With autumn leaves, Victorian cast iron lampposts and grand period houses, Rock Park is one of Wirral's hidden conservation areas.
The houses were built by the rich merchants of the 1800s as they distanced themselves from the sounds and smells of their everyday commerce on the other side of the river.
It was quickly a very fashionable and desirable place to live with a pier and ferry service to take people across the Mersey.
READ MORE: Wirral's lost and forgotten railway stations and what they look like now
The grand homes along the waterfront of Rock Ferry formed a gated community of wealthy families, including the American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne.
After WWII and with the increase in car ownership, many felt the need to create a bypass to ease the pressure on the New Chester Road.
Controversial plans were first pulled together in 1960 and looked to bulldoze through the entire estate to create the new highway.
After two public inquiries, in 1968 the then Ministry of Housing and Local Government approved the £1m road that included the compulsory purchase and demolition of 15 houses from the Rock Park estate.
Lucy McConnell, 40, who lives just outside the estate but within the Rock Park conservation area in a Grade II listed building, said: " The bypass devalued the houses massively."
Graham Williams, 71, who has lived in Rock Park since 1987 said: " But that allowed us to buy them."
The two residents of Wirral's historic waterfront spoke to the ECHO about the good, the bad, and the somewhat baffling aspects of life in a beautiful, period urban village.
Graham lives with his wife Moei, his four daughters - who grew up in the period home - have long since flown the nest.
The grandfather of nine’s knowledge of the area is extensive and he can pick out any house and reel off an almost unbelievable snippet of history - such as how Charles Dickens is rumoured to have stayed in one of the grand homes after the publication of A Christmas Carol to escape the sewage smells of Liverpool while visiting the city.
Or the story of the man at another house who refused to give up his cast iron gates for the war effort and is believed to have buried them in his garden only to have them dug up and put back after the war, resulting in the only original gates left in Rock Park.
Graham’s own house is also full of history having once belonged to a wealthy barrister and Graham even met the woman who used to be the maid when she was just 14.
He said: “I met Janet Larkin when she was 90 and she told me how when the barrister moved to London she became the maid for the house next door and when the gentleman passed away she became the companion of his wife who left her the house.
“Unfortunately, she soon realised she couldn’t afford the upkeep and sold it on to a housing association.”
His home was also briefly a vicarage when St Peter’s Church was bombed during WWII, and Graham even met a couple who had been married in his living room.
He said: "Before I moved here I had never really settled, I had been looking for a Victorian home I could fix up as I was keen on DIY then.
"I still remember the day I walked into my house, I was twitching with excitement and trying to control my excitement in case the estate agent saw and put the price up.
"I did a lot of work on the house back then because it needed it and the more I did, the more I loved it."
Lucy, mum to James aged four months, said she and husband Bradley, 42 , instantly fell in love with their home.
She said: "I just walked through the door and fell in love. We hadn’t even considered Wirral when we were looking for a home, but once we had walked around the area, I was completely in love."
When you buy a property in Rock Park you automatically become a Rock Park Proprietor and this includes the responsibility for the maintenance of the esplanade along the River Mersey which is in need of much needed restoration and investment.
There is a yearly fee for those living in Rock Park to help with the upkeep - written into the contracts of the homes from when they were first built and set at 15 shillings, but is now thousands of pounds a year and any additional costs must be voted on during the AGM of the proprietors.
Much of the money is spent on the upkeep of the roads, leaving little for the esplanade eroding away into the river.
Graham said: "We can’t afford it. It has been closed once or twice for safety reasons, but it is in the public realm.
"I can only speak for myself, but I was chair of Rock Park for many years and we were very willing to give the esplanade to Wirral Council as a public space because it is a local amenity but with certain conditions over lighting, we were concerned about having lighting along the esplanade all evening as it would glare into our homes.
"I don’t really understand what happened but things fell apart, which is a shame as it has huge potential."
Lucy said: "It got bogged down in all the details. There is no view like it over to Liverpool, but because of its condition, no one really comes here.
"There is often a focus on the damage that has already been done, but what about what it could be? It could be really stunning.
"Perhaps in the future, there could be some compromise between the council and the residents, because it can’t be done by the residents alone.
"There is no one quick fix, there is so much nuance, who pays for the esplanade, do you charge people without a sea view the same as those along the front?"
It could be easy to have the perception that only the extremely wealthy live in the community, but Lucy said it is not the case, she said: “[Due to upkeep costs of their listed homes] things like the esplanade take a back seat. I know it looks ridiculous, it looks like a grand house, but this was cheaper than a terraced house in parts of Liverpool.”
The situation is compounded further by the lack of access to grant money from the Government, while money for river walls and sea walls is available because there is no official documentation on what time of wall there is along the esplanade, none can be secured for Rock Park.
There has been a campaign headed by the Rock Ferry Waterfront Trust who want to save the slipway at the end of the esplanade - believed to be the oldest structure on the River Mersey.
The Trust, not to be confused with the Rock Park Proprietors, owns the slipway and the old pier and has ambitious plans to create a yacht marina and watersports centre, though no application has ever been submitted to Wirral Council.
There have been talks to work together between the trust and the proprietors which Graham said have been halted due to the pandemic.
Paying for the roads and esplanade isn't the only thing people living in the conservation area have to think about.
Most of the buildings are listed and come with a long set of conditions should an owner want to make some changes.
Lucy said: "These homes are listed and within the conservation area, you can’t touch them without permission.
"Our house wasn’t listed until the 80s, like some of the others, so they weren’t protected. We have PVC windows at the back because they were put in before the house was listed."
Graham said: "A house that had PVC windows was made to replace them last year.
"The buildings have to be painted in stone colours, but it can be hard to know what that is.
"I have spoken at length with conservation officers to get updates to the property right.
"I once had to source a particular kind of Welsh slate for the roof and it was only when a chapel elsewhere was being demolished that I could get the job finished."
Lucy said the rules can be quite restrictive and can sometimes lead to a person opting to do nothing rather than trying to fix it to the tight specifications.
Number 18 Rock Park is completely derelict and many want to see it revamped soon, Graham said: “We have said if they just did the frontage as it was and did what they wanted inside.
"I think at this point even if they knocked it down and left it as grass, the way it is, invites trouble. And there is the concern that if a young person went in there, they could hurt themselves, it is not safe."
Despite the pressures and worries of keeping their homes to particular standards and the continuing decline of the waterfront over the decades, both Lucy and Graham wouldn't live anywhere else and believe the whole area has massive potential it just needs a little push in the right direction.
Lucy believes this is a dream home, she added: " People say on Facebook ‘it has got so bad’, but it hasn’t at all, number 18 is one house in 20.
"The esplanade is the one thing people focus on, but there is so much more to this conservation area, often people don’t realise it is here and it is not private, you can walk along here as I do and many of my friends do."
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