Originally Posted by
Kolchak
I read this on the Echo forums, please excuse the fact that I've cut and pasted both parts of the conversation.
Makes for interesting reading.
'I remember as a kid visiting a cousin in Kirkby. There was some sort of camp, huts and asbestos pipes overhead, I recall next to some park with a bowling green, anyone know what this was?
He used to take me to Kirkby industrial estate were there was still old war pill boxes, is that the word? made of thick concrete with slits I presume for guns? Also, an old rail track running between the old factories, I remember a wood next to it all, I heard that there where munitions factories in Kirkby during the war, anyone know about that?'
'......Yes......one sixth of all the munitions used in the war were made in kirkby and the Bunkers can still be seen in Draw Well road where they used to separate the trains into smaller groups in case of an explosion....it was referred to as Port Kirkby to confuse the germans who were looking for it.....the Royal Ordnance factories were built from 1936 onwards(They knew it was coming didn't they)....I bought 'Mysons' office block and most of the buildings had extremely tough walls and light roofs so they would blow off in an explosion....The 'Echo' have photographs of RAF bomber pilots visiting the girls who made the bombs on the estate....I don't know if there are any books written about Kirkby's part in the war(Might be an idea eh!) but I met a man who'd worked on the estate all his working life and he told me that on the right hand side of the 'Admin' building was where they made detonators....when they had a tray full a man would walk out and down the path at the side preceded by a man with a whistle and a red flag....anyone near would get down into the slit trenches at the side until he'd passed and he would be holding these things like a tray of eggs (true).......My mother told me that the girls who filled the bombs went yellow with the chemicals....an old black man asked could he look in my factory one day and told me he'd worked there during the war and he'd come back here for a visit from Barbados...he said that torpedoes had been made in that very building. I've got lots of snippets of information but would love someone to enlighten me further on this subject....Kirkby Industrial estate was very important in the war effort and people should know about it....along with the camp in Huyton and 'Fort Crosby'....just past the coastguard station at Blundellsands (Now demolished).....local history and so so interesting.....there is a well used film clip of a Lancaster bomber dropping a 10 ton 'Grand Slam' bomb and it always flicks through my mind whenever I see it.....Made in Kirkby.'
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(From Tonycrosby and chancery3)
I remember the pillbox in Kirkby very well, located at the back end of that piece of greenery near the Industrial estate.
The ground near Simmonswood lane was pretty flat and there used to be lots of Sunday morning football played there - but near the back of the flattened area were a series of 'dunes'...a sort of hilly area just before you got to the estate itself (not far from the Birds Eye factory), and in the middle of this was a pillbox.
As young kids, this was an endless source of fascination to us, and many a war-game ewas played around this structure. It was quite small, a very low ceiling inside, with a small, short tunnel to gain access to it.
Though it has to be said...my one abiding memory of it was that it was generally used as a place to relieve oneself when caught short. It was often littered with various little 'offerings' of all sorts from small boys. You tended not to spend too much time inside there, such was the general odour...
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