Wirral Peninsula
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  Map sources for Wirral Peninsula at grid reference SJ285850
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Wirral or The Wirral (IPA: [wɪɹəɫ]) is a peninsula in North West England bounded by the River Dee to the west and the River Mersey to the east. (Both terms "Wirral" and "the Wirral" are used locally, although the merits of each form are the subject of local debate.)
The roughly rectangular peninsula is about ten miles long and seven miles wide. The northern part constitutes the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, and the southern part the borough of Ellesmere Port and Neston in Cheshire. The peninsula used to be entirely in Cheshire as a hundred - a "hundred" being a geographic term used in England, Scandinavia, South Australia and some parts of the USA to divide a larger region into a smaller administrative unit.
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[edit] History
Wirral was once an independent Viking mini-state with its parliament at Thingwall. Ancient Irish annals record the population of Wirral by Norsemen led by Ingimund expelled from Ireland and getting agreement from Aethelflaed or "Ethelfleda", Queen of the Mercian English to settle there peacefully. This can still be seen from place name evidence - such as the common '-by' (meaning 'town' in Danish) suffixes and names such as Tranmere, which comes from trani melr ("cranebird sandbank"). Similarly, archaeological finds (such as two hogback tombstones) corroborate this.
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.
The 1820s saw the birth of the renowned shipbuilding tradition when John Laird opened his Cammell Laird yard in Birkenhead.
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 tunnel under the River Mersey for the Mersey Railway led to increased development after 1886. The first tunnel was supplemented by a vehicle tunnel in 1934 (Queensway) and a third in 1971 (Kingsway).
In 1929, the 3rd World Scout Jamboree was held at Arrowe Park and this celebrated the 21st Anniversary of the publication of Scouting for Boys. Thirty-five countries were represented by 30,000 Scouts, plus another 10,000 British Scouts who took the opportunity to camp in the vicinity. This was certainly the greatest assembly of international youth the world had ever seen up to that time.[citation needed] Two things stand out from the Arrowe Park Jamboree - the numbers and the mud! During the occasion, it rained so much that the clay soil could not absorb the water and the site soon resembled a sea of mud!
Wirral's dockland areas of Wallasey and Birkenhead continued to develop and prosper. A host of other port-related industries then came into existence, such as flour milling, tanning, edible oil refining and the manufacture of paint and rubber-based products. A large chemical and oil refining complex is still in Ellesmere Port.
Another important development was the building, in 1888, of the now famous industrial village of Port Sunlight. This was 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.
[edit] Geography
Wirral can be defined as both a geographical peninsula and socio-cultural area. . The current Metropolitan Borough of Wirral has a population of 312,293 people (according to the 2001 census) [1], and covers an area of 60.35 square miles, bounded by the Cheshire Plain, the River Dee and the River Mersey. The Irish Sea lies to its north west side. [2]. The Shropshire Union Canal joins the River Mersey at Ellesmere Port & the River Dee at Chester. This makes the geographical peninsula, as a technicality, an island. However, it has been noted that 'it is difficult to find any work in which there is a written description of the exact area defining The Wirral Peninsula.' [3]The major urban centres of Wirral are to its east; these include Birkenhead and Wallasey. To the west and south, Wirral is more rural. Two thirds of the population of Wirral live on one third of the land - in Birkenhead and Wallasey, according to Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council.
Other towns to the south and west of this area are often considered part of Wirral; notably, Ellesmere Port is often described as one of its 'border towns'. [4]
[edit] Places on Wirral
Primarily: Category:Towns and villages in Wirral
Other towns and villages in Wirral include:
- Burton (not part of Wirral Borough)
- Capenhurst (not part of Wirral Borough)
- Childer Thornton
- Clatterbridge
- Ellesmere Port (not part of Wirral Borough)
- Gayton
- Grange
- Great Sutton
- Hoose (historical Hoylake)
- Hooton
- Ledsham
- Lower Heswall
- Neston (not part of Wirral Borough)
- Ness (disambiguation) (not part of Wirral Borough)
- Overpool
- Parkgate (not part of Wirral Borough)
- Poulton Lancelyn
- Puddington
- Raby
- Shotwick (not part of Wirral Borough)
- Storeton
- Two Mills
- Woodhey
- Bebington
[edit] Sights
Despite containing urban and industrial areas, Wirral still has picturesque villages, sandy beaches, large areas of land owned by the National Trust as well as views across the two estuaries and out into the Irish Sea. Many villages of Wirral are well preserved with their characteristic red sandstone buildings and walls. Sights or places of interest include:
- Bidston Hill
- Caldy Hill
- Hilbre Island
- Leasowe Lighthouse
- Thurstaston Common and Thor's Stone
- "The Thing" - site of Wirral's Viking parliament
- Mersey Ferry
- Ness Gardens
- Port Sunlight
- Lady Lever Art Gallery
- Victorian Pleasure Gardens at Eastham Country Park
- Williamson Art Gallery
[edit] Accents & dialects
The peninsula has a range of accents, though the proximity of the accents of Liverpool and Cheshire means that many people's are between the two. In Birkenhead Wallasey and Moreton the influence of Liverpool is particularly strong, though the residents are sometimes disparagingly called Plastic Scousers. Accents in the South and West Wirral areas are not as strong, however. Neston once had a distinctive dialect derived from the migrant workers at the Denhall Colliery but this is now all but extinct.[1]
[edit] Wirral in literature
- Sir Gawain spent Christmas on Wirral before his confrontation with the Green Knight.
- The wilderness of Wirral:
- few lived there
- Who loved with a good heart
- either God or man
- Wilfred Owen, one of the greatest poets of the First World War, grew up in Tranmere.
- Olaf Stapledon, a writer, spent much of his life in West Kirby and Caldy, and many landscapes mentioned in his works can be identified.
- Roger Lancelyn Green, the children's writer, lived at Poulton Hall in Poulton Lancelyn, Bebington.
[edit] Famous people
- Chris Boardman (cyclist)
- Ian Botham (cricketer)
- Adrian Boult (conductor)
- Pete Burns (singer/songwriter)
- Daniel Craig (actor) (Spent his teenage years on the Wirral)
- Matt Dawson (rugby player and TV personality)
- Dixie Dean (footballer)
- Lottie Dod (Wimbledon tennis champion, "most versatile female athlete of all time")
- Wilfred Grenfell ("Grenfell of Labrador")
- Emma Hamilton (mistress of Horatio Nelson)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (American writer; lived in Rock Ferry as US Consul)
- Austin Healey (rugby player)
- Paul Heaton (singer and song writer for the Beautiful South)
- Stephen Hough (pianist)
- Shirley Hughes (children's author and illustrator)
- Paul Humphreys (musician)
- Rita Hunter (Wagnerian soprano)
- Andrew Irvine (Everest climber)
- Glenda Jackson (actress and politician)
- Phil Liggett (cycling commentator)
- Andy McCluskey (musician)
- David Nugent (England footballer)
- Paul O'Grady (comedian and TV personality)
- John Peel (disc jockey and radio presenter)
- Patricia Routledge (actress)
- Ted Robbins (comedian)
- Alan Rouse (famous climber)
- Cyril Scott (composer)
- FE Smith (Lord Chancellor)
- Philip Wilson Steer (impressionist painter)
- Ray Stubbs (sports commentator)
- Philip Toosey (hero of the Bridge on the River Kwai)
- Harold Wilson (Prime Minister - Head Boy of Wirral Grammar School)
- Marty Willson-Piper (guitarist for The Church)
[edit] Popular Music
[edit] Television and Film
- The 1980s sitcom Watching was set and partly filmed at various locations on the Wirral.
- The Lime Pictures production Hollyoaks films occasionally, on location, on the Wirral.
- The film Chariots of Fire was filmed at various locations on the Wirral including the Oval Sports Centre, Bebington and the Woodside Ferry Terminal.
- Although ostensibly set in Liverpool, the film The 51st State was partially filmed around the docks, in Birkenhead, on the Wirral.
[edit] Transport
The M53 motorway runs along the length of Wirral, from near Chester. At the north eastern end, Wirral is joined to Liverpool by three tunnels under the River Mersey: two road tunnels Mersey Tunnels, one from Wallasey (Kingsway) and one from Birkenhead (Queensway) and the Mersey Railway tunnel. The Wirral Line of Merseyrail links many parts of Wirral to Lime Street station in Liverpool and many other suburbs. The Mersey Ferry also regularly crosses to Liverpool. The nearest airports are Liverpool John Lennon Airport and Manchester Airport.
[edit] Sport
- The Open Championship at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake took place in 2006.
- Tranmere Rovers football club are Wirral's principal football club and play at Prenton Park, Birkenhead.
- Hoylake, in north west Wirral is one of the premier European Land Sailing or Sand Yachting sites, and is host to the week-long European Championships in September 2007.[2]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Notes
- ^ Greg Dawson - Wyrale (1996), ISBN-10: 0952259826
- ^ Wirral Sand Yacht Club
