Westminster Road: Difference between revisions

'''North from Charles Street'''

[[File:8SHP1 Westminster Rd looking south from Hoole Rd.jpg|thumb|''<small>Westminster Road looking from Hoole Road</small>'']]

 

In those 100 yards, on the eastern side Williams Terrace (now Nos.4-10) was built, to be joined in 1894 by the new Hoole Urban District Council's Offices, a house (No.2) for the Sanitary Inspector, and the base for the Hoole Volunteer Fire Service. It is just possible to decipher Hoole Urban District Council on the front of the tyre depot today. By 1902 a Fire Station had been erected on the site, and after the Council moved to The Elms in 1924 the offices were used by Moffat and Gillespie for their drapery business, and the Fire Station became a lino and curtain warehouse run by Greenaway and Sons.

Westminster Road was originally called Peploe Street after the Peploe-Wards who married into the Hamilton family. In 1865 the Marquis, later to be the Duke, of Westminster, built the School for Girls & Infants lower down the Street and enlarged it in 1895; in recognition, the Street was re-named Westminster Road. The School became Hoole Community Centre in 1987.

 

The Baptist Church was originally built in 1863 as a Lecture Hall & Reading Room for use by local working men giving them the opportunity to improve their reading skills and general education. From 1893 Ebenezer Baptist Church hired the Reading Room for Sunday worship and purchased it in 1911. It was established as a Church in 1952.

 

Although Peploe and New Peploe Street (as Westminster Road was known) were predominantly houses, purpose-built shops were erected on the corners of Charles Street, Law Street and Philip Street, and a row of three squeezed into a gap opposite Law Street.

Traders included:

 

Remarkably, three off licences traded in the street. On the corner of Charles Street, owned by Pritchards Solicitors, the licensee in 1880 was John Payne, and in the 1930/50s Archibald Manley. The Lion Brewery in 1906 was at No.56, the Dymond family in the 1940/50. And at No.138 the pub that never was! Drury House was built in 1877 but following opposition from the local Temperance Movement and the existing pubs was not granted a licence. Magistrates were eventually persuaded to sanction an off-licence 1892 to William Mullins. From 1939 to the 1950s Albert Harrison was licensee. Many readers will recall that the Drury House off-licence was still operating in the 1980s. The building was the second in Westminster Road to be designed by John Douglas.

 

Next to the school, Hoole's second garage appeared in 1930 run by Harry Oates and later his son. Next door were buildings used by Maddocks the coach builders and as a workshop and store for Norbury & Sons, plumbers whose shop was on the corner of Charles Street.

At the corner with Lightfoot Street, Flookersbrook runs beneath your feet. The Minutes of the Hoole Local Board record how dangerous the bridge crossing this was, and how it was piped in 1865 at a cost of £60 10s, the tubes being supplied by Thomas Brassey’s Canada Works Company.