Enlistment in Liverpool

[DaveR]

Hi,

the recollections of a soldier I'm interested in say he enlisted in the RAMC at the tramway depot in Liverpool after being turned away by the RA next door (he was under age). Does anyone know where the tramway depot was?

thanks

Dave Risley

[MartinWills]

At a guess this may have been at the tournament drill hall at Edge Lane, however this was not a tramway depot at the time - the Edge Lane depot was constructed and used as such from 1921 onwards. The tournament hall had originally been built for the Liverpool exhibition of 1913.

The depots in 1914 were:

Seaforth (Liverpool Overhead Railway Tramways)

Dingle

Smithdown Road

Walton

Lambeth Road

Green Lane

Liverland

Hatton Garden

Garston

Tramway Road depot had served for horse trams from 1869 until some time in the 1870s. It subsequently served as a works until 1893 and was subsequently (though I cannot confirm if this included WW1) used by the T A.

Wavertree depot served for horse trams till 1900 and was used as a cinema from 1911 to 1918 before being used by the military and reverting to a tramcars works in 1921.

West Derby depot is shown by a contemporary map as being adjacent to "The Barracks" but only served as a horse tram depot froom 1882 to 1900 after which it saw use as a tramways depot and later as commercial premises

There were several other disused former depots at the time.

Lambeth Road Works was offered as a munitions factory in April 1915 and became "Lambeth Road NAtional Shell Factory and also served as the "rectification factory" for various smaller scale producers. The output reached a peak of 20,000 shells a week and towards the end of the war aircraft wings were also produced. At the time of the armistice some 300 Avro wings had been completed and some 200 Sopwith Snipe main planes were on hand.

Hope this helps.

[DaveR]

Thanks.

Dave