Walking back from collecting my diabetic tablets at the pharmacists in New Brighton I stumbled across these strange looking bollards blocking both ends of an alleyway, between A554 and Duke Street. From their weird bulky shape and the zigzaggy engraving around the top, they don’t look like standard council bollards to me, so I started to wonder if they might originally have been something else and repurposed.
The bollards look very much like old Naval Cannons, the type you hear a fair amount about in London being used as street furniture. I’m taking a guess that they could be Georgian based on the age of the houses in the area, as New Brighton wasn’t developed until 1830, spearheaded by James Atherton to rival other resorts namely the original Brighton.
It’s possible that if these are cannons then they could have been surplus from Fort Perch Rock the coastal defense battery completed in 1829 in the mouth of the River Mersey.
One of a set of strange looking Bollards, New Brighton, 2025.
Mind The Gaps 
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