Heritage et AL

Recently a customer was searching through old letterbooks in the Chelsea Archives at Birkenhead Library. Tissue thin pages, eye-watering  italic script, crumbling pages, circa 1889 – that sort of thing. He was hoping to find reference to his grandfather. Instead he found curious little notes. Which would be fine, except they seem to be nonsense: Ref: 'Platypus', Chelsea Archives, Birkenhead Library

Photo credit: Melvin Vaniman c1902, Chelsea Archives It's big, it's orange , it's preposterous. You see it out of the corner of your eye as you drive up the Harbour Bridge, unless you're concentrating on the road of course.. It's the Chelsea Sugar Refinery in Birkenhead.