Secret St Helens

By Sue Gerrard

In 2018, St Helens celebrated its 150th anniversary as a town. In this book, Sue Gerrard traces the fascinating and hidden heritage of this Lancashire town, which began life as four townships and became a municipal borough in 1868.During the Industrial Revolution, St Helens developed extensively with the coal mining and glassmaking in the area. It was the birthplace of the world’s first passenger railway and the world’s first navigable canal. Indeed, there is a place where these two ‘firsts’ cross each other. Industrial giants such as Pilkington Glass and Beecham’s Pills also started life here.The town was also home to three-time Oscar winner George Groves (film sound engineer), the actor and Oscar-winning screenwriter Colin Welland (Chariots of Fire) as well as the chart-topping Rick Astley. Hollywood actors Herbert Mundin and Gary Stretch were also born here. Although Saints Rugby League lead the way with sport, champion motorcyclist Geoff Duke lived here, and there are many more sporting personalities from the town.As well as people, places and events, Secret St Helens will also explore historical buildings, such as the fifteenth-century Windleshaw Chantry, and the town’s role in the modern world, including its influence on the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amberley Publishing
• Release date: Nov 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781445689753

Book preview

Introduction

St Helens did not exist as a town until the mid-nineteenth century. It was a series of small settlements. These included Eccleston, owned by the Ecclestone family, whose ancestral home dates to 1100; Parr (Parre), a manor owned by the Parr family (Henry VIII’s last wife, Catherine Parr, was a distant descendant); Windle (Windhull), which was controlled by the Windle family until it passed to the Gerards of Bryn and Sutton – the origin of this name is unknown, but some say it could mean ‘south town’. Several families owned land here, such as the Eltonhead, Ravenhead and Sherdley families. The centre for these four townships became the small chapel of St Elyn, Church Street, from which the town takes its name.

Areas of today’s borough appear in historical documents. Newton appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 and gave its name to the local Newton hundred. Local village references are Haydock in 1169, Eccleston in 1190, Rainford in 1198, Billinge in 1202 and Rainhill in 1246.

Coal was a reason why St Helens became a thriving industrial town, and in 1868 a borough. Mining dates back to the 1540s when the four townships were pursuing coal mining. St Helens was well placed on the south Lancashire coalfield, and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries coal was supplied by packhorse to the growing port of Liverpool. This gave St Helens a pivotal role in the Industrial Revolution and transport development.

In 1746, the Liverpool to Prescot turnpike road was extended to St Helens and assured the coal industry’s success. As industry grew so did the means of transport, and the world’s first navigable canal – the St Helens Canal – was cut between 1755 and 1757. In 1829 George Stephenson’s Rocket won the Rainhill Trials, and the world’s first passenger railway, the Liverpool to Manchester, opened in 1830.

In 1782, John Wesley described St Helens in his journal as a ‘small but populous town’. Industry, however, flocked to St Helens, including glassmaking, copper, iron and lead founding and alkali manufacturing. This growth led to an influx of workers and whole areas became known as ‘little Irelands’ because of the number of Irish people living there. These included Greenbank, Smithy Brow and Gerard’s Bridge. In the 1841 census there were 1,000 Irish people in the town, with 600 living in Greenbank. Workers at Ravenhead Copper Works came from Wales and housed in cottages between Watson Street and the canal. This became known as ‘Welsh Row’.

As the population grew so did social problems such as health, housing and education. In 1845, John Blundell, a local surgeon, estimated ‘fifty cases of typhus per year, per thousand and six or seven people have fallen into the canal and died’. The population of the whole township was 11,800 in 1845. By 1870 the population was 45,000 and St Helens was a thriving and prosperous town – formerly a village of little importance, now the seat of various branches of industry. However, by 1879 there was said to be ‘2290 individuals who were dependent for food upon the Distress Relief Fund.’

The population explosion made St Helens crowded, dirty and unhealthy; there were issues with water supply, housing and sanitation. This led to Queen Victoria granting a charter of incorporation in 1868 and the town became a municipal borough. In 1885, the town returned its first MP, H. Seton-Karr, and in 1889 it became a county borough.

In the 1974 local government reorganisation St Helens incorporated the previous urban district councils of Newton-le-Willows and Earlestown, Haydock, Rainford, Rainhill and parts of Billinge. The town then became St Helens metropolitan borough in Merseyside.

A Chronology of the St Helens Area