Old Station Masters House

[Hana]

My sister has asked if I can tell her how to find out the history of a Station Masters house in particular who may have lived and died there. The house was demolished and there is now a small estate of houses and apartments on the site.

I have goolged just about everything I can think of and can find no reference to the house other than in the application for planning permission to build the houses and apartments back in 2004, it was the station masters house for Spital station on the Wirral Line I have the address as 60 Spital Road ,Wirral from the planning application and I have looked at the 1911 census but nothing comes up,maybe it wasn't built then.

If anyone can make any suggestions for any searches I can do on the internet I would be grateful,otherwise I'll have to tell her to write to the Planning dept or the agents for the development.


Hana

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Is the station still there? Is the railway line still there?
There are often clubs/societies for defunct lines. You may find someone has written a book about the one your sister is interested in.

Jay

[Hana]

Yes Janet the station is still there and the line is still used ,I'll see what I can find about books ,thankyou for the suggestion.

Hana

[Uncle John]

My July 1922 Bradshaw shows the line jointly owned by the LNWR and GWR, so it was separate from the Mersey Railway and the Wirral Railway. Depending on how good your library is for railway books, you may find some clues.

[Hana]

Thankyou Uncle John,to be quite honest it is some years since I went to our local library but from what I can remember it was a decent size,I'll pass this on to my sister,she doen't live too far away from the library .

Hana

[Olde Crone Holden]

The property would have been owned by the railway, so that won't tell you much.

Try post office directories and street directories, electoral rolls, for the names of the people who actually lived there.

Have you also tried Land Registry records? Possibly local Rates Books too, although until fairly recently, it was the owner of a property who paid rates, not the tenant.



OC

[Hana]

Thankyou OC,I went on the Land Registry site this morning but it said service wasn't available,I think that maybe you can only search during open office hours so I will try again tomorrow.I also tried the living search on FMP ,I know the address is now gone but I thought that maybe it would throw up an earlier date but no luck,I came across 192.com and thought I could do an address search as we know no names but I am not subscribed to them and I couldn't see how much it would cost,where would I find the P.O directories please and I also went through every road for Wirral on 1911 but I didn't recognise any addresses,it did give Railway cottages but none in this area.

Hana

[Olde Crone Holden]

This is probably utterly useless, but I used to live in a house which was built as a railway property.

It was a terrace of ten houses and the end one was larger than the rest and the Station Master lived in that one!

OC

[Hana]

I can remember this house myself ,drove past it every week on the way to our local retail park and Asda,It was a detached house and set back from the road ,I must have gone along this road for 20/30 years and it was only after it had been demolished that we realised it had been there at all,certainly didn't realise it was the station masters house till my sister has just asked for my help.Just shows how things blend into the background and we take them for granted.

Hana

[Gwyn in Kent]

If it was generally known as the Station Master's house, it should feature on local maps, so you could get an idea of how the area changed over the years in relation to the house.
Parish registers would be a way of checking for 'events' at that address providing it wasn't a busy town.

[Anne in Carlisle]

Might be worth trying the National Railway Museum in York. They might know the whereabouts of records for the railway company and subsequent nationalised line.

Anne

[annswabey]

There's a file at the National Archives

RAIL 404/141

It relates to " Bromborough Spital and Babington Station Buildings" and is described as "Deeds, Agreements, Contracts,Sspecifications, Estimates, Plans" and is dated 1901

[Hana]

Annsawbey,

Thankyou for finding that for me I'll have a look for it tomorrow and Ann in Carlisle [ gosh aren't there a lot of Anns ] I'll also see what I can find out about the Museum,I did actually visit it years ago when the children were little.

Hana