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Bootle
Bootle maps
Historic maps of Bootle and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Bootle maps
Bootle area books
Displaying 1 of 10 books about Bootle and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Bootle
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of Bootle.
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or of a photo of Bootle.
RAILWAY WAGON EXPLOSION AT BOOTLE
ON 22ND OF MARCH 1945 MY FATHER HERBERT NORMAN STUBBS WAS THE FIREMAN ON AN AMMUNITION TRAIN. A WAGON FULL OF DEPTH CHARGES CAUGHT FIRE, SO MY FATHER UNHOOKED IT AND PUT DETONATORS ON THE LINE TO WARN A TROOP TRAIN, WHICH WAS DUE. THE DEPTH CHARGES EXPLODED AND HE WAS THROWN THROUGH THE AIR. UNFORTUNATELY THE DRIVER HAROLD GOODHALL WAS KILLED. MY FATHER WAS AWARDED THE GEORGE MEDAL AND THE INDUSTRIAL V.C.. I HAVE A LETTER FROM THE RURAL DISTRICT COUNCIL OF MILLOM, APART FROM OTHER DOCUMENTS, CONVEYING THEIR GRATITUDE FOR HIS ACTIONS, WHICH SAVED A LOT OF LIVES AT BOOTLE STATION VILLAGE.
Cumbria memories
Staying at The Boat House
I first visited Silecroft in 1957, with my mother and father. It was August and we were on holiday for a week. I fell in love with the village at first sight and that love has lasted a life time. We stayed in the Boat House on the shore. Our first night was very windy and I remember walking to the village, for milk, the next morning with the wind behind me blowing me along. The village has changed little in the last 52 years, the caravan site is bigger and the shops are, unfortunately, gone. However it is still a wonderful peaceful place, where the cares of the world do not seem to live. My granddaughters now love the village as much as I do and it is a joy to take them there.
Jean W
MR & Mrs Lockwood
My Grand parents lived in Kirksanton in 1928 and 1929 at Jubillee house.
( does anyone remember them)
The Green – 1952-53 (Seven Years Old)
I come from an RAF family that travelled across the globe until, in 1964 we ended up in Australia. Though english by birth, I am now an Australian, but I have fond memories of some parts of England where I grew up, especially The Green. I was six years old. One day, I was told we were going to Millom, which turned out to be an RAF base near the wilds of Cumbria, in the north of England, where my father was to be an instructor. We didn’t live on the base but at a village about ten miles out of town called The Green, which was very rural. We were on the edge of the Lake District, perhaps the most beautiful part of England. The neighbouring hills were Black Combe, White Combe and White Hall Knott. The house itself was stone with a tiny patch of lawn to the side, behind a stone wall that protected it from the road. To my recollection it was 100-200... Read more
The Holborn Hill Evacuee.
The view is looking over Holborn Hill towards Black Combe. Holborn Hill is old Millom, the new part of Millom was built when iron ore was discovered in 1855 at Hodbarrow and the iron works was built and Hodbarrow mines opened. It then became a prosperous town with a population rising to 10,000 people. My memory is of Holborn Hill and a five year old girl who was evacuated there at the beginning of the war. She arrived at Millom station from Dartford after having a rough time at an evacuee collection centre. She was taken to live with a family in Holborn Hill.
The little girl was called Betty Sherwood and in later years, she was now married, had tried to trace her wartime family. She and her husband had travelled from Yorkshire, where she now lived, to Millom to find them. Unfortunately she could not remember many details of the house she stayed at or the family name only that she had had many happy years... Read more
The Old Co-Op.
I was born in Market Street in 1939. Later, because of the war, my mum left me in Millom for my grandad and grandma Kirby to look after me. Mum went back to be with my dad in heavily bombed Manchester. I spent the war years here and they were very happy years. After the war I went back to Manchester, but came back to Millom for all my school holidays. Wellington Street was a nice shopping street and I used to go to the Co-op with my grandad and grandma and watch money catapulted from the counter across the shop to the office and then the return journey of our change and divi book. We used to go to the Co-op bakery just as the newly baked bread had come out of the ovens each day (just like mother used to bake). We would take the bread home and my grandma would cut me a thick crust and spread butter on it. That taste cannot be repeated these days.... Read more
St Georges Church Millom
This is the church where my grandma and grandad Kirby are buried. We recently visited the churchyard to place a wooden memorial cross on their grave. My friend of the 40's Norman Benson made the cross and had a brass name plate made to go on it. He often visited my grandparents when he lost his parents. Norman,his sister Vera, my sister Pam,her husband Bill and my wife Barbara and I were there to see the present vicar kindly say prayers over the grave after the cross was in position. My grandad and grandma were liked and well known in Millom. The church itself was built about 1875 and has a memorial window dedicated to Norman Nicholson the writer and poet. He used to go to worship in this church. I as a boy remember him leaving his house on St Georges Terrace to go for a walk, then suddenly return to scribble notes about things he had thought of for a book or poem.
