Halton Memories: Heyday of the shipyards

By Runcorn And Widnes Weekly News on Nov 20, 09 04:18 PM in 1900-1999

Some reminiscences about the boatyards by the Manchester Ship Canal.

Back in the days when many of us saw 'Ferry Hut' as simply a convenient place to browse in the summer sunshine on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal, it would have been hard to imagine that at one time, and within a stretch of a few hundred yards, there were no fewer than four shipbuilding yards.

The yards started at Richard Abel's place below South Bank Terrace and continued as far as the old Quay Workshops.

It would also have been hard to imagine that what is now the revitalised Promenade in Mersey Road, was once seen as a site for a dry dock.

The dock would probably have been about 150ft in length, taking in boats of probably up to 100 tons.

An agreement to construct such a dry dock was still in existence as late as 1923 - some 32 years after it was made by the Manchester Ship Canal Company - and 29 years after Queen Victoria opened the country's greatest inland waterway.

"The dry dock would have been a good thing back in the days when there was so much building and repair work going on," regular correspondent Percy Dunbavand reflected, "but 32 years had elapsed by the time a final decision was being made."

It was Percy who came across the long-standing agreement for a dry dock in the files of the Weekly News when it was finally decided, at a full council meeting in February 1923, to accept that the plan was no longer viable.

At that meeting, councillor and tanning industrialist R H Posnett pointed out that they had never been given any idea what the depth of the dry dock would be and there was no guarantee that it would be anything but a 'white elephant' as far as the town of Runcorn was concerned.

In the event, the council decided not to press the claim for the dry dock, accepting instead the gift of the land for the making of what would become the new Mersey Road on the site of what was still Old Mersey Street.

For their part, the Manchester Ship Canal Company agreed to construct a wet dock, which would mean they would also retain the boat repairing yards associated with the Ship Canal in Runcorn.

The construction of Mersey Road went ahead with almost immediate effect and was opened a year later in 1924. A plaque commemorating the opening ceremony is still retained on the wall a short distance from the old Transporter Bridge site.

Incidentally, Percy recalled there was a time when boats were repaired on the River Mersey sandbanks at low tide but one vessel, the Queen of the Mersey, landed on a rock and broke in to two parts.

The picture shows the main arch of the Silver Jubilee overshadowing a Shell tanker seen passing Richard Abel's boatyard in the late 1950s.