George Edward (Ted) Pearson (1915 – 2003)

George Edward Pearson was born 11thJuly 1915 in Neston, the son of George Pearson and his wife Susie (nee Chrimes). As a member of the Territorials he was mobilised at the start of the war and was serving as a Sergeant in the Royal Army Service Corps when he was sent to  ….read more

Edward ‘Marlow’ Jones (1889 – 1966) by Ann Jones Billings

I’m so enjoying Neston Past, I wonder if I am in the unique position of being the daughter of a Little Neston miner born in 1889, at Number 3 New Street, and still in control of most of my faculties at 75...read more

The Railway at Parkgate: a brief history by Alan Passmore

It is now well over 60 years since the last passenger train steamed through Parkgate, and recollections of the time when trains chuffed between Hooton and West Kirby are now a distant memory for those Nestonians who once travelled on this route. The first railway on the Wirral peninsula was the Chester & Birkenhead, constructed between the city of Chester and the then quite infant town of Birkenhead (for Liverpool); it was opened to traffic in September 1840 with its first terminus at Grange Lane, extended in October 1844 to a riverside station at Monks Ferry...

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Neston (Wirral) Colliery by Phil Pritchard

The Neston Colliery (later known as “The Wirral Colliery”, and then even later as “The Wirral Colliery (1915)”), was situated on the eastern coastline of the Welsh Dee estuary, at the end of Marshlands Road (previously known as Colliery Lane) in Little Neston, Cheshire West, using a site that was made vacant by the demise of the Anglican Smelting Company…read more

Charles Roscoe of Neston – A Remarkable True Tale of Tragedy at Sea and Divided Love by Anthony Annakin-Smith

There are many interesting gravestones in Neston churchyard but one that is particularly unusual is that of Charles Roscoe – it bears what is probably the most detailed image to mark any grave there. The image, cast from a mould, is of a ship and is still fine in every detail ...read more

Not in our Name: the Slave Ship ‘Neston’ by Anthony Annakin-Smith

Residents of Neston may be surprised to know that, of the many slave ships that sailed from Liverpool when it was at the forefront of the transatlantic slave trade, one was a vessel named after the town...read more

Vizcachani, the Barber family and Neston’s South American Links. by I. Bushell

Approaching Neston from the A540 down Hinderton Road, on the right-hand side where the road narrows lies a substantial Edwardian family house bearing the name Vizcachani at its gate. An unusual name, given by the house’s first owner John Lionel Barber in 1907...read more

The Anglican Smelting, Reduction and Coal Company  by  Anthony Annakin-Smith.

The story of the Anglican Smelting, Reduction and Coal Company Ltd. offers an intriguing footnote to Neston’s industrial history and forms an unlikely link between the area and gold deposits 4,500 miles away...read more

Commander John Monk, R.N. (1791-1880) by Simon Brown

John Monks’s path in life took him across most of the seas of Europe, fighting Napoleon with the Royal Navy and then trading with Mediterranean ports as a merchant captain and ship owner…read more