County Borough of Bootle, Lancashire : Official Handbook [Second Edition] : E. J. Burrow & Co. Ltd. : nd [c.1938/39

For the 'second edition' of the official handbook to the County Borough of Bootle in Lancashire the Borough Council turned to the prolific publisher of such books, Edward J. Burrow of Cheltenham. They produced the handbook noting " its civic and industrial importance, with noted on modern developments; the Docks; Public Services and Local Commercial Undertakings" and it is datable, from rates information to 1938/39.

 

Bootle, a county borough in its own right, was often overshadowed by its much larger neighbour the City of Liverpool. Indeed Liverpool had attempted to annexe the borough in 1903 although in the 1974 local government reorganisation Bootle was amalgamated with the somewhat distant and very different Southport further up the coast as one of the new Metropolitan Boroughs, Sefton, within Merseyside. As a Lancastrian child I was often reminded that Bootle was the county's 'forgotten' County Borough - the other you had to recall was Barrow in Furness (now in Cumbria) and it was I think the only Lancastrian County Borough that never had its own Transport Department as it's trams had been part of the Liverpool system and the buses were a mixture of that city's and the Ribble company's routes. It did of course, as a County Borough, register vehicles with the registration index of EM.

 

The cover is of the 'traditional' design much favoured by local authorities - suitably 'civic' and with the County Borough's coat of arms, or heraldic achievement, with the motto of "Respice, Aspice, Prospice" - 'reflect on the past, consider the present, provide for the future'.

 

 

Done