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The Ship Hotel is situated on the stunning Parkgate Parade on the Wirral peninsula. Parkgate has in its time been a thriving port in the 1700s, popular Victorian holiday resort with one particular regular visitor being Lord Nelson, whose mistress Lady Hamilton lived just down the way. It is now a destination for diners, walkers, bird watchers and fans of the ever popular and famous Parkgate ice-cream and local shrimps.

The hotel provides good value, well equipped, en-suite accommodation, providing excellent, warm, clean and comfortable rooms at budget prices. We pride ourselves on our homely, friendly atmosphere and warm welcome given to every guest at The Ship.

The Ship Hotel, Parkgate 1905

History of the Ship
(courtesy of Geoffrey Place of the Parkgate Society)

The present Ship Hotel occupies the site of three buildings, probably adjoining. Before the 1850s the front part, facing Parkgate parade, was a house and shop, which at one time housed the post office. Behind it was the Ship Inn, and behind that was another inn called the Black Bull or Bull’s Head. It was reached by the passage or ‘weint’ called Drury Lane, between these buildings and Mostyn House. In 1829 ‘the licensed public house, the Black Bull at Parkgate was to let, with eight bedrooms’. It is not heard of again.

The Ship has a very much longer history, as the name at least, can be traced to the mid-eighteenth century. In 1758 the Freemason’s Parkgate Lodge was meeting at The Ship in Launch, and they possibly continued to meet there until 1775. But whether this inn was on the site of the later Ship, there is no means of telling. In 1772 Betty Wright who advertised that she ‘keeps the sign of the Ship at the Lower end of Parkgate and could accommodate visitors for the sea bathing season’.

The first mention of the Ship, definitely in Drury Lane is in 1822 when it is variously called the Ship and the Princess Royal. The Princess Royal was a passenger-carrying ship between Parkgate and Dublin. It was built at Parkgate and was still sailing in 1809. It seems likely that, if the present Ship Inn was named after the Princess Royal, then those earlier mentions of the Inn name, before the ship was built, could be of elsewhere.

In 1859 Ship Inn belonged to the Parkgate Hotel Company, which rebuilt and enlarged it, apparently making all three houses into one. But the expense bankrupted the company. In 1860 a new owner reopened it as the Union Hotel ‘now complete with entirely new furniture’. The Union as an Inn sign sometimes refers to the union of England and Ireland in 1800. Clearly this is much later than that union and may perhaps reflect the union of the original three houses. The hotel went bankrupt again in 1865.

About 1876 John Acton, previously at the Chester Arms became landlord. He was a keen Freemason, and from then until 1922 the freemasons met in a converted stable and coach house behind the hotel.

In the 1970s the hotel was refurbished by new owners Trust House Forte and reverted to its former name the Ship.

In the early 1990s the premises were purchased by us and have been operated under our stewardship since then, adding to a long and colourful ownership.

 

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