old Parkgate had to retire from the shipping scene; the
last recorded reference to a boat landing passengers is 1811.
Parkgate’s story does not end there; in fact, well before the
last boat had left the quayside, fashionable society had
discovered that here was the ideal venue for the newly found
pastime of sea-bathing. We who take bathing so much for granted
find it difficult to appreciate that, until the middle of the
eighteenth‘ century, “taking a dip” was almost unheard of.
It was a Dr Russell who, in 1750, published a Dissertation
on the Use of Seawater on Diseases of the Glands in which he
advocated sea-bathing as a means of curing all such ills. And
here, at Parkgate, was the ideal place to put the
recommendations into practice. Firm yellow sands, bracing
breezes, magnificent views across the estuary to the Welsh hills,
pure sea-water, well-established communications (which were to
improve with the coming of the railways), and excellent
accommodation almost guaranteed Parkgate’s success. And lest it
be thought that the gentry of the time kept well away from such
goings-on, note the following extract from a London newspaper
dated 1802:
Among the sea-dippers at Parkgate, near
Liverpool, were the Hon. Colonel Crewe, Sir Boyle and Lady
Roche, Sir Richard and Miss Hills, Colonel and Mrs Jepson,
Lieutenant-Colonel Colston, Major Henchman, Captain Chandlers,
Mr Trench, Mr Benson, the Hon. Mrs Foley, and the beautiful Miss
Currie of Chester. Parkgate had indeed become “much resorted
to by the 'gay' and fashionable world”.
The kind of
bathing indulged in at Parkgate in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries was, however, different from the gay
abandonment of today’s sun-seekers. It was not done to be seen
in the water with the body uncovered; and as such things as
bathing-costumes had yet to be introduced, bathers had to use a
contraption called a bathing machine. Tobias Smollett in his
article “Bathing Machine”, written in 1770, describes the
machine admirably:
The bather, ascending into this
apartment by wooden steps, shuts himself in, and begins to
undress; while the attendant yokes a horse at the end next to
the sea, and draws the carriage forwards, till the surface of
the water is level with the floor of the dressing-room; then he
moves and fixes the horse to the other end. The person within,
being stripped, opens the door to the seaward, where he finds the
guide ready, and plunges headlong for the sea. A certain number
of machines are fitted with tilts, that project from the seaward
end, so as to screen bathers from the view of all persons
whatsoever.
Conditions inside the bathing machines
apparently were pretty awful — dark, damp and musty, and
crawling with insects. Small wonder, then, that not everybody
used them. A visitor passing through Parkgate in 1813 was
obviously shocked by the scene at high tide:
We
discovered a spectacle which a foreigner might have moralized
upon with more seriousness than we of this free country can be
permitted to do. Few of either sex thought it necessary to hide
themselves under the awnings of bathing machines. . . . He would
be a fool or worse who accused them of any intentional
indelicacy, but I do think it would be as well were they not to
despise bathing machines for the few plain reasons that induce
so many to use them. The crowds came to Parkgate until the
1830s, when the expanding road and railway networks made the
more commercialized resorts of Blackpool and Southport (and even
New Brighton) readily accessible. Local people still bathed at
Parkgate until the 1940s, when the expanding saltmarsh finally
reached the foot of the sea wall.
All through Parkgate’s
years first as a port and then as a resort, a small section of
the community has eamed its living from fishing on the Dee; few
people, even today, have not heard of Parkgate Shrimps. Gone,
however, are the days when fishermen’s nets hung along the sea
wall and trains of twenty or thirty trucks full of cockles and
mussels would leave Parkgate Station bound for the towns and
cities of the North and Midlands. - And what of Parkgate
today? Well, Neston’s suburbs have crept up to its very edge;
there is no sea you would be very lucky even to see it from here
but its “front” has survived as an interesting relic from the
port’s maritime days. Any fine day brings out visitors in their
hundreds, to stroll along the prom, sample home-made Parkgate
ice-cream, and take home a few ounces of Parkgate Shrimps. Most
visitors remark on the attractive vista from Parkgate: westwards
to the patchwork of the Welsh hills, or northwards to the cliffs
about Thurstaston shore and the Hilbre Islands in the Dee
estuary.
Few of those who amble along this mile long
esplanade look at the many and varied buildings which make the
town “all on one side”. Fewer still know the historical
background to them. There is not the space here to describe all
the buildings in detail - besides, others have done this already
but any description of Parkgate would be incomplete without a
mention of some of the more interesting buildings.
Most
people start at the Neston end of the promenade and here,
opposite the Old Quay Inn, is a row of eighteenth and
nineteenth-century cottages, one of which has the name. Nelson
picked out in stones on the ground in front of the house. This
memorial is not, as many believe, to Admiral Nelson but to
Nelson Burt, the son of a Chester artist Albin Burt who
specialized in painting miniature portraits. Young Nelson was
drowned in 1822 and his father set his name in the earth outside
the front of the cottage. Nearer the parade, in a house on the
corner, a young lady, Emma Lyon, stayed during the summer of
1784 to try to get rid of a skin complaint. The remedy (seaweed
and salt water) evidently worked, for she wrote:
My knees
is well . . . there is hardly a mark, and my elbows is much
better. If I stay a fortnight longer I shall not have a spot,
for you can scarce discover anything on my knees and arms.
This young girl, unknown at the time, was to become the
renowned Lady Hamilton, wife of Sir William Hamilton, and later
the mistress of Lord Nelson. But more of Emma later. This part
of the parade is somewhat dominated by the black and white
timbering of Mostyn House School, a boys’ preparatory school
with a fascinating history. The oldest part of the school was
originally a hotel, the George Inn, built about 1770 and at the
time one of the most fashionable in Parkgate.
The remainder of this fascinating
history can be found in Kenneth Burley's excellent book,
Portrait of Wirral, of which I had permission to copy some
items.
