Hoylake - History

History

In 1690, William III set sail from Hoylake with a 10,000-strong army to Ireland, where his army was to take part in the Battle of the Boyne. The location of departure remains known as Kings Gap.

The present day township grew up in the nineteenth century around the small fishing village of Hoose. The name Hoylake was derived from Hoyle Lake, a channel of water between Hilbre Island and Dove Point. Protected by a wide sandbank known as Hoyle Bank and with a water depth of about 20 feet, it provided a safe anchorage for ships too large to sail up the Dee to Chester.

To facilitate safe access into the Hoylake anchorage, two lighthouses were constructed in the 1760s. The lower light was a wooden structure that could be moved according to differing tides and shifting sands to remain aligned to the upper light, which was a permanent brick building. Both of these structures were rebuilt a century later. The upper lighthouse, consisting of an octagonal brick tower, last shone on 14 May 1886 and is now part of a private residence in Valentia Road. The lower lighthouse, closer to the shore in Alderley Road, was deactivated in 1908 and demolished in 1922.

The Royal Hotel was built by Sir John Stanley in 1792, with the intention of developing the area as a holiday resort. The numerous steam packet vessels sailing between Liverpool and North Wales which called at the hotel provided valuable patronage. By the mid-nineteenth century a racecourse was laid out in the grounds of the hotel. The hotel building was demolished in the 1950s.

Hoylake's lido, located on the promenade, was opened in June 1913 and rebuilt in the late 1920s. In 1976, the Hoylake Pool and Community Trust took over the running of the facility from Wirral Borough Council. The baths finally closed in 1981.

The Hoylake and West Kirby War Memorial is a notable local landmark, as it was designed in 1922 by the British sculptor Charles Sargeant Jagger who was responsible for a number of war memorials around the world, including the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner in London.