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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
National
Charlotte Hadfield

Life in the secluded wooden chalets by the sea many don't know exist

Tucked off Leasowe Road in Wirral, you'll find a row of wooden chalets that date back more than 100 years.

The dwellings on the Castlefield Estate are believed to have been built around 1909 and are still occupied by residents to this day. According to newspaper articles from the time, the dwellings started out as holiday accommodation, otherwise known as "summer bungalows".

Today, the private estate which sits close to the North Wirral Coastal Park, is home to a mixture of original wooden bungalows and new build brick homes.

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Neil Foreman, 54, is one of the only residents who live in an original wooden dwelling on the estate, while others visit their chalets throughout the year and at weekends.

When Neil first moved to the area with his elderly mum in the early 1980s, they only had one neighbour.

Neil told the ECHO: "This is the oldest inhabited structure in the field. I love it down here because we never had any neighbours, it was quiet and there's lots of wildlife.

"It was isolated and secluded and it was by the sea. I always go and walk along the prom.

"Some people come down and mow their lawn in the summer and keep an eye on it, it's more of a holiday for them."

Neil has lived on the estate since the early 1980s (Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)

The single storey structure opens up into a small living room, while the kitchen looks out onto a secluded garden. The chalet has been raised up from the ground by pillars so it doesn't get damaged by flooding during bad weather.

There are around eight original dwellings remaining on the estate, with some in better conditions than others. When he first moved in, Neil said they had gas and running water but no electric, which has since been added.

He said: "When we first came here there was no sewage. We used to have a septic tank but a good few years later someone said 'we're going to put a main drain down this field into the main sewer. We've got our own sanitation so they can't say it's unsanitary now.

"It's only been in the last five or six years that we've got central heating and a gas fire for my mum because she's been feeling the cold. The good side outweighs the bad part of it because it's nice and quiet."

'Summer bungalows date back to 1909'

On March 13, 1956, the ECHO reported on an inquiry at Wallasey Council Chamber into the decision to refuse planning permission for a "brick bungalow" to be built "in place of a summer bungalow at Castlefield Estate, Leasowe."

Mr Lowe, who was appealed the decision at the time, said the history of the land on the estate dated back to 1909 when "30 pioneers grouped together and rented nine acres with a view to future development."

The article said: "They put up temporary bungalows and a private company was formed to purchase the land. In 1914 the site was valued at £3,465. In May, 1914 the purchase of the land was completed and in 1924 a revised Development plan was submitted to and approved by Wallasey Council."

Sunfield Road shanty town in Leasowe, taken for a report by Wirral corporation in 1927 (Reproduced by permission of Wirral Archive Services)

It was not uncommon for makeshift homes to be built in Moreton and Leasowe at that time, with the great housing shortage of World War I bringing people to the area to live in old tramcars, huts and wooden bungalows.

This included a caravan town just a short distance away in Moreton, that started out as holiday homes for people to get away from the the smog of the towns and cities like Birkenhead and Liverpool.

By the time the shanty town, known as "Moreton in the Mud", was demolished in the early 1930s it stretched from Moreton Common as far as Sunfield Road in Leasowe.

It's unclear whether the houses on the Castlefield Estate were once part of Moreton in the Mud or if it was separate entity in itself.

'Everyone that comes here wants to live here'

Kenny Bristow, 76, and his wife Linda Bristow, 74, bought an original dwelling on the Castlefield Estate in 1982. The couple lived a short distance away in a bungalow in Moreton at the time, and enjoyed overnight stays in the chalet with their family.

Kenny Bristow lives on Castlefield Estate with his wife Linda (Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)

But after Kenny's business was hit with financial difficulties, they decided to move to the estate permanently and replaced the original chalet with a new timbre building and a static caravan attached to it.

Kenny told the ECHO: "A friend of mine owned that one next door and we always said to him that if he ever knew of one going for sale let us know. And this one came up for sale.

"The people were from Liverpool and we bought it off them. It was an old shed, a timber hut.

"We never lived in it - it was a holiday. We'd come down and have BBQs with the family. We absolutely loved it."

'It's a very secluded community'

Linda added: "It was just a hut but it was a pretty little thing. They were all different shapes and sizes.

"It had two tiny little bedrooms, a tiny lounge, a toilet and a garden."

What Kenny and Linda's original chalet used to look like (Kenny Bristow)

Kenny said: "We knocked the bungalow down and put this caravan here and it's been here ever since.

"Everyone that comes here wants to live here. It's a very secluded community. People who live over the road say 'we didn't even know these were here.

"There's not a bad person on here - everyone's friendly."

"Everyone that comes here wants to live here" (Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)

"We have a committee and we have a fund that we pay into once a year which pays for the maintenance of the field and the road so it's not down to any one person. The secretary and a couple of treasurers look after it.

Kenny added: "When it comes to winter we say 'we need to move', but then you get over it when the weather improves and the garden starts livening up.

"You couldn't replace this for what it's worth. Even living here for the amount of time we've lived here it's still like being on holiday."

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