Hamilton Square Station

As you approach Hamilton Square Station from the centre of Birkenhead you pass through the tranquility of Hamilton Square itself. All around are leafy streets, expensive looking buildings full of solicitors and bankers (or these post-​recession days full of For Sale and To Let signs”. Over to the right you’ll see the majestic Wirral Museum. Further on up the road and you see straight across the river, spotting iconic landmarks such as Liverpool’s Anglian and Roman Catholic Cathedrals, the Liver Buildings and the somewhat more modern Echo Events Arena. The station itself lies beneath a tall tower with the slogan ‘Hamilton Square Station Frequent Electric Trains’. It all looks great. Then you step into the station and suddenly you feel that you’ve passed through the gates of hell. It’s dark, dismal and dreary on the ground floor but to reach the platforms you need to take a lift down into the pits of the earth. You step out of the lift into a maze of corridors and if, like me you’re looking for the West Derby line, you might have to descend down a further staircase even deeper underground and follow even more corridors in search of the correct platform. One other word of advice, no matter how much you might hate lifts do not try climbing up or down the stairs. There are about a million of them between the platforms and the surface of the planet. You’re constantly doubling back on yourself and at every turn you think you must surely have reached the top but the climb just goes on and on and on. There are serving members of the SAS who couldn’t manage the climb without collapsing in floods of tears. Fortunately the trains are quite frequent so you shouldn’t have to wait too long if you time things correctly. When the train I was waiting for did arrive, spot on time I have to say, I got on to a faint scent of urine. Being below ground it wasn’t possible to open a window so I had to grin and bear it. Also, as appears typical of Merseyrail trains, the seats had clearly been designed on the assumption that no passengers would possess legs. I’d hate to have to travel by Miseryrail at peak times. Luckily I only had to endure 10 minutes or so before changing at Bidston but the memory of Hamilton Square Station will live for ever in my darkest nightmares.

If you were to watch a horror movie that’s set in the city, and then if someone were to get murdered in a dank and horrible station, it would probably look like Hamilton Square! It’s just dank and dim and dark and I never feel 100% comfortable here! Much like its little sister station, ‘Conway Park’, it’s another dark stop on the Wirral line as you make your journey towards the city of Liverpool.
I always much prefer to get the bus if I’m stuck in Birkenhead, just because all the stations in Birkenhead are shitty and don’t seem to be that well kept! Although this is a grade 2 listed building, this means nothing to me! If it were a mansion it would be rotting away at the floorboards! Boo!

The station was built in the 1800’s, and is apparently a Grade 2 historical building. Yet there’s really not much to see at this little station. But it’s a good place to change trains if you’re coming from Liverpool and you want to get to Chester. Also, if you want to go shopping in Birkenhead it’s fairly easy to get to the shopping centres and market from this station.
Also, as the name of the station suggests, it’s near Hamilton Square itself, which is a nice patch of green in the city. It makes a great place to have a picnic lunch, and it’s right by the Wirral Museum.

Designed by Edinburgh architect, James Gillespie Graham, for the shipping magnate William Laird, work began ca. 1826; the finished result comprising a concentration of various Grade 1 listed buildings — originally designed for both residences and businesses as part of the new town’s municipal hub, and still largely occupied by legal firms and offices — their cellar areas being largely the preserve of cafes and sandwich bars. The square is still an elegant space, dominated by the later Town Hall building (1887), and with an open-​plan garden area at its heart, crossed by interlinking pathways, with a suitably regal monument to Queen Victoria right at the centre. Suggestive of how the rest of Birkenhead was intended to develop, unfortunately, owing to poor business decisions compromising Birkenhead’s independence as a dock, the money later ran out, and the standard and quality of architecture beyond Hamilton Square declined alarmingly. Laird’s son, John (Birkenhead’s first MP) lived at no. 63 Hamilton Square.