Lairds - connections or coincidences? We’ve acquired the Lairds from a recent marriage, and as no-one else seems to have researched them I’ve had a preliminary search. As more information has turned up I’ve given them their own page. Bold Street, Rock Ferry Mention Bold Street and almost everyone thinks of the one in Liverpool, but there used to be a Bold Street on the Birkenhead side of the Mersey, and it was home to the Hopkins in the early 1900s and to great grandmother Sarah Ann Courtney in her final transfiguration as the wife of William Henry Biggs. When widower William Henry Biggs married the widowed Sarah Ann Hopkins on the 30th March 1896 in Liverpool, they both gave their address as Pitt Street.  By 17th November 1897 when William Henry registered his father’s death they were living at 25 Bold Street, Birkenhead, a convenient address for a shipyard worker. On the 31st March 1901, the date of the census, they are at the same address and just two doors away from Sarah Ann’s son, John Charles Hopkins, and his wife Ann Coyne at number 29. When John had married Ann on the 7th August 1899 he gave his address as 25 Bold Street, Tranmere, so he married from his mother’s home and started his own married life close by. William Henry and Sarah Ann are still living at number 25 in 1911; John and Ann have crossed the Mersey and are living in Garston. William Henry and Sarah Ann both died at 25 Bold Street: Sarah Ann on the 7th May 1924, and William Henry on the 22nd Jan 1937. Using the old-maps.co.uk web site it is possible to see where Bold Street was in the 1930s; it ran north from Ebenezer Street between New Chester Road and Russell Road. The junction with Ebenezer Street, like Bold Street itself, no longer exists of course, but it is marked approximately by a large marble plaque which can be seen on Google StreetView (click on the image): The wording is: “The Prime Minister the Right Honourable James Callaghan M.P. laid this stone on the 3rd September 1976 to mark the commencement of factory building on the Rock Ferry Industrial Estate Birkenhead.” It doesn’t often happen - apart from births, marriages and deaths - that you know exactly where a family member was on a particular day but the following photo comes from my father-in-law’s album. There was obviously some initial confusion over the month, and the typed ‘7’ for July has been changed in pencil to an ‘8’ for August. During the 1930s he spent his holidays motorcycling with a friend around Ireland and Scotland, taking in the Western Isles just before the war. Looking at the subject of this photo, I suppose we should be grateful he wasn’t detained as a spy! Click image to enlarge. Most of the photos he took are sepia landscapes, which haven’t aged very well; but he did take a series of shots of shipping on the Mersey which do probably have an historical interest. I’ve put them on a separate page, along with a few from his travels.