10:00 Sunday October 11 2026
Current Participants: 13 space(s) available
The grade D ride is 27 miles long, starting and finishing outside Hamilton Square Railway Station. The ride will begin at 10:00 and John Hampson, the ride leader, will be at the start from 09:45 onwards. If you are a newcomer to Wirral Cycling Group please get to the start by 09:45, so that John can explain how we ride as a group. The route will take us to all the lighthouses, past and present, in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral and is due to finish at about 15:00.
The ride is mostly flat but with two proper hills: one up to the Beacon in West Kirby Boundary Road and one up Bidston Hill at Bidston. Don’t worry though; it is ok to walk up either hill.
There will be eleven stops on route:
- Woodside Lighthouse
- The One o’Clock Gun (not a lighthouse, but interesting anyway)
- New Brighton Lighthouse
- The Lighthouse in Wallasey Village (not a lighthouse)
- Upper Mockbeggar Light (aka Leasowe Lighthouse)
- Site of the Lower Mockbeggar Light
- Lower Lake Light
- Upper Lake Light
- The Lighthouse at Red Rocks (also not a lighthouse)
- The Mariners’ Beacon at West Kirby
- Bidston Lighthouse
Lunch will be at the Baked Cafe in Larton at 18 miles.
You can view or download the planned route on GPX from Komoot: Wirral Lighthouses
NOTES:
Woodside Lighthouse
The current lighthouse at Woodside Ferry Terminal is a replica of the original one built in 1840. It is not actually a lighthouse, but a beacon to guide the ferry. In 1859 the area was redeveloped, land at the end of the pier was reclaimed, and a new floating landing stage was built in 1861. The Woodside Ferry Light was no longer needed, but remained in situ despite the alterations around it.
The One o’Clock Gun (not a lighthouse)
Ships needed to know the exact time for accurate navigation and used to set their chronometers by watching for a time-ball that was dropped down a pole on top of the observatory at Waterloo Dock at 1 pm every day (they still do this at Greenwich Observatory). But because of air pollution the Liverpool Observatory was moved from the Waterloo Dock to Bidston Hill on the Wirral, too far for ships to see the ball drop, so instead they installed a gun on the shore and fired it by electric signal from Bidston Observatory. They pressed the firing button at 1 second to 1 pm and the gun fired on the next swing of the observatory clock’s pendulum. It was last fired on 18th July 1969.
The original one o’clock gun was a cannon from the Crimean War and was fired for the first time on 22nd September, 1867, and daily thereafter (except Sundays). The gun on the gun house today is not that gun (that one is in Albert Dock Maritime museum); no one seems to know where this one came from.
New Brighton Lighthouse
A primitive wooden light known as a perch (a wooden tripod supporting a lantern) was first built here in 1683, hence its other name Perch Rock. It marked the Black Rock to the North Channel of Liverpool Bay. In February 1821 a pilot boat crashed into the perch and destroyed it. Construction of a new stone lighthouse started in 1827 and it opened on 1st March 1830. It was decommissioned in October 1973
The Lighthouse in Wallasey Village
Two fishermen’s cottages in Wallasey Village were turned into an inn in 1830. which got its name because people could see the Leasowe Lighthouse nearly 3 miles down the coast looking along Green Lane (which use to run all the way to Leasowe Castle and Mockbeggar Hall before the Leasowe Golf Course was built). The original inn was demolished in 1960 and replaced by an ugly modern pub building.
Upper Mockbeggar Light (aka Leasowe Lighthouse)
Known as Leasowe Lighthouse, but actually not a lighthouse (it is a beacon) and not in Leasowe (but in Moreton). It is one of a pair of lights that were built in 1763 to guide ships safely into the Port of Liverpool. They were known as the Upper and Lower Mockbeggar lights. When aligned these lights guided vessels through the Rock Channel, at the time the main route into Liverpool. The lighthouse was the first in Britain made of bricks, using 660,000 handmade bricks and initially, the light was lit by coal, which had to be carried up the 149 stairs. But in 1772 oil lamps were installed along with a large reflector. The lighthouse closed in 1908 because the Rock Channel had silted up and was no longer the main route into Liverpool.
Lower Mockbeggar Light
The lower light of the pair was ¼ mile off-shore at Mockbeggar Wharf (Leasowe Lighthouse was on the sea shore at that time). The lower lighthouse was made of wood and was destroyed by a storm after only six years in 1769 . So they decide to swap the upper and lower lights, use the brick lighthouse as the lower light and build a new lighthouse / beacon on top of Bidston Hill, two miles away.
Lower Lake Light
There were also two beacons at Hoylake built in 1764 which, when aligned, marked the channel past the East Hoyle bank into the Hoyle Lake (a safe anchorage for ships). Both lights were decommissioned in 1886, as the channel had silted up and the Hoyle Lake was no longer suitable as an anchorage. The Lower Lake lighthouse was demolished in 1908, and the land was then used for the Winter Gardens Picture House. The site is just to the east side of the old Lifeboat station.
Upper Lake Light
The Upper Lake lighthouse was rebuilt in 1863 and included two houses for the two lighthouse keepers’ families. The lighthouse and the houses were sold in 1909 and are now a private residence.
The Lighthouse at Red Rocks
Just a replica! But it looks like a real lighthouse.
The Mariners’ Beacon at West Kirby
A windmill on top of Caldy Hill had been used for hundreds of years as a navigation aid past Hilbre Island into the River Dee. But the mill was destroyed during a storm in 1839. So John Shaw Leigh, the owner of the land, had an 18 metre high sandstone column built in 1841 to replace the mill. A large stone ball was mounted on the top of the column and a millstone is set at the base of the column.
Bidston Lighthouse
The first lighthouse at Bidston was built in 1770, two miles inland from the lighthouse it replaced. Again it was not a lighthouse, but a beacon to indicate the way into the Rock Channel at Meols. There was also a signal station here which used moveable boards and flags. It was the last in a series of 11 such stations between Holyhead and Liverpool. On a clear day a message could be sent from Holyhead to Liverpool in under a minute. This lighthouse is the second on the site and replaced the original in 1873. It was closed in October 1913.
