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Wirral Peninsula

The Wirral, is a peninsula in North West England. The roughly rectangular peninsula is about 15 miles (24 km) long and 7 miles (11 km) wide and is bounded by the River Dee to the west that forms a boundary with Wales, the River Mersey to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north.

The main urban development is on the eastern side of the peninsula. Wirral contains both affluent and deprived areas, with affluent areas largely in the west, south and north of the peninsula, and deprived areas concentrated in the east, especially within Birkenhead.


~The Romans and Britons
Around 70 AD, the Romans founded Chester. Evidence of their occupation on Wirral has been found.

~English and Norse
The Anglo-Saxons under Æthelfrith, king of Northumbria, laid waste to Chester around 616. Æthelfrith withdrew, leaving the area west and south of the Mersey to become part of Mercia, and Anglo-Saxon settlers took over Wirral except the northern tip.

~The Normans and the early Middle Ages
After invading England in 1066 and subduing Northumbria in 1069/1070, William the Conqueror invaded and ravaged Chester and its surrounding area, laying waste to much of Wirral

~The 16th, 17th and 18th centuries
The first wet dock in Britain was opened in Liverpool in 1715, and the town's population grew from some 6,000 to 80,000 during the 18th century. The need to develop and protect the port led to a chain of lighthouses being built along the north Wirral coast.

~The 19th century
The 1820s saw the birth of the area's renowned shipbuilding tradition when William Laird opened his shipyard in Birkenhead, later expanded by his son John Laird. The Lairds were largely responsible for the early growth of Birkenhead, commissioning the architect James Gillespie Graham to lay it out as a new town modelled on Edinburgh.

~The 20th century
The dockland areas of Wallasey and Birkenhead continued to develop and prosper in the first half of the century, specialising in trade with Africa and the Far East. 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. In 1922 a new oil dock was built at Stanlow near Ellesmere Port, and in 1934 oil refining began there. A large chemical and oil refining complex still dominates the area.

(Wallasey, Bidston, Upton, Woodchurch, West Kirby, Thurstaston, Heswall, Bebington, Bromborough, Eastham, Neston, Burton, Shotwick, Backford and Stoke)


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