Ellesmere Port
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Template:GBdot Ellesmere Port is an industrial town in the district of Ellesmere Port and Neston, Cheshire, England, situated in the south of the Wirral Peninsula on the estuary of the River Mersey, to the north of Chester. The town has a population of 64,100.
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Description
The town is primarily industrial, being dominated by a Shell oil refinery at Stanlow and a former ICI chemical works. The town is also home to the Vauxhall Motors car factory, noted for producing the Astra range of cars in the UK. There are a number of tourist attractions: the Boat Museum, the "Blue Planet" aquarium, the McArthur Glen Cheshire Oaks outlet village, and a flea market.
History
Not mentioned in the Domesday Book, Ellesmere Port used to be part of the parish of Eastham.
The town was founded, as the name suggests, as an outlet to the sea from Ellesmere, Shropshire and the Wales border area around Llangollen (via a canal then called the Ellesmere Canal). The canal was engineered by William Jessop and Thomas Telford as part of a project to connect the rivers Severn, Mersey and Dee. The section between what was then called Whitby Locks, and Chester, was opened in 1795, but the connection to the Severn was never completed. The canal is now part of the Shropshire Union Canal. The Boat Museum, now part of the National Waterways Museum was founded around some of the surviving historic port buildings and basins; it opened in 1976.
Transport
Ellesmere Port has a railway station with frequent electric trains to Liverpool and occasional trains to Helsby. It is also located at the interchange of the M56 and the M53.
The Manchester Ship Canal joins the Mersey estuary north-west of Ellesmere Port at Eastham, but the town is also the northern terminus of the Shropshire Union Canal (which used to exchange goods with sea-going boats at what is now the boat museum).
Local government
Ellesmere Port was nearly included into the Merseyside borough of Wirral when that was formed in 1974. It was removed from the proposals before the Local Government Act 1972 had its first reading, and instead remained in Cheshire as part of the borough of Ellesmere Port and Neston.
Famous people from Ellesmere Port
Famous people from the town include the British deputy prime minister John Prescott, the footballers Joe Mercer (who has a street named after him) and Stan Cullis, and the singer Lee Latchford Evans.
See also
External links
- Ellesmere Port Standard (local newspaper)
- The Boat Museum
- The Blue Planet Aquarium