The Parkgate Society

The Old Quay and its Environs

This area of the village to the south of Station Road has been completely changed as a result of its re-development in the early 1960s.  This board stands on or close to the site of the old customs house, which was demolished about 1962 to make way for the present Old Quay public house – some of the other neighbouring properties had already been acquired by the Birkenhead Brewery and demolished in the 1930s.

The custom house itself ceased to be used by the Revenue service in 1821, following the withdrawal of Parkgate’s shipping services some years previously.  It was here in the ‘long room’ that the customs service auctioned off smuggled goods that had been confiscated by its officers.  The premises were bought by Christopher Bushell following the Mostyn estate sale of 1849, while in its last years the building provided a home for the Cosy Café, as some will still remember.

The adjacent properties were all subsequently bought by the Brewery and finally all were demolished about 1962, to make way for the development of the present Old Quay pub and car park, which opened in that year.

Another view taken from the same spot, but looking up Station Road towards Neston, with a tobacconist’s shop in Dover House, next to the Old Custom House, and a further shop or boarding house beyond: a woman wheels her baby in a pram past Dover Cottage to the left.

Turning now to the area to the north of Station Road, Talbot House was once an inn.  In 1798 a guest staying there was Mrs Maria Fitzherbert, the estranged wife of the Prince of Wales, later George IV.  At the time there was unrest in Ireland, the so-called rebellion of the United Irishmen, and a detachment of 700 British troops was encamped on the shore here, waiting to take ship for the crossing to ‘the emerald isle’.  Noticing the paucity of the soldiers’ rations, she is said to have taken pity on the men and paid for extra provisions for them.  The suppression of this rebellion, after a number of battles over a period of six months, led to the Act of Union of 1800, by which the separate Irish parliament in Dublin was merged with the British parliament in London from January 1801.

In the later years of the reign of Queen Victoria, the occupant of Talbot House was the Hon. Henry Holbrook, a Cheshire man, who had made a successful career as a merchant and politician in British Columbia. The house had been his mother’s, and in retirement at Parkgate he continued to maintain an active role as an advocate and intermediary between various interests in Britain and Canada.

In more recent times Talbot House took on the name Green Shutters, and it is still remembered as the Greenshutters Café.

Beyond, on The Parade, Prospect House appears to have always been a private house, while in the later part of the 19th century Seaward House (built 1721) was a small boys’ boarding school run by a Scottish teacher William Barrie and latterly by three unmarried Roberts sisters, originally from Sleaford, Lincs.

The adjacent house Barnoon, of similar age, became a restaurant known as ‘The Marie Celeste’, then ‘The ‘Porthole’, before returning to its present use as a private house.

The general configuration of these houses suggests that it may have been here that a shipbuilding business was once situated.  It is known that ships were built on the shore at Parkgate throughout the 18th century and that shipwrights and all the tradesmen associated with this industry lived here.  Ship repairing here is known to date from the previous century but, while the existence of shipbuilding and repair is undisputed in Parkgate, these former industries have left very little substantive evidence of the whereabouts of their former existence here.

It is generally understood that in 1784 Emma Lyon, later Emma, Lady Hamilton, boarded for a while at Dover Cottage (now No 16 Station Road), having come to Parkgate to seek a cure for a skin complaint.  She had been born at nearby Ness, the daughter of Henry Lyon, the blacksmith at Ness colliery, who died shortly after his daughter’s birth, with dramatic effect on her subsequent life.

At the time of her visit to Parkgate she was living in London and known as Mrs Emma Hart; she came to be considered a great beauty, moved in high circles and became the muse for the artist George Romney.  Later, in 1791, she went on to marry in London an elderly widower Sir William Hamilton, then our envoy to the court of the Kingdom of Naples.  It was while living there during the Napoleonic wars, as the ambassador’s wife, that she became the confidante of Queen Maria Carolina, and was introduced to Horatio Nelson, later becoming his mistress.  

After Nelson’s death during the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 she lived an impoverished life and died in 1815 at Calais.

Next door at No 15 lived a Chester miniature artist and engraver Albin Roberts Burt (1783-1842), an acquaintance of Emma’s mother’s family at Hawarden; he used this cottage as a second home, mainly in the summer. 

The house became known as Nelson Cottage following a tragic accident, when his son Nelson, aged 9, was one of 9 souls drowned in the Mersey hurricane of 5/6 December 1822, when their boat the steam-packet Prince Regent with 23 passengers and crew was inundated by huge storm waves, while they were travelling home from Liverpool to Chester via the Ellesmere Port ferry. 

Nelson is buried at St Lawrence’s Church, Stoak; his father, who was a great admirer of Admiral Nelson, collected the stones off the beach at Parkgate to construct this lasting memorial to his unfortunate son. 

Albin Roberts Burt was born in the Chancery Lane area of London and christened on 17 December 1783 at St Dunstan in the West; he married Sarah Jones at Edgbaston, Birmingham, on 31 December 1810 and died at Reading in early 1842.

It is understood that this second section of the sea wall, between the South Slip and the Donkey Stand, was completed by about 1830, some 20 years after the Parkgate shipping trade had re-located to Liverpool.  The sea wall extends a short distance south, beyond the slipway, as shown in the pictures above, its purpose here not exactly clear. The slip itself is very steep and hardly suitable for safe use by fishing craft – the Parkgate fishermen preferred to use the middle slip for landing their catches.

Boats (a couple of punts) landing at the South Slip at high tide; this photo shows the remaining houses on the South Parade, also seen in the following two pictures, and what may have been a cattle creep or other access to the shore.

Photos: David Scott collection, courtesy of Burton & Neston History Society; & Alan Passmore (3).

Last Updated January 2023