Issue 81 West Derby & Croxteth Park March 2013
TO CAL AD L T SE V O E E PA R DA GE T Y 2 I SE
WEST DERBY
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BABBLING BROOKS by Stephen Guy, West Derby Society
The Georgian house on the edge of the city stood next to a gurgling brook which added a pleasant atmosphere to lawns overlooked by a conservatory. Liverpool was in the grip of movie mania and picture palaces were being built at key locations. Developers acquired Tue Brook House at the corner of Green Lane and West Derby Road. They pulled down the historic residence and put up an art
deco cinema called the Carlton, opening in 1932. Throughout this period the Tue Brook was visible on its way from Wavertree to Fazakerley. Liverpool is criss-crossed by streams but, like the Tue Brook, virtually all are now covered over. Most discharge into the River Alt which winds its way to the sea at Hightown. The Alt is best seen on the Croxteth Hall Country Park where the river is once again very clean following many
Y EAWA CE K A T I NEW RY SERV E DELIV
years of pollution. I last saw a water vole on its banks in 1965 and perhaps soon we may see playful otters back in the Alt and adjacent streams. One of the last sightings of an otter in West Derby was about 100 years ago in the Hall Brook, pictured where it passes under Croxteth Hall Lane. This was also the scene of a murder in 1909 when a Liverpool groom called Benjamin Scholey strangled his former girlfriend Minnie Gascoigne. They had walked out into the countryside and quarrelled before Scholey dumped the body in the brook. He later confessed to police. At his trial Scholey was sentenced to death but later reprieved. The River Alt gets its name from the ancient Norse (Viking) language and Croxteth was originally Krok’s Staith, meaning Krok’s landing-place. The identity of Krok is lost in the mists of time but he must have been a prominent figure. Rivers, streams and springs have long fascinated people. Like theTue Brook, they have been invested with a mythology that is still alluring. An iron-rich spring that trickles out of the rock in St James’s Gardens, behind Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, is believed by some to have healing properties.
Holy wells are still revered such as St Helen’s Well at Sefton. St Anne’s Well is marked on the Rainhill maps but some years ago my attempts to find it were unsuccessful.
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