St. Helens
St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England. It is the largest settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens with a population of just over 100,000, part of an urban area with a total population of 176,843. The Town was officially incorporated as a Municipal Borough in 1868 responsible for the administration of the 4 townships Ecclestone, Parr, Sutton and Windle, with the larger responsibility as a County Borough established in 1887 (superseded in 1974 by the larger Metropolitan Borough).
Today, St Helens is very much a commercial town. The main industries have since left, become outdated, or have been outsourced leaving the float and patterned rolled glass producer Pilkingtons, a world leader in their industry, as the town's one remaining large industrial employer. Previously the town had been home to Beechams (now part of GlaxoSmithKline), the Gamble family of the Alkali Works, Ravenhead glass (bought out by the Belgian nationalised Durobor), United Glass Bottles (U.G.B.), Triplex (owned by Pilkington, farmed out to India), Daglish Foundry (closed and demolished 1939),and Greenall's (now located in nearby Warrington).
The town retains strong cultural ties to the Coal Industry and has several monuments including the wrought iron gates of Sutton Manor Colliery,as well as the 1995 town centre installation by Thompson Dagnall known as "The Landings" (depicting individuals working a coal seam) and Arthur Fleischmann's Anderton Shearer monument (a piece of machinery first used at the Ravenhead Mine).
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 is 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 originally existed on Chapel Lane, around the approximate site of the modern pedestrianised Church Street. Historically this would have fallen within the berewick of Hardshaw, within greater Township of Windle (making up the southern border) abutting onto the open farmland of Parr to the East, and Sutton and Eccleston to the South and West respectively.
St. Helens remained a small village until the Industrial Revolution radically altered its nature.Coal was first documented as being mined in Sutton in the sixteenth century though there is a possibility that pits had been dug in the area many years previously.
During the seventeenth century the plentiful supplies of coal were transported by pack-horse to provide fuel for the refining processes of the Cheshire rock salt industry and also other trades in Liverpool.The success of the local coal industry was ensured by the extension of the Liverpool to Prescot turnpike road to St. Helens in 1746 and the opening of Britain’s first true canal, the Sankey Navigation in 1762.From that date the town became an ideal location for heavy industry, having excellent supplies of fuel in the form of coal and a good transport system in terms of road and canal.Thus St. Helens became associated with the famous names of Pilkington Bros., the Patent Alkali Co; Daglish’s Foundry; Cannington Shaw & Co and many others.
The twentieth century brought many changes especially with the loss of most of the town’s heavy industry and the closure of all the coal mines. Local government boundaries were also radically changed in 1974 when the old borough was enlarged and became St. Helens Metropolitan Borough.
