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BROMBOROUGH DOCK.
c.1987
The dock was
opened in 1931 by William Lever who wanted to use it to bring ships
transporting raw materials to his Port Sunlight factory. It was
built on the site of the Bromborough Pool, a wide tidal inlet where the
River Dibbin flowed into the Mersey.
The dock had
18 acres of deep water berthage, 3000 linear feet for mooring and 84,000
square yards of quay room, and was the largest private dock in the
world. During WWII it was heavily used by shipping unable to get
into the Birkenhead and Liverpool docks because of German bomb damage.
The last
ship came to the dock in 1987, the year it was closed. In 1991,
tipping operations began when the dock site and the adjacent silting
ponds were to be turned into a landfill site. The dock itself was
filled in during the first 12 months of tipping, and the River Dibbin
put into a canal-like straight channel through the middle of it.
When that happened, all traces of what had been a "pool" at Bromborough
completely disappeared. |
