NORTHOLME, BRAYSTONES
by DOT WALKER

My thanks to Dot for her photographs and personal memories of Northolme before the Second World War, which I give in her own words below. This is another page which may well grow quite a lot over time- does anybody remember staying there in, say, the 1950s?

The year is 1937 and I am three years old. I am standing outside my great-aunt's bungalow at Braystones. I do not know that a new king, George VI, has been crowned, or that Guernica has been destroyed in an air raid. All I know is that I have been left outside on a tartan rug with a plate of biscuits, and I am not happy about it. My great-aunt takes me into the bungalow. I say that a tiny bedroom at the front looks like a railway carriage, and everyone cheers.

Great-aunt Kit, christened Catherine Maria McGill, was born in Irton in 1870. She was station mistress at Braystones from about 1907 until 1927 [this site will eventually include a page about the railway stations; meanwhile, at left is a picture of Kit at 'Northolme' in the early 1930s]. Because she had the only telephone, people who were in trouble on the beach always went to her for help. It was when she retired that Kit moved to Northolme, nearly opposite the station. The bungalow became a much-loved meeting place for her widely scattered relatives. All that ended in 1937, when Kit came into a legacy and moved to Wallasey. She died there in 1968, at the age of 97.

Here are some more pictures from Dot's family album, showing Northolme in its heyday, with her own captions (note that this first one shows very clearly the railway carriage windows; there are probably enthusiasts out there who could tell us which line it ran on!): This picture shows my mother, Harriet Walker, on the front porch at Northolme in 1929.
The next picture seems to be chronologically the earliest. Dot dates it to 1927 and comments: The bungalow already has its flowerbeds edged with whitewashed stones, but there is no trellis against the end wall and, more to the point, no window to the left of it. It doesn't look as neat and pretty as it does in the 1937 photo, because it hasn't yet been transformed by Kit.

Following the 1977 railway accident the site was buried under the newly-reinforced embankment.

PPS: After sending me the 'Northolme' information and pictures, Dot read the 'Latona' page on this site, following which she kindly sent me this picture showing the spring south of Braystones station about 1930.