West Cheshire Golf Course

Spring on the West Cheshire Golf Links, with its background of cylindrical brick- red gas works Ultramarine

The West Cheshire Golf course was formed in September 1908 and went into liquidation on 7th June 1952.

The course occupied 2 sites as indicated on the map above. The first course occupied the former Bidston Moss to the east of the Birkenhead to New Brighton Railway and south of the line to Seacombe with the club house and first tee lying to the north across the Seacombe line. The course could be reached by an underpass under the Seacombe branch line. The first course moved from this site sometime in the mid-30s possibly due to the expansion of Birkenhead Docks with the construction of Bidston Dock which can been seen on the above map (click on image to enlarge) and in the photo below.


This expansion is referred to here:

The low-lying land north of Bidston, the site of the old West Cheshire Golf Course, is suited to port industries. The latest of the docks, Bidston Dock, at the head of the West Float, gives shipping facilities Merseyside Plan 1944

The original course became a municipal tip in 1936 which gradually expanded across the former course into the 90s.

The original course is the one referred to by Lowry in Ultramarine which we can assume he used with Tess Evans ( the basis of the character Janet in Ultramarine). Lowry himself was a member of Caldy Golf Club as a youth and later was a member of the Royal Liverpool Club at Hoylake. We can only speculate why he used the West Cheshire course rather than the ones at Caldy and Hoylake. Certainly, the West Cheshire was nearer to Tess's home in Liscard, she may have been a member or perhaps Malc was "hiding" with her at the West Cheshire from the prying eyes of his family and their friends? You can see the course's clubhouse which Malc and Tess would have used on the left of the photo below.


The gas works which Lowry referred to in Ultramarine was located the east of the course in Gorsey Lane, Wallasey which would have been clearly visible from the east end of the original course.


The only meaningful mention of the course in local newspapers I could find related to winding up of the club. However, the most detailed mention of the course is in Bill Houldin's Up Our Lobby which refers to the West Cheshire Artisans based at the course but also talks about caddying at the course. The book includes this description:

The West Cheshire Course was situated around what was the Wallasey Pool, (now Bidston Dock). The Pool was simply an irregularly shaped, grassy banked stretch of water. On one side ran the Wrexham/Wallasey railway, and on the other side up to the road bridge, the golf course. The course followed the line of the pool and then took a right turn following the road past what is now the incinerator. It went up to what is now the Co-op Coal Depot, but which then was a railway engine sheds. It then took a right turn again. It was a nice undulating and interesting course and bred many fine golfers... The clubhouse itself was on one side of a dirt road which starting at the first tee and going under the Wrexham/Wallasey Railwayb line bridge, would stretch for three or four hundred yards up the hill to Breck Road, Poulton... The Professionals Shop and Caddies Stand were on the opposite side of this sunken, dirt road. They were connected by a wooden bridge which lay alongside the railway bridge, both crossing the sunken dirt road at this point.The Caddies' Shed was just that, an open-ended wooden structure, roofed in with corrugated iron and having a dirt floor. Nothing here to encourage the lazy tomlounge about.




The second course was located west of the New Brighton to Birkenhead line occupying the former Bidston Aerodrome site as seen below:


The above map appears on the site of a former member of the club - Bert Gadd:

My new club, West Cheshire, just down the road from Hoylake, now lies partly under the M53 motorway having been wound up half a century ago, so I guess my course record 63 is safe.The Life and Times of Bert Gadd – Professional Golfer

Bert Gadd's mention of the club is one of the few on the Net. Another refers to the role of the course in WW2:

The West Cheshire Golf Course, of which my parents and I were members, was taken over to decoy German aircraft to hopefully bomb wide open spaces. The job of some brave folks, as air-raids started, was go out setting light to the many oil filled pots. The deception worked, the only problem being that some of the nearby homes including ours) suffered damage.

The old course received many bombs creating the abundance of "ready made" bunkers. However, as the estimate to reconstruct the course was prohibitive, the compensation money given by the government was used to build a new course - the clubhouse having escaped damage. WW2 Talk

Both former sites are now virtually unrecognisable due to the first being used as a tip and the second being consumed by a motorway, access roads and a retail park. There is sparse information existing about the course unlike Caldy and the Royal Liverpool - the course has virtually disappeared off the map and local consciousness. It must be noted that the course was not connected to Bidston Golf Club which still exists on land adjacent to the second course.

The original West Cheshire course and the later tip are now Bidston Moss Nature Reserve.

This triangular piece of land sandwiched between the River Birket, the M53 and A554 was designated as a Local Nature Reserve in 1994.

Although vastly changed from the salt marsh of the original mossland it is an important wildlife site in North Wirral, particularly for its ponds, reedbed and marshland.

Approximately eight hectares in size the site has had a varied history. The construction of a sea wall in 1847 along the eastern limit of Wallasey Pool effectively destroyed the salt marsh at Bidston. Land drainage and the canalisation of the River Birket allowed the construction of roads and buildings.

The adjacent golf course was constructed in 1890, while land forming the present nature reserve continued to be used for grazing until the 1970's. Part of the reserve's land was then used for tipping builders rubble - particularly the mound in the north-east corner.

It was declared a Site of Biological Interest in 1980 and improved in 1984 by the construction of ponds, paths and boardwalks together with tree and wildflower planting. Since then it has been managed by the Wirral Ranger Service. Read more

Scampered Like Children Past The Hall Line Shed

And there had been nothing that mattered, save only themselves and the blue sky as they scampered like children past the Hall Line shed to the harbour wall just in time to see the Norwegian tramp steamer Oxenstjerna pass through the gate of the inner dock, while a scratch four paused on their oars watching her entrance steadfastly, their striped singlets dancing in the afternoon sunlight. Ultramarine

The Hall Line shed stood on the Wallasey side of the Great Float in Birkenhead Docks near to the Duke Street swing bridge.



Robert Alexander started shipowning in the 1850s and in 1868 founded the Sun Shipping Co., Liverpool which operated cargo and passenger services. The ships were named _____HALL, the company became known as the Hall Line, and in 1899 the name was officially changed to Hall Line Ltd. The company was purchased in 1901 by John Ellerman and continued operating as part of the Ellerman Group as Ellerman's Hall Line. Below is a photograph of a Hall Line ship The City Of Cairo built in 1915 and which would have been a familiar sight at the Hall Line sheds in Birkenhead during the 1920's



People rowing would also have been a familiar sight in the Great Float as it is today. The photograph shows a scratch four training from Wallasey Grammar School in the Great Float sometime in the 1930s. The Liverpool Victoria Rowing Club have been rowing in the Great Float since the 1884 and their boathouse is located near to the former Bidston Dock site. If you go to their site you can see a photograph of one of their oarsmen with a striped singlet as described by Lowry.



It is not surprising that Lowry has chosen to have a Norwegian ship entering the docks given the Norwegian heritage of Hilliot the main protagonist of Ultramarine which reflected Lowry's desire to adopt Norway as his spiritual or even sometimes his imaginary home.



The above ship Bravore would have been typical of the kind of Norwegian ships that would have visited Birkenhead Docks in the 1920's.

The Oxenstjerna acts a catalyst in Hilliot's mind to remind him of how Janet and his love first grew in Norway as they had both seen the ship in Oslo Fjord. I cannot find any ship with the name of Oxenstjerna and we can only speculate why Lowry chose this name. The ship in Ultramarine is named after a Swedish minister as we discover when Hilliot tells Janet the source of the name on the way home on the Liscard bus after seeing the ship.



Oxenstjerna is an ancient Swedish senatorial family, the origin of which can be traced up to the middle of the 14th century, which had vast estates in S6dermanland and Uppland, and began to adopt its armorial designation of Oxenstjerna (" Ox-forehead") as a personal name towards the end of the 16th century. Its most notable member was Count Axel Gustafsson (1583-1614), chancellor of Sweden, 1911 Encyclopedia

Love In The Sand Dunes of Wallasey 1927

Had he not sought her in the town and meadow and in the sky? Had he not prayed to Jesus to give him rest, and found none until the hour they met? Again, they seemed to be sitting together on the sand dunes, staring at the sky; great wings had whirred above them, stooping, dreaming, comforting, while the sand imprinted like snow, had been whistled up about them by the wind Ultramarine


The above passage from Lowry's Ultramarine comes just after Hilliot's (Lowry's) day dream of the smells of Birkenhead and Liverpool as Hilliot day dreams about Janet the lover he left behind in Liscard, Wirral.

These reminisces are based on Lowry's love affair with Tess Evans and the above passage clearly demonstrates his affection for Tess. I am currently pulling everything together what I know about Tess for a longer post on Lowry's early love.

In the 1920's, the north coastline of the Wirral looked very different to today's. The coastline from New Brighton to Meols consisted of sand dunes and was much nearer to the wild place described in my post on Robert Louis Stevenson's The Wrecker. Gradually from the 1930's onwards, the coast was tamed with concrete sea defences with new promenades and roads.



In the spring of 1927, Lowry and Tess could have walked off the old promenade by the Marine Park in New Brighton (see above map) then walked along the beach towards Harrison Park. They would have passed the Yellow and Red Noses which were high sandstone cliffs above the beach.



They would have continued their walk up towards the sand dunes which ran in front of the railway line from Birkenhead to New Brighton passing Warren Point near to where Lowry was born in North Drive.





They could have stopped to sit anywhere between Harrison Park and Leasowe as the dunes would have stretched for nearly 2 miles before reaching lower ground around Moreton.

When they stopped to sit, Hilliot (Lowry) was thinking of escape by a sea voyage:

Beyond, a freighter carried their dreams with it over the horizon. Ultramarine

From the tops of the sand dunes, you would have had wonderful views of the Mersey Estuary with ships leaving the mouth of the river. Perhaps, this is when Lowry told Tess that he intended to fulfill his dreams of adventure by going to sea on board a Blue Funnel Line ship.

Palais De Danse

I shut my eyes and imagined that this was indeed Janet and I dancing at the New Brighton Palais De Danse. Ultramarine Pg 106

I have spent some time researching Lowry's reference to the Palais De Danse in Ultramarine. I cannot find any reference to the Palais De Danse amongst the many dance halls and theatres in New Brighton during the 1920's. I recently discovered that there used to be a dance hall in Pasture Road Moreton, Wirral in the 1920's called the Palais De Danse as seen in the above 2 photographs.

The Moreton Palais De Danse was built in the early 1900s from 2 army huts and was owned by Mrs Oborn. The house adjourning the dance hall was a former farm cottage and was demolished in the 1960's. However, the dance hall still stands as can be seen in the photographs below. The dance hall is now called The Apollo Club and has gone through many transformations since the 20's including being a skate rink, a community food hall during WW2, the Labour Party Club before reverting back to a dance hall. It is currently the home of the Apollo Dance Club which is run by the Merralls Dance Academy




Lowry would have been familiar with Moreton which lies a few miles west of New Brighton where he was born. In the mid-20s, he frequented dance halls and cinemas with Tess Evans (Janet in Ultramarine) on the Wirral. A close reading of Ultramarine reveals that he and Tess wandered all over the north Wirral and it is entirely possible that they frequented the Moreton Palais De Danse which was very popular with young courting couples. The photograph below of Moreton shore in the early 1930's indicates the popularity of the area. The Palais De Danse is in the row of buildings in top left corner of the photograph.



We will never know for sure whether Lowry was referring to the Moreton Palais De Danse or whether he liked the title of the dance hall and used it in Ultramarine or he may have also been familiar with other sources of the name.

The phrase Palais De Danse was a popular name given to many dance halls in England during the early 20th Century conjuring up images of cosmopolitan Europe.



The above photograph is one of the most famous dance halls called Palais De Dansein Berlin before the First World War and maybe the precursor to the others. I have posted below a YouTube video of the Orchester vom "Palais de danse" Kapellmeister with Giorgi Vintilescu recorded in 1912. Vintilescu was "The King of Rags" in Germany. The band recorded the latest rags from America. His Band at the luxury "Palais de danse" consisted of: 2 cornets, 1 trombone, flute, 2 violins, piano, brass bass and drums.



There were Palais De Danse halls in Hammersmith,Edinburgh Leicester, Nottingham as well as in Melbourne and Sydney.

There was also at least 2 films with the title Palais De Danse one made in Germany in 1913 and another in UK in 1928 by Maurice Elvey. Here is a synopsis of the 1928 film:

With a rags to riches story, an intrigue with an older woman, a lounge lizard, and secrets to prevent a scandal, 'Palais de Danse' has all the ingredients to make this late British silent a success.



Starring Mabel Poulton (above), a short, impish faced girl who failed to make the transition to sound and was therefore coming to the end of her career in this film, it starts with a Cinderella type plot - Mabel is with her war veteran father watching the bright young things going to party, when she's invited to join them as their token 'poor one'. Of course she falls in love with someone much higher in class than she - Tony King (Robin Irvine), who loves her right back, and even more when she becomes a dance partner at the Palais, under the lecherous gaze of Number One dancer, Juan Jose (a splendidly villainous John Longden).

With Tony's mother, Lady King (Hilda Moore), not entirely receptive to the budding romance, while hiding a secret of her own, the stage is soon set for drama, passion, and a final fight to the death. Along the way there is considerable room for dancing, comedy, and intrigue, and it is all done very well.

With a ballroom sequence not unlike the one at Blackpool in Maurice Elvey's earlier 'Hindle Wakes', and some excellent close-up work, especially of people's eyes, this is an unusual film which repays the attention. A forgotten drama with charm, energy, and some excellent performances.

I have posted the video below from 1926 to give us an idea of how Lowry and Tess may have danced during their evenings out:



You can read more about the dance crazes of the 20's and 30's in Ross McKibbin's book Classes and Cultures.



Sussex University also has a collection of mass observation records on dance halls in the 1930s in the UK.

You can also read a book published by the Liverpool Institute of Popular Music entitled Let's Go Dancing: Dance Band Memories of the 1930's Liverpool which paints a vivid picture of dancing to live bands in the Merseyside area including New Brighton.

Doris "Dolly" Lewis

Please play the Bix Beiderbecke track below entitled Dolly Dimples while you read this post:



Lowry met Dolly Lewis on his first trip to the USA in 1929.

Lowry first visited the USA after writing to the American poet Conrad Aiken who he had just discovered after reading Aiken's Blue Voyage, a book which had a profound effect on Lowry. Lowry had suggested to the recently unemployed Aiken that Aiken should become his mentor to help with entry to Cambridge University. Aiken couldn't turn the offer down once Lowry was able to secure funding from his father. When Lowry discovered that Aiken had recently returned to the USA, he "invited" himself over to meet his literary hero who would become his life-long friend. Initially, Lowry stayed with Conrad Aiken in Cambridge Massachusetts at Aiken's apartment in 8 Plymton Street.



The above apartment was just by the famous Grolier Poetry Book Shop opened in 1927.



After a couple of weeks in Cambridge, Aiken took Lowry with him to stay in South Yarmouth, Cape Cod where Dolly lived. Dolly was the step-daughter of Charles D. Voorhis, an old friend of Aiken's.



Lowry's first biographer Douglas Day paints an idyllic picture of Lowry and Dolly going for long walks on the beach, reading poetry and painting as well as visiting the theatre in Boston with Lowry staying over at Dolly's house. This picture is based on the archives of Conrad Knickerbocker who was an early researcher of Lowry's life. Knickerbocker's archive contained letters from Dolly to Knickerbocker in the early 60's.

Day claims that this was Lowry's first proper love affair. This claim was before documentary evidence emerged in the form of two letters from Tess Evans that she and Lowry had been close before Lowry embarked on his sea voyage to the Far East in 1927. When Day wrote his biography, he thought that the character Janet in Ultramarine was a Lowryean fantasy but in actuality the character Janet was based on Tess.



However, according to Lowry's later biographer Gordon Bowker, Dolly says in interviews that she was not smitten with Lowry and found him a nuisance. Either way, both biographers detail that Lowry wrote to her from on-board the SS Cedric on the way home to England.

How much Lowry was in love with Dolly is debatable with Lowry adopting an absurd tone of affection in the letter which couldn't possibly be serious. You can read the full acount in Bowker's Pursued By Furies Pgs. 89-90. The only letter to have been published between Lowry and Dolly is the fragment contained in The Collected Letters Of Malcolm Lowry Volume 1. Day and Bowker elude to a much longer letter written on board the Cedric and perhaps other correspondence.



Lowry did meet Dolly again in 1934, when he visited the Cape Cod area with his first wife Jan Gabrial. Bowker tells the amusing story of Lowry calling Dolly from Provincetown, where he was staying on the trip, inviting Dolly over to meet him and Jan. When Dolly arrived, Jan was absent and she found Lowry drunk on the floor with sheet music for the song "My Dolly" open on the piano. I can only assume that song was the Vincent Youmans classic which I was unable to find but I thought the YouTube video below might suffice to go with whatever was going around Lowry's head! Tea For Two, from the 1925 musical, No No Nanette. Song by Irving Caesar and Vincent Youmans; performed by Helen Clark and Lewis James.



I was intrigued about Dolly and wondered whether she continued with her painting. This is what I discovered:

Artist and environmentalist, Doris ("Dolly") L. Lewis (Henriquez) divided her life among Massachusetts, the Caribbean, and South Florida. Her paternal grandparents descended from old New England families and built a house on Boston's Marlborough Street when the Back Bay neighborhood first opened. Later, some of the family moved to Cambridge, where several in-laws had lived for many years; one had married Longfellow's artist son, Ernest.



On her mother's side, Lewis descended from the prominent "Anglo" Lindo family of Jamaica and Costa Rica. Her grandfather was one of the eight partners of Lindo Brothers, members of which owned extensive plantations for coffee, bananas, and sugar in Jamaica and Costa Rica, as well as the J. Wray rum company, the Daniel Finzi wine and spirit business, and properties on Jamaica's north coast that later were developed into resorts. They also founded the Bank of Costa Rica.

Born in 1909 at the Cecil Lindo (her great uncle) Historic House on Parque Morazan in San Jose, Costa Rica, Lewis returned to a family plantation "El Sitio" at Juan Vinas, with her father, Sidney Lewis (of Cambridge, Massachusetts) and her mother, Daisy ("Mimi") Lindo Lewis (later Voorhis). For a few years just before and during World War I, Sidney Lewis ran mining interests out of Wheeling, West Virginia, but decided to return to Costa Rica in 1919 when his daughter was ten. The family stopped in New York on the way, staying with Doris Lewis's grandfather, August Lindo, on Park Avenue. Before embarking, her father traveled alone to Cambridge to visit his mother for a few days and suddenly died, perhaps a victim of the flu epidemic. After her father's death, Lewis was taken by her mother to live with members of the Lindo family in Jamaica for one year, possibly at her great uncle Robert's plantation, "Sunnyside," two miles outside of Linstead.



Then Lewis and her mother migrated to Cambridge to live near her father's family. In the Boston area she attended the Buckingham School, the May School, and the Museum School. Summering on Cape Cod from the late 1920’s and moving to South Yarmouth about 1934, Lewis at a young age became associated with a group of New York, Boston, and Cape Cod artists and writers, including Van Gogh's acquaintance Dodge McKnight (friend of Isabella Steward Gardner), poet Conrad Aiken, and novelist Malcolm Lowry. Lowry wrote perhaps his most famous letter to her—a 30-page love letter, which remains in her family.

Other artists who were close associates were Howard Gibbs (whose first-class "Still Life" Lewis owned), Harold Dunbar (who painted her portrait, and she, one of him), Byron Thomas (whose famous "The Skater" she owned), Frederick Wight (later associated with UCLA), and Alice Stallknecht (who did two portraits of her). For over sixty years Lewis was a close friend of Catherine Huntington, who owned the Provincetown Playhouse and kept Eugene O'Neill's plays alive during the 1940's. She also painted Huntington's portrait.

On Cape Cod Doris Lewis at first painted typical Cape landscapes in oil, which exhibited in Cambridge in the early 30's. But at the same time she produced a strong body of modernist surrealistic oils, which exhibited at the Provincetown Art Association, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and other locations. She also painted in New York and Boston.



Through her mother's family, Lewis maintained keen interest in the Caribbean, and in 1937 married Anglo-Jamaican Edward Henriquez in Havana, where she spent the next twelve years. Henriquez had been educated at Belmont Hill School, founded partially for him and his brother by the Atkins family, who had extensive sugar holdings in Cuba and land in Belmont outside Boston. An "Anglo" herself, Lewis—unlike many North Americans—showed great interest in and love for both native peoples, Cuban Hispanics and Blacks.

Briefly in the late 1930's—when her husband's sailboat was being built—Lewis lived under primitive conditions among Afro-Cuban sugarcane workers some distance from the cultivation of Havana. During the day the men toiled in the fields, and Lewis was struck by the spiritual faces of the women and children left at home—especially by their long-suffering and innocence. The only art materials she had with her were conte pencils and a sketchpad. And so were born 25 character-full portraits in an exhibit, "Faces of Afro Cuba," which showed posthumously at the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill in 1996.



In 1949 Lewis returned to the States to live in Florida for the rest of her life. There, in addition to pursuing her own artwork in hard-edge oils and in pottery, she personally encouraged countless artists, potters, and gardeners, as well as serving on various county- and state-wide boards and founding the Ceramic League of Palm Beach County. She also performed a busy, vocal, and courageous role in Florida's environmental affairs and is credited as one of the leading activists to save the Everglades. She died in 1995 at her home in West Palm Beach.JAMES R. BAKKER ANTIQUES, INC


As ever with Lowry there is an ironic touch in the above which I enjoyed. The fact Dolly came from a family who owned rum distillers would have surely made her interesting to Lowry even if they had to drink bootleg booze due to prohibition. Dolly also painted the picture below called Circus which includes a ferris wheel which was such a potent symbol in Lowry's Under The Volcano. Dolly painted Circus in 1939 just as Lowry was struggling with the first drafts of Under The Volcano.



One of the reasons why I was intrigued by Dolly was after reading Lowry's letter to Conrad Aiken on 24 April 1931 which included the following about Dolly:

Thank God Dolly's got a job. I was thinking last night of her saying - I'm so excited you GNAW, I must always get a little bit aTIPSY you GNAW MRS CHERRY MRS CHERRY oh I'm so excited you GNAW. Jesus bloody christ I was nearly sick when I thought of her - I wonder why she knocked at my door the last night all the same-

We will never know the true extent of their relationship but perhaps Lowry invited her over to his temporary Provincetown home to find out why she knocked on the door and then got too drunk.

New Brighton 1920's

New Brighton was not only where Lowry was born but was the place he returned to in his teenage years to have fun.

His novel Ultramarine has many references to New Brighton. Many of these references relate to his teenage romance with Tess Evans (Janet Travena in the novel) who lived in nearby Liscard. Lowry may have met Tess for the first time in New Brighton at one of the many dance halls, cinemas or theatres which existed in the town during the 1920's.

The above clip of film from a documentary on the history of New Brighton brings to life some of the places mentioned by Lowry in Ultramarine:

New Brighton Bank Holiday
Thousands of children at New Brighton, on a Bank Holiday, making for the sands with their pails and shovels.. Ultramarine Pg 43

New Brighton Palais de Danse
I shut my eyes and imagined that this was indeed Janet and I dancing at the New Brighton Palais De Danse. Ultramarine Pg 106

New Brighton Town Gardens (Tower Gardens)
The two figures, the girl with the brown eyes in the school blazer and white skirt. Janet Travena and her lover slowly walk through the afternoon sunlight. Halfway down the Town Gardens, he pauses to light his pipe. Ultramarine Pg 130

Also in the clip, during the sequence relating to Harrison Drive, you get a glimpse on the horizon of houses on the cliff above Warren Drive where Lowry was born.

The above clip is part of a longer documentary which you can view in segments on Youtube.