Hoylake Station sign back home

Mar 26 2008 by Lorna Hughes, Birkenhead News

SEVENTY years after it was originally hung, an art deco sign is taking pride of place in a historic Wirral station.

First unveiled on March 14, 1938 following the electrification of rail lines from Birknhead Park to West Kirby, the Hoylake Station sign was recently discovered by chance in a Merseytravel store room.

Councillor Mark Dowd, chair of Merseytravel, said: “This is the finishing touch to Hoylake Station, which we painstakingly restored only recently in the run up to the Open Golf Championships.

“The art deco station is a real gem on the network and it was nice to celebrate the anniversary in this way.”

After a £600,000 restoration Hoylake narrowly missed out on a National Railway Heritage Award, coming second only to the £800 million transformation of St Pancras Station in London.

Neil Scales, chief executive and director general of Merseytravel, said: “There was no way our renovation of Hoylake Station could compete with St Pancras on sheer size and scale, but for detail and precision it is a great achievement.”

The opening of the station in 1866 had a big effect on the Hoylake population, which in 1861 was only 924.

By 1911 that number had swelled to more than 14,000.