The Wirral is a peninsular bounded by the River Dee to the west and the River Mersey to the east. It is mostly in North West England although the south west corner is in North Wales. It adminstered by Cheshire County Council in the south, Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council in the north and Flintshire in the south west. Previously it was entirely in Cheshire as hundred.
When referring to the Wirral peninsular the name is shortened to the Wirral. Something is either in Wirral or on the Wirral.
There are a number of significant towns and villages on the Wirral including:
The M53 runs along the length of the Wirral. At the north eastern end , the Wirral is joined to Liverpool by two tunnels under the River Mersey.
History
At the end of the twelfth century, Birchen Head Priory stood on a lonely headland of birch trees, facing open countryside and surrounded by the Mersey. It was from here, Merseyside's oldest building, that Benedictine monks operated the first Mersey ferry in 1330, having been granted a passage to Liverpool by a charter from Edward III.
The original ferry service, now famous throughout the world, put Wirral on the map as part of the King's highway, yet for centuries the peninsula remained a cluster of small holdings and hamlets. It wasn't until the 1820s that steam-powered boats improved communication and opened up Wirral's Mersey coast for industrialisation.
Wirral's first railway was built in 1840 planned by George Stephenson and connected Birkenhead with Chester. This encouraged the growth of Wirral; Birkenhead and Wallasey grew into large towns. In 1847, Birkenhead's first docks and its municipal park, the first in Britain and the inspiration for New York's Central Park, were opened.
The Mersey railway led to increased development after 1886, when pioneering Victorian engineers were the first in the world successfully to tunnel a railway beneath a major river. The first tunnel was supplemented by a vehicle tunnel in 1934 (Queensway) and a third in 1971 (Kingsway).
Wirral's dockland areas of Wallasey and Birkenhead continued to develop and prosper. The 1820s saw the birth of the renowned shipbuilding tradition when John Laird opened his Cammell Laird yard and a host of other port-related industries came into existence, such as flour milling, tanning, edible oil refining and the manufacture of paint and rubber-based products.
Another important development was the building in 1888 of the now famous industrial village of Port Sunlight, designed to house employees at the original firm of Lever Brothers, now part of the Unilever group. The village, which turned Lord Leverhulme's philanthropic dream into reality provided workers with a benign environment.
Literary
Sir Gawain spent Christmas on Wirral before his confrontation with the Green Knight. Wilfred Owen, the greatest poet of the First World War, grew up in Tranmere, on Wirral.
See also
External links
Last updated: 08-24-2005 20:02:14
