Landmarks and Open Spaces
Bidston Hill comprises 100 acres (0.40 km2) of heathland and woodland maintained by Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council as a nature reserve and public park. The land was purchased in stages from 1894 to 1908 by Birkenhead Corporation from local landowner Lord Vyner. It is the site of Bidston Windmill, built around 1800 and Bidston Observatory, owned by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory. The hill also contains a number of ancient rock carvings, including that of a Sun Goddess thought to have been carved by the Norse-Irish around 1000 AD.
Tam O'Shanter Cottage was believed to be built about 300 years ago. Its name derives from a stone carving of the poem Tam O'Shanter by Robert Burns, which adorns a wall on the site. In 1950, the building was recognised as having special historical interest for preservation. Despite two fires and threats of demolition in 1954 and 1975, the cottage was rebuilt and restored in the mid 1970s. Four acres around the cottage were developed as a city farm in 1986, known as the Tam O'Shanter Urban Farm.
Opposite the cottage is Flaybrick Memorial Gardens, Birkenhead's first municipal cemetery. The grounds encompass an arboretum and nature trails.
Bidston Moss was originally low-lying wetland marsh at the head of Wallasey Pool. In 1936 most of the land was given over to residential, commercial and industrial landfill. Since the cessation of waste disposal operations in 1995, Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority and the charitable trust Groundwork Wirral have undertaken environmental restoration works to landscape the site.
The area has one of the largest Tesco supermarkets on the Wirral, situated at Bidston Moss.
Read more about this topic: Bidston
Famous quotes containing the words landmarks and, landmarks, open and/or spaces:
“The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings—crowded, active, thick.... But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow’s horizons are vague and its demands are few.”
—Larry McMurtry (b. 1936)
“Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life’s sensational pleasures.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)