St Helens, Merseyside
St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England, with a population of 117,308. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens which had a population of 183,200 at the 2021 Census.
The town is north of the River Mersey, in the south-west part of historic Lancashire. The town was initially a small settlement within the historic county's ancient hundred of West Derby in the township of Windle but by the mid-1700s the town had developed into a larger urban area beyond the townships borders. By 1838 the council was formally made responsible for the administration of Windle and the three other townships of Eccleston, Parr and Sutton that were to form the town's traditional shape. In 1868 the town was incorporated as a municipal borough, then later became a county borough in 1887. In 1974 the town was made a metropolitan borough within the new Metropolitan County of Merseyside by the Local Government Act 1972, with an expanded administrative responsibility for several nearby towns and villages.
The town was famous for its heavy industry, particularly its role in the coal mining industry, glassmaking, chemicals and copper smelting and sail making that drove its growth throughout the Industrial Revolution. Originally home to a large number of industrial employers such as Beechams, the Gamble Alkali Works, Ravenhead Glass, United Glass Bottles, Triplex, Daglish Foundry, Greenall's brewery, the glass producer Pilkington is the town's only remaining large industrial employer.
The town is today most famous for its Rugby League team St Helens R.F.C. who have won 3 World Club Challenge cups in recent years, and museums such as the North West Museum of Road Transport, the World of Glass and art installations such as Dream.
History
Pre-history
The southern part of what became the traditional county of Lancashire was at least partially settled by the Brigantes, a Celtic tribe, who were subjugated by the Romans during their 1st Century conquest, with nearby Wigan suggested as a location for the Roman settlement of Coccium. Eccleston in St Helens appears to derive its name from either the Latin ecclesia or the Brittonic eglwys, both meaning "church", suggesting a common link to a place of worship although none is known in that township until the 19th century.The first recorded settlements are the Manors, Parishes and Titled Lands listed in the Domesday Book in the 11th century. The titled lands would have encompassed the modern townships of Sutton, Windle and Parr as part of their fiefdoms, though it may be inferred from the listed tithes that the land was populated before then.
Formation
St Helens did not exist as a town in its own right until as late as the middle of the 18th century when it is referenced in Parliament. The development of the town has a complex history: it was spurred on by the rapid population growth in the region during the Industrial Revolution. Between 1629 and 1839, St Helens grew from a small collection of houses surrounding an old chapel, to a village, before becoming the significant urban centre of the four primary manors and surrounding townships that make up the modern town.The Domesday Book of 1086 reveals that several manors existed at that time, although there are no specific references to "St Elyn", or mentions of the particular "vill" or villages. Windle is first recorded on some maps as "Windhull" in 1201, Bold in 1212 and Parr in 1246, whilst Sutton and Ecclestone composed part of the Widnes "fee" under a Knight or Earl. It is known that the Hospitallers held lands in the area of Hardshaw as early as 1292, known as Crossgate and many of the original parishes, townships and local areas are named after the families that owned the land between the 11th and 18th centuries.
The Ecclestone family owned the Eccleston township. Their ancestral home dates to 1100; it was built by Hugh Ecclestone. The family is referred to throughout the period until the 18th century when they departed for nearby Southport.
The manor of Parr remained in control of the Parr family and their descendants from the 13th to the early 15th century when a distant relative of the original family line, William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton sold the manor to the Byroms of Lowton. The family later supported the Royalists during the English Civil War, and Henry Byrom died at the Battle of Edgehill.
The extensive lands of Sutton Manor stretched across the open and flat land leading towards the Mersey. The manor's name is of unknown origin, but the land within the estate referred to several leading families, including Eltonhead, Ravenhead, and Sherdley. In 1212, William de Daresbury was the title holder of the manors. The Sherdley family can be traced back to the Northales, who had been settled in the area since at least 1276 when they were referred to as plaintiffs in a boundary dispute with the Lords of Rainhill.
Windle contained the smaller Hardshaw, described as a berewick in the Domesday Book. It was in Hardshaw that Chapel Lane was constructed. The Windle Family were Lords of the Manor and Township from the Norman period onward before ceding control to the Gerards of Bryn.
In 1139, the earldom of Derby, in the Peerage of England, was created: Norman descendant Robert De Ferrers was the first Earl. Subsequently, the region passed to John of Gaunt, and eventually the Stanley family. Their ancestral home was eventually established in the nearby Knowsley area, with the foundation of a hunting lodge in the 15th century and subsequently Knowsley Hall in the 18th century. The Earl of Derby's lands encompassed a region from Liverpool to Manchester, and to the north beyond Lancaster and were primarily turned to meeting the pastoral needs of the people.
Throughout this period, the area was predominantly arable land and was noted for its large swathes of moss, heath and bog land while elsewhere in parts, it was covered by the greater Mersey Forest.
The origin of the name "St Helens" stretches back at least to a chapel of ease dedicated to St Elyn, the earliest documented reference to which is in 1552. The first time the chapel was formally referred to appears to be 1558, when Thomas Parr of Parr bequeathed a sum of money "to a stock towards finding a priest at St. Helen's Chapel in Hardshaw, and to the maintenance of God's divine service there for ever, if the stock go forward and that the priest do service as is aforesaid". Early maps show that it was originally in Chapel Lane, near the site of the modern pedestrianised Church Street. Historically this would have fallen within the berewick of Hardshaw, within the greater township of Windle abutting onto the open farmland of Parr to the east, and Sutton and Eccleston to the south and west respectively.
In 1552, the Chapel of St Elyn was noted as "consisting only of a challis and a lytle bell". The chapel was described as being at the crux of the four townships of Eccleston, Parr, Sutton and Windle, and lay on the intersecting roads that criss-crossed the area and linked Lancashire towns such as Liverpool, Ormskirk, Lathom and the Cheshire region south of the River Mersey. The transport link is attested to by the existence of Chester Lane that originally wound through the west of the town heading south to the Mersey crossing point of Warrington and beyond to the ancient Chester Road that stretched between the historic town of its name and the Manchester townships. The chapel also sat directly between the port town of Liverpool, and the landlocked Manchester townships that would become important in the development of the greater area of both St Helens and Wigan.
As a busy thoroughfare it is suggested by historian and genealogist William Farrer that a village existed in the vicinity for centuries, later sharing the name of the chapel. It is known from the diaries of a local Puritan by the name of Adam Martindale that by the time the King's Head Inn was constructed in 1629 on "the great road" between Warrington and Ormskirk, a number of houses, farms and manors counted amongst the properties in the local vicinity and general area. Martindale notes that by 1618 that the original chapel had been demolished and rebuilt in the same vicinity. In 1678 a building was converted for use as a meeting place for the Society of Friends by George Shaw of Bickerstaffe. Local historians believe the building had been used for another purpose long before 1678. The Quaker Friends' Meeting House, as it is now known, is a Grade II listed building.
The strong link to Roman Catholicism in the area was maintained throughout this period by the eventual Lords of Sutton Manor, the De Holland family, starting in 1321. Thomas Holland, a local Jesuit priest, was arrested and tried for high treason in October 1642 as "taking orders by authority of the see of Rome and returning to England". The first step toward his beatification was allowed by Pope Leo XIII in 1886. Conversely Roger Holland was burnt at the stake for heresy when he continued his professed belief in the Reformed churches some 100 years earlier in 1558 during the persecution of Mary I. It is suggested that Ravenhead Hall was the site of a Catholic chapel during the most severe of Catholic persecutions during the 17th and 18th centuries. Whilst the Lathom family maintained Rainfords close connections, as did the Ecclestons.
Less well-known is the Windle connection to witches. In 1602, two women were sent to Lancaster for trial, while a decade later Isobel Roby was submitted to Sir Thomas Gerard, accused of upsetting the ship upon which James VI and I's Queen Consort Anne of Denmark was arriving. Roby was finally executed at Lancaster, along with the Pendle and Salmesburg witches, on 20 August 1612.
By 1746, St Helens, composed of the greater area of the four townships beyond Prescot, was referred to in a statement in Parliament related to the extension of the Liverpool to Prescot Turnpike.
The rapid growth of St Helens at the centre of the townships is attested to by several authors. The Penny Cyclopaedia states in 1839 that "Saint Helen's, Lancashire, is in the township of Windle, in the chapelry of St Helen's, Prescott parish. The township contains, and had in 1831 a population of 5,825. The town has risen into importance of late years" In contrast by 1844 Cyrus Redding mentions a reversal of the roles: "St Helens, originally an inconsiderable village, is now a very thriving town"; and he later states that the town "... may be said to contain the four townships of Sutton, Parr, Windle and Eccleston". The composition of the town described by Redding largely mirrors those observations made by Samuel Lewis in 1848 and later still in 1874 by John Marius Wilson and John Bartholemew in 1887.
Census figures from 1801 suggest the population of the District Area of St Helens to be 12,500; by 1861 it was between 37,631 and 55,523 in the wider area with St Helens itself comprising a population of 20,176 in 3,577 households. The Ordnance Survey map of 1843 shows St Helens as the significant urban centre
The original Town Hall was constructed in 1839 and described by Wilson in 1874 as "in the Italian style, with a Corinthian portico; and contains a lock-up, a newsroom, and a large hall for courts, concerts, balls, and public meetings". It was not until 1852 that the Civil Parish of St Helens was instituted. The Mill Street Barracks were completed in 1861.
On 2 February 1868, Queen Victoria granted a Charter of Incorporation, defining St Helens officially as a Municipal Borough. The first election of Councillors took place on 9 May the same year, followed by the first Town Council meeting on 18 May. About 20 years later in 1887 St Helens became a County Borough, with two Members of Parliament.
In 1894, the Parish of St Helens was incorporated under the 1893 St Helens Corporation Act. This was achieved by the abolition of the Civil Parishes of Parr, Sutton and amalgamation of their townships. The Civil Parishes of Eccleston and Windle both ceded portions of their areas over to St Helens.
The modern Borough of St Helens includes areas historically not associated with the town. The 1974 creation of the Ceremonial County of Merseyside appended the former urban districts of Haydock, Newton-le-Willows and Rainford, and parts of Billinge-and-Winstanley and Ashton-in-Makerfield urban districts, along with part of Whiston Rural District, all from the administrative county of Lancashire. The urban sprawl of St Helens was already extended up to the boundary lines of places such as Haydock and Rainhill, where inhabitants may consider themselves either part of either both St Helens the 'Town' or 'Borough', or just the Borough.