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With bowling greens and municipal parks skirting the prom, this town should be preserved in its entirety as a monument to traditional aspiration
What’s going for it? Time was when the English middle classes were content with a semi, an extramarital affair and reasonable access to a golf course. Now it’s all cold-pressed drip coffee and single-estate mint chocs. West Kirby is a veritable vision, though, of the way things used to be (I can’t, however, vouch for its marriages, one way or another). Golf courses, bowling greens, municipal parks, playing fields where dads watch Saturday team sports. Very good schools, of course. Sunday afternoon strolls along the prom, with an occasional foray on to the sands at low tide, to Hilbre Island. Sailing clubs. The town’s avenues weigh heavy with black-and-white Tudorbethans and lawns kept in check with a weekly shove of the Qualcast. It’s a haven of traditional aspiration, with only a slight, recent incursion of – whisper it – new money, easy to spot with their bling-bling extensions. They should probably preserve the town in its entirety as a monument to a certain way of life; it may not last. All the aspiration and granite work surfaces in Merseyside won’t be able to hold back the waves from this flat-as-a-pancake sandy coast if the worst happens.
The case against Too conventional for many, delightful as it is. I would keep an eye on predicted sea-level rises, especially in what estate agents here call the “flat” part of town. Continue reading...