For most residents in Birkenhead, an historic building is not hard to find, with the area littered with remnants of a time when Birkenhead went from a small village to a booming port town at the height of the empire.
However, not every landmark or historic building still stands, and not all the lost buildings were victims of the Blitz.
And most of these buildings that no longer stand are lost to time, with only those who saw them knowing they were there.
However, on the corner of St Aidan’s Terrace and Shrewsbury Road in the quiet village of Claughton, there is a plaque which stands as a memorial to one of these lost buildings.
It is easy to miss, you may only stumble on it while walking your dog, having had no prior knowledge of its existence.
The sign bearing no more than a name and a date leaves more questions.
Google shows it is where once stood a college of national importance, in the backstreets of a quiet village in Birkenhead.
Local historian and Chair of the Wirral History and Heritage Association Paul Smith shared more on why it was there and what happened to it.
The shock
Mr Smith has a small black-and-white postcard bearing the image.
The sheer size of the building took me aback. It would not look out of place in the area, with Gothic redbrick buildings being plentiful.
However, the sheer size of the building, on a site now occupied by small cottages tucked away behind a small wood, was not something I would have expected.
The College
The college was founded by the Reverend Joseph Baylee at the behest of John Bird Sumner, who, at the time, was Bishop of Chester but eventually became Archbishop of Canterbury.
Mr Smith explained why the college was there.
He said: “1847 was a pivotal year in Birkenhead because it’s when Birkenhead Park was opened, it’s also when Birkenhead docks were opened, and it was all going well.
“But there was huge antagonism between the sort of evangelical protestants and the Roman Catholics, and this came particularly to the fore in 1847 when there was mass immigration as a result of the Irish potato famine.
“Those who could afford it went on to America, but lots of people ended up staying in England, and lots of them ended up on the Wirral, in Birkenhead in particular, and in the North End.
“At the same time, the evangelical wing of the Church of England was very much in ascent, and there were a large number of local clergy in Liverpool and Birkenhead who were from Northern Ireland and therefore very extreme Orange Protestant.
“And the Reverend Baylee was definitely of that wing, and he set up the college with the consent of the Bishop of Chester, who was also an evangelical.”
Birkenhead was also often the scene of sectarian violence, with riots frequently breaking out between Protestants and Catholics, as was the case in Liverpool too.
The college became a bastion of Protestantism in a changing religious landscape in Merseyside and the rest of the country.
Notable figures
Plenty of young clergymen passed through St Aidan’s College as they trained to serve the church in Britain and throughout the empire.
But there was a notable figure who came from the college. However, there was one notable figure.
The Closure
Eventually, with a decline in religion and the number of students, St Aidan’s College was forced to close.
And after a year, the building was demolished, leaving only the memorial plaque behind.
However, a great building, as impressive architecturally as it was historically, was lost.
The reasons it was demolished rather than preserved are not entirely known.
But Mr Smith said: “I guess it was probably the lack of students, and the church authorities probably thought, well, we can accommodate the students in other seminaries.
“And if we sell it, we’ll make a packet to go towards our church funds. Whereas, you’ve only got to look at that building and think, that’s going to take an awful lot of maintenance.
“Thinking back to the 60s and 70s, people weren’t nearly as hot on conservation as they are now.”
