The Mellanear works

[katy]

I currently live on Lunt Road and I am very interested in the history of the Mellanear works. I would love it if there are any pictures out there of the works on Lunt Road before they went and pictures of the development of the park.

I like to look out of my bed room window and imagine all the workers coming and going. I wonder what it would have been like to live on Lunt Road at that time.

Someone said to me once that when the works became out of use they had a massive tin wall surrounding the land which used to block the light out of the houses.

Any stories or pictures would be great!

[red ron]

Hi Katy, nice to meet you. The works was one of the big employers in Bootle. I had cousins who worked there, my wife had relatives who worked there. It had a nasty health reputation. I believe workers were given a pint of milk to drink each day. This is all hearsay, but I know the employees were not the healthiest you've seen. I expect someone may confirm it. I do know however that it was securely fenced and boarded when it became empty. When it came down the land where it stood and where the park is, was severly contaminated. Up to six foot depth of concrete was poured onto the land and left for many years. Then they landscaped it. They cannot build houses on there yet, I believe. Some of that info is from personal witnessing as I was also on the landscaping crew at the time. I was also involved in the layout of the flagging and roadways in the area. Being the inquisitive type, I asked questions. R R

[katy]

That is really interesting. I can imagine the view wasn't as good as it is now when the works were in place! I feel lucky to have the park near my house, it is nice to wake up and see trees and birds.

Some one must have photos, I would love to see them.

Also, what came first the houses or the works?

When and why did they close? Where was the main enterence?

See, I have so many questions...I am desperate to fuel my imagination!

[red ron]

Hello again Katy, It was known locally as the Melly. It was a dirty job. The main entrance was at the litherland end of your road, at the bend. It made tin ingots that were sent all over the place to help make steel and other alloys etc.
As regards the houses or the works, I would guess the works, but it is only a guess. You would be best asking Jan on that subject, she has means of finding out these things. There are quite a few helpful people on the site but I am only sure of Jan. I recall there were loading bays against the wall with large doors, wagons would park against them and they would be loaded. You may have seen similar ingots on the backs of lorries in your travels. I don't know what part of the road you live in, but I had friends named Hamilton who lived very near the 'nursery' end. I don't know if any of them are there now, but they were there then and they would have given you info. Send a pm to Jan, she will help. Ron..

[Mack]

Hi Katy

When I was a kid back in the 70's (about 1976) right at the end of the street by St Elizabeths the remenents of the old factory was still there. No roof or anything, it was just a crumbling old building. Me + my mates used to play in there. We could climb in through the broken window next to Pennington Bridge.

It was the best playground ever for us as we were kids and you could climb over the rubble, play, hide and use your imagination to pretend you were in all kinds of perilous situations.

I always remember during one of our fantastic adventures playing in the Melly I found a Walky Talky hidden under a pile of bricks (fully charged by the way). I took it home + thought to myself WOW this is cool ! should I tell my mum + dad what I've just found ? I could have loads of fun with this ! This is around the time CB radio was taking off + noboby I knew had a CB, at this time I was 11 years old.

After much thought I told my mum and dad and they told me to hand it into to the police - Marsh Lane. I handed it in and was told by the police that if no one claimed it back in 30 days I could have it back.

Thinking back now who would have claimed back a hidden walky talky inside a crumbling derelict old building hidden under a pile of bricks without any public access at the time?

It was obviously being used for something dodgy, but I was a young kid at the time being honest returning something I thought somebody had lost and after being advised by my parents that it should be returned to the rightful owner of the lost property.

To this day I have always wondered why that Walky Talky was hidden amongst the rubble of the Melly in 1976.

Mack

[Mack]

Hiya

Below is a link to our Bootle Gallery which shows how the streets
around Lunt Road, Bootle look like recently...



http://www.bootlehistory.com/photos/lunt_rd/index.htm

Mack

[Sheila Graham]

Any stories or pictures would be great![/quote]
----
Katy, I worked for Williams Harvey from about 1960 to 1964. I worked in the wages office; I help calculate the wages for the women and men in the Mellanear works.....I also printed out their wage slip. I loved working there...We got a three course lunch everyday; and I loved the atmosphere in the place. If we had to work at Christmas to get the wages out on time we would get Christmas dinner in the Merton Hotel. I also got a weeks ages as a Christmas bonus. Of course that was the office staff. I know my boss would take people around the factory who were looking for a job and when the applicant found out how much the wages were, the comment was "I get more than that on the dole". I was in contact with the 'Mellanear Neighbours" or something like that. I tried to cut and paste the website but it has disappeared...sorry. I remember a story that my boss told me. One of the men who lived, perhaps in Lunt Road, walked to work. As he got to the gate, he turned around putting his back to the wind to light his pipe...when he lit it he walked home, forgetting he was going to work. His wife had to remind him of the time and where he was going:-)) sheila.g

[Jan]

Hi Katy,

I looked in the 1938 Directory (a bit like a phone book) and Lunt Road was all houses, no Mellanear Works was listed, I will ask a friend who has a later directory to look it up for me.

Hope that has helped.

Jan

[Peter W]

Hi! Katy! Welcome to this great site. Photographs of the Mellenear works can be found in the lending section of Orrell library, which are contained in one of my Bootle books, "Bootle" Images of England. Hope to see you at the Forum Meet-up.

[Jan]

Thanks Sheila for the name Williams Harvey, I went back to the 1938 Directory and found this.

Williams Harvey & Co Ltd Tin Smelters - Office and works Altcar Road Bootle. TA (Trading As) "Mellanear", Liverpool.

I will see what else I can find.

Jan

[Jan]

They were also there in 1911!

the company dissolved in 2000 (in London)

The date of incorporation was 5/12/1901

Jan

[katy]

Hello all

Thank you for all your responses. It is all helping me to build a picture up.

I have read somewhere that the works came to Bootle from Cornwall - I wonder why they moved up north?

I have also heard when they opened the park all the houses on Lunt Road got given hanging baskets for the front of there houses and there was a bit of a celebration. There must have been some press at the event, or someone must have taken photos. I am new to all this, so can anyone tell me whether there is any way I can look through the local presses archive?

Katy

[Jan]

Hi Katy,

Crosby library have old newspapers on microfilm, you can go and view them and there is no charge, I am sure the staff there will help you, they are very good.

You could also e-mail them and ask if they have any information.

local-history.south@leisure.sefton.gov.uk

Cheers.........Jan

[katy]

I will email them and let you all know what happens

katy x

[henry]

Katy.
If you click on SEARCH on the home page you will find a few reports on the Mellanear and when i worked there there was a big wall around the factory and the view from your now bedroom the MELLY would look like something the Germans built as it was a dark and dangerous place so you would not have had a pretty view then as your road now has.

[katy]

I emailed the local history unit at Crosby Library (thanks to Jans advice).

This is what they had to say for themselves:

'Thank you for your e-mail. Our biggest source of information for the
Mellanear Smelting Works is a pamphlet called The Story of the Mel-Inn
Social Club by Harry Wallwork, published in 1997. This works deals with
the social club attached to the works, but also contains information
about the works as well.'

I am going to head up to the library when I get chance - and some time off work! They also mentioned there are some maps which may be interesting.

katy

[margaret willee]

I currently live on Lunt Road and I am very interested in the history of the Mellanear works. I would love it if there are any pictures out there of the works on Lunt Road before they went and pictures of the development of the park.

I like to look out of my bed room window and imagine all the workers coming and going. I wonder what it would have been like to live on Lunt Road at that time.

Someone said to me once that when the works became out of use they had a massive tin wall surrounding the land which used to block the light out of the houses.

Any stories or pictures would be great!

Kathy i lived in nr10 Lunt road from 1944 to 1952 . sorry no pictures , we played along the side off the mellie the entrance was down the side , most off the men in the street worked ,there most ended up with lung cancer ... will visit the park next time i come back , what number do you live in ,,I remember we had a loo out side and a shelter in the back yard .
have very happy memories from Lunt road , and mail a fello who lived further dowm from me .....

[Sheila Graham]

[quote="katy"]Hello all

Thank you for all your responses. It is all helping me to build a picture up.

I have read somewhere that the works came to Bootle from Cornwall - I wonder why they moved up north?
]-----
Katy, the men that came up from Cornwall were tin miners, they were probably brought up because of their experience. sheila.g

[garthur]

My grandfather was one of the ex tin miners who came up from Cornwall as the mines there were already closing.

My family are from Hayle in Cornwall and the name Melinear and Penpoll came from Hayle.

The Harveys who had Melinears factory in Orrell are, I believe, the same Harveys who had one of the two major engineering factories in Hayle.

Richard Trevithick [invented the steam engine which was used to pump the water from the deep mines] married Jane Harvey. Richard went to S. America to install pumps in the silver mines, but he ended up losing everything. When he returned home to Cornwall his wife, Jane, was the proprietress of White Hart Inn at Hayle.
One of their sons [it might have been Francis] married into the Hosking family - which was my grandmother's clan.

Many of the families in the old Orrell area came from Wales and Cornwall. In fact, I suppose it could be said to be a Celtic Enclave!! Most of the population seemed to be Welsh, Cornish or Irish!!

Hope this helps to give some idea of the origin of the Melinear and the Penpoll works!

Glenys (the other one!)

[jvlovelady1]

Hi Everybody,

I am totally new to the site, but looking around I note one or two familiar names, if not faces. What prompted me to join were two threads, Bootle Gas and the Mellanear. Then there were mentions of Lunt Road and Litherland Road. I think, I was born closer than anyone to the Satanic tin mill, at 31 Altcar Road. Even as a kid it had seemed to me to be a place never to work in. I had an uncle who suffered a sever industrial injury) (Jim Spencer, married dad's sister) who worked there until forced to retire in about 1950. There was another uncle, Jack Wallace (married to another sister of my father) who also worked there and lived in one of the houses in Litherland Rd , 198, 200, 202, I can't quite remember which now.

Lunt Road was mentioned and one of the correspondents must have lived at the back of us. I always remember walking up to St Elizabeth's Infants School through Lunt Rd and buying Sticky Lice in a little shop (now long gone, I suppose) on the way.

I note that you can no longer drive directly from Altcar Road to Beck
Road, but when I lived there you could. Our bonfires, in those few years after the war, seemed to be things of tremendous size, and they were held on the Lunt - Beck Rd crossing and fueled with wood nicked off the canal and bomb sites. Directly opposite our from door was the Mellanear pillar box, standing defiantly beneath whatever the Luftwaffe threw at it. It used to be manned by a guy named Jack Dolce, who lived in Lunt Rd. Needless to say Harvey's was never bombed and the nearest it came to being hit would have been the night that the air-raid shelter in St Andrews Road was hit and five houses on Alt Road.

Altcar Rd was one sided, containing odd numbered houses, 1 - 31 and on the other was the almost fortress like wall of Harveys and beyond that the Canal.

Bootle Gas was were my grandfather worked for thirty years until his death in 1927.

That's it, I must have now sufficientlty bored you all, so I'll sign off.


Best wishes to all

John Lovelady

[Sheila Graham]

It used to be manned by a guy named Jack Dolce, who lived in Lunt Rd.
That's it, I must have now sufficientlty bored you all, so I'll sign off.


Best wishes to all

John Lovelady[/quote]
----
Hiya John, and welcome. I worked in the Mellanear doing the wages and some of the names you mentioned comes to mind; In particular Jack Dolce, would it have been his daughter Grace that worked in the labs whilst I was there? ( from about 1959/60 to 64. ) Grace and a few others took me nightclubbing in Liverpool for my 21st, there was a 'funny' smell in the Blue Angel that made me feel unwell and I had to go home at 10.30pm. lol....If I can find the time I will look for a picture of Grace et al on a night out with Wm Harvey & Co.... sheila.graham

[Mack]

Peter Woolley sent these pics from the Mellanear Works by email.
Pete will add the text himself later in this thread as the scanned document was too small to read here - Mack

___________________________________________________________


From Peter Woolley

Pics from the Mellanear Works





Peter W

[margaret willee]

Hi Everybody,

I am totally new to the site, but looking around I note one or two familiar names, if not faces. What prompted me to join were two threads, Bootle Gas and the Mellanear. Then there were mentions of Lunt Road and Litherland Road. I think, I was born closer than anyone to the Satanic tin mill, at 31 Altcar Road. Even as a kid it had seemed to me to be a place never to work in. I had an uncle who suffered a sever industrial injury) (Jim Spencer, married dad's sister) who worked there until forced to retire in about 1950. There was another uncle, Jack Wallace (married to another sister of my father) who also worked there and lived in one of the houses in Litherland Rd , 198, 200, 202, I can't quite remember which now.

Lunt Road was mentioned and one of the correspondents must have lived at the back of us. I always remember walking up to St Elizabeth's Infants School through Lunt Rd and buying Sticky Lice in a little shop (now long gone, I suppose) on the way.

I note that you can no longer drive directly from Altcar Road to Beck
Road, but when I lived there you could. Our bonfires, in those few years after the war, seemed to be things of tremendous size, and they were held on the Lunt - Beck Rd crossing and fueled with wood nicked off the canal and bomb sites. Directly opposite our from door was the Mellanear pillar box, standing defiantly beneath whatever the Luftwaffe threw at it. It used to be manned by a guy named Jack Dolce, who lived in Lunt Rd. Needless to say Harvey's was never bombed and the nearest it came to being hit would have been the night that the air-raid shelter in St Andrews Road was hit and five houses on Alt Road.

Altcar Rd was one sided, containing odd numbered houses, 1 - 31 and on the other was the almost fortress like wall of Harveys and beyond that the Canal.

Bootle Gas was were my grandfather worked for thirty years until his death in 1927.

That's it, I must have now sufficientlty bored you all, so I'll sign off.


Best wishes to all

John Lovelady

John I lived in nr 10 Lunt road , till 1951,(when we left, I was 11yrs old )but knew alot off the kids in Altcar Road , if were the same age who knows we might have played together , I had a brother called Billy ......

[jvlovelady1]

Hi Maggie and Sheila,

We are almost exactly contemporaries. I was about eight when we left, other people I remember where my cousins the Buckleys and Wilmots from Altcar and Lunt Road and a lady named Mary Maguire (from the back of us in Lunt Rd) who once did a strip in our back room because my elder brother George told her that a cockroach had fallen onto her hair. The things you learn as an eight year old! There was also a Cunliffe that lived next door. The man of the house, even in those days, looked like the perennial highdesk Dickensian clerk

As to your brother what was your family name, I might remember.

Sheila, Old Jack spent considerable time drinking tea in our place. Mention of the Blue Angel revives other memories of similar places. Everyone burbles on about the Cavern, but there were also the Jacaranda and the Iron Door and an after hours place down near the Pier Head. Strange, strange night crowd used to haunt the old tea stall down there!

There was a post about the Northern Dairy and I thought I was going mad.
It was on the other side of Linacre Lane to us. On our side the Lane was a sweet shop that had a mirrored glass front. It must have been bombed at the same time as Alt Road. For years afterwards we were picking up "diamonds" (molten mirror glass) from all kinds of odd places.

Best wishes and thanks for the welcome.

John

[margaret willee]

My name is or was Willee ...
The Jac, remember it well . thats were we were every Frid ,sat night . Slow dancing may be with John Lemon . no place to put your coat on an old table with the rest . one loo .Had to hitch home those were the days . most off the nusres from Bootle went there .. oooohappy days or nights ....

[Sheila Graham]

.Had to hitch home those were the days . most off the nusres from Bootle went there .. oooohappy days or nights ....[/quote]
-----
The Jac and the Iron Door and the Pink Parrot and I am sure more that I can't remember. I went back to the Blue Angel but I never felt ill like I did the first time:-)...I used to love those places. I remember a musical trio in the corner, one could still hold a conversation and still hear the music. When they brought in the disco I never went back...Never could understand why going out for a social night meant we couldn't talk to each because of the noise.. sheila.g remembering one of the best times of her life..

[annie]

hi jvlovelady -i know of a jimmy lovelady who had a brother named george and one who was a singer. i think there were 5 brothers altogether. but dont know where they were born. jimmy was married to my friend iris

[jvlovelady1]

Annie,

There were four of us, George died just before the turn of the century and Jimmy just afterwards, then there was me, and the musician was Bill. He is still at it and has picked up some recognition as a classical composer for guitar and writer of incidental music for TV.

If you do not see iris I will pass on your remarks next time I'm in touch

John

[annie]

hi john i see a lot of iris ..she comes out with me and my sister for lunch every thursday to the pub and your jimmy was a good friend to me when he was alive. i will tell iris i have spoken to you

[Hawk-1]

Hello Katy,
If you can get a copy of my new book: 'Klondyke Kaleidoscope', you will find a lot of information about the factory and its origins in Cornwall.
It's on sale now at Harris Drive News near Hawthorne Road.

Regards,
HarryW.

[istock]

I currently live on Lunt Road and I am very interested in the history of the Mellanear works. I would love it if there are any pictures out there of the works on Lunt Road before they went and pictures of the development of the park.

I like to look out of my bed room window and imagine all the workers coming and going. I wonder what it would have been like to live on Lunt Road at that time.

Someone said to me once that when the works became out of use they had a massive tin wall surrounding the land which used to block the light out of the houses.

Any stories or pictures would be great!

[istock]

I currently live on Lunt Road and I am very interested in the history of the Mellanear works. I would love it if there are any pictures out there of the works on Lunt Road before they went and pictures of the development of the park.

I like to look out of my bed room window and imagine all the workers coming and going. I wonder what it would have been like to live on Lunt Road at that time.

Someone said to me once that when the works became out of use they had a massive tin wall surrounding the land which used to block the light out of the houses.

Any stories or pictures would be great!

Hi Katy,

I lived in Altcar Road from when I was born in 1953 until 1976.
My family lived in No:7 Altcar Road, we lived opposite the offices of the mellanear Works.
We didn't need an alarm clock to get us out of bed in the morning, as the hooter from the factory and the workers walking down our road to get to the factory on time, kept us from sleeping in!
I remember the lovely family next door Mr & Mrs Hodge. Their house was spotless, Mrs Hodge had the most shiny window ledges ever! I remember as a child still in bed but hearing Mr Hodge leaving his house going up to the Mellanear with his wooden glogs on.
The offices were nocked down just before I left Altcar Road.

[istock]

I currently live on Lunt Road and I am very interested in the history of the Mellanear works. I would love it if there are any pictures out there of the works on Lunt Road before they went and pictures of the development of the park.

I like to look out of my bed room window and imagine all the workers coming and going. I wonder what it would have been like to live on Lunt Road at that time.

Someone said to me once that when the works became out of use they had a massive tin wall surrounding the land which used to block the light out of the houses.

Any stories or pictures would be great!

[BOBHAMO]

welcome istock bobhamo

[lily8]

Hi Istock and welcome to BB's