Birkenhead: Liverpool's Reflection, Built on Ships
The Mersey is 1,000 metres wide at this point. Liverpool's waterfront faces you directly from the Birkenhead promenade at Woodside. The ferry, running since the twelfth century (Gerry Marsden sang about it in 1964), takes eight minutes. The rail tunnel, opened in 1886 as the world's first underwater railway tunnel, takes four. Birkenhead has always been defined by its relationship with the city across the water: close enough to be useful, far enough to develop its own character.
Cammell Laird's shipyard was the reason Birkenhead grew from a hamlet to a town of 100,000 in less than a century. Warships, submarines, merchant vessels, all from 1824 onwards. HMS Birkenhead. CSS Alabama, built secretly for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, causing a diplomatic crisis. The yard still operates, maintaining Royal Navy submarines, though at a fraction of its peak workforce.
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The Mersey is 1,000 metres wide at this point. Liverpool's waterfront faces you directly from the Birkenhead promenade at Woodside. The ferry, running since the twelfth century (Gerry Marsden sang about it in 1964), takes eight minutes. The rail tunnel, opened in 1886 as the world's first underwater railway tunnel, takes four. Birkenhead has always been defined by its relationship with the city across the water: close enough to be useful, far enough to develop its own character.
Cammell Laird's shipyard was the reason Birkenhead grew from a hamlet to a town of 100,000 in less than a century. Warships, submarines, merchant vessels, all from 1824 onwards. HMS Birkenhead. CSS Alabama, built secretly for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, causing a diplomatic crisis. The yard still operates, maintaining Royal Navy submarines, though at a fraction of its peak workforce.
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