The Best Guide for the Neston Area

Weeks 47 and 48 of Neston in the Great War, and Water at Parkgate is Under Discussion.

The latest glimpse at life in Neston during the Great War, from local historian Susan Chambers.

Notices were being posted at Parkgate warning of the dangerous gutters which had been forming in the last couple of years on the foreshore. A.G. Grenfell of Mostyn House was hoping to take advantage of the channels, and was looking forward to more sailing, rowing and motor boating, having built a wooden landing stage in addition to the ladder down the sea-wall, about which complaints had been made. Mr Grenfell was trying out one of the small boats this week when it rapidly filled with water and sank, leaving him to battle with the strong current in the new channel. Luckily three local fishermen were on-hand to help him, George and William Fewtrell, and William Campion who jumped into Fewtrells' punt and reached him just in time.

Were these Mr Grenfell's steps?

A letter from some Parkgate residents was asking the council to put a new top on the twelve landing-stage posts that had just been exposed on the foreshore after forty years under the sand. This new platform would be accessible from the bank of sand next to the sea-wall and an attraction to visitors, as there was enough water for a boat for four hours a day in the channel.

The war was obviously far from over but voluntary recruitment had dwindled, so a national Registration Scheme was about to be launched. This was a type of census to discover just how many men (and women) in various trades and professions, ages, and marriage status were available for the armed services or essential jobs. There was also a serious shortage of munitions and, despite the many objections and dire predictions of H.N.Gladstone of Burton Manor, the War Office was still intent on manufacturing explosives on his estate in Hawarden.

Two local men were being recommended for the Distinguished Conduct Medal, Captain M. Cramer-Roberts of the 4th Gurkha Rifles whose family lived in the villas on Hinderton Road (formerly on the town side of the former police station), and Corporal Albert Littler, who was also from Hinderton Road, on the opposite side, just beyond the Institute. Albert was serving with the Canadian Field Ambulance and had achieved a rescue of a man injured during the first gas attack at Ypres. He was well-known in Neston as a member of the concert group, the Concord Society, and had sung a solo at a fund-raising event at the Picturedrome in the Institute last November. He had joined up in January.

This week's 'Neston Flicks'

The whooping cough epidemic at the Liverpool Road schools was coming to an end but many children were not in school this Wednesday because of the bad weather.

A big circus, Sir John Sanger's, was visiting Ellesmere Port, featuring Russian Cossacks, an elephants' gymnasium, ponies playing musical chairs, Belgian ponies, the smallest pony in the world, a comedy of performing sea-lions, French Clowns, Aerial Danes etc etc...

At the District Council Meeting a planning application for a ‘model village' of eighty houses on a five acre site of the old brickworks on the corner of what is now called Marshlands Road and Burton Road had been submitted but had to be held over until the Little Neston part of the Town Planning Scheme was discussed. The scheme never came to fruition. The old claypits on Raby Road were about to be fenced off, and Harry Norman was given the contract for painting the street lights.

A stroll up to the Cross

On Sunday 27th June various Cheshire Volunteer (for home defence) units had a day's ‘training', when the Chester group were drilled in defending Shotwick village They then marched across the fields to Puddington and on to Little Neston where they were met by the 60-strong Neston contingent with rifles, ending up on the cricket field in Parkgate, where Neston's man-in-charge, Major Grundy, addressed the Volunteers. The Chester men went for the train home and a good day had been had by all.

This article covers roughly June 25th to July 9th 1915.

Related content:

Neston - 100 Years Ago

Neston in the Great War - Neston Villages Remember

Days Gone By - photos of Neston's past

Newspaper Clippings

A new book edited by Susan Chambers and compiled and published by Burton & Neston History Society has recently gone on sale.  See: Neston - Stone Age to Steam Age.

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Comments

Paul Booth

At 12:08 on 8th July 2015, Paul Booth commented:

Another excellent piece. I wonder if the wonderful scheme to 'reclaim' the Dee estuary by the planting of Spartina Anglica has already started further up the river by this time? The mozzies delight.

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