So, what DO we know? Well, they trace their roots back to the Cammell Laird works team of the ‘world famous’ shipyard of the same name. With the exception of an iceberg-related ‘incident’ in 1912 that led to Kate Winslet posing topless for some floppy-haired toddler 85 years later, impsTALK’s knowledge of shipping history is sadly lacking: we’ve not heard of the shipyard either.

Laird

“I'd move to Rockferry tomorrow,” warbled the Welsh songstress. “And I'd build my house, baby, with sorrow.”

Sorrow? It’s hard to believe she’s not singing about Hereford, but Rock Ferry it is. Beautiful. Beautiful. That’s an Ivor Novello, right there.

More intriguingly, Ferry’s Rock Park was home to American novelist Nathanial Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, between 1853 and 1857. Hawthorne, who, unlike Duffy, was capable of stringing together a sentence or two, was serving in a diplomatic capacity at the time as US counsel, second only in importance to serving as ambassador at the US embassy in London.

Hawthorne had been promoted to the prestigious position as a reward for leaving out all salubrious details when penning the biography of Franklin Pierce prior to his election as US president. However, there’s no point searching for his former lodgings today: Hawthorne House was bulldozed in the 1970s to make way for the A41 bypass.