WIRRAL'S bid for a new New Brighton Tower and Tesseract Park is currently with the Millennium Commission. Councillors expect to hear any day whether the bid makes the final 'short' list of 90 projects across the country.

Meanwhile, there is a timely publication from Birkenhead-based Countyvise tracing the social history of New Brighton. The Inviting Shore (Part One), 1830 to 1939, by Anthony Miller, costs £7.95 and is essential reading for history fans.

New Brighton was founded in 1830 as a fashionable watering place and posh residential dormitory for the mercantile elite of Liverpool society.

Developer James Atherton had already built Georgian terraced property in Everton. Over the Mersey he saw sand and potential for a new Brighton, christened with its royal Sussex counterpart in mind.

The opening chapter states: "In just over a century and a half since Atherton's arrival, New Brighton has witnessed many changes. The young and select watering place of the mid-19th century, described by one contemporary observer as the 'Elysium of English Watering Places', was gradually transformed into the brash and rather vulgar seaside resort of the late Victorian and Edwardian period."

Atherton had built an Albion Crescent in Everton, a name he would later reproduce in one of New Brighton's first streets. He left Everton after his three young sons died within a few years of one another, to team up for a new start with fellow developer William Rowson in buying land at New Brighton.

Rowson decided to build his house, Cliff Villa, just above the Red and Yellow Noses, near the shore in what is now Wellington Road.

Atherton chose a piece of land upon the high ground almost overlooking Rowson's site and built a house in Montpelier Crescent. One of the early maps of New Brighton, circa 1835, only highlights two street names, Montpelier Crescent (with one 'l') and Albion Street.

A start had been made on New Brighton.

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