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| Coat of Arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral |
THE WIRRAL PENINSULA.
1) The Wirral Peninsular covers an area of 60.35 square miles and is joined to mainland England at the north western tip of the county of Cheshire.The peninsula is actually completely surrounded by water officially making it an island, although it's southern border at Ellesmere Port is actually at the site of the man made Shropshire Union Canal.
2) Despite it's small size the peninsula boasts no less than 1,900 listed buildings, 215 churches, 50 towns and villages, 25 conservation areas, 9 scheduled ancient monument sites, 8 sites of special scientific interest, 10 lighthouses, 5 nature reserves, 4 windmills, 4 historic parks, 2 watermills, one castle and one fort.
3) The indiginous people of the Wirral Peninsula were the Celtic, Cornovii Tribe who lived in the modern day counties of Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Clywd.
The oldest known reference to the tribe was mentioned in an historical record written by Roman philosopher Ptolomy in the 2nd century A.D.
The name Cornovii means people of the horn. The word horn pertains to a horned, religious idol that the tribe worshipped.
The Cornovii made their living from salt and copper mining and from the building and running of hill forts, the most famous of which is the Wrekin in Shropshire.
Their tribal capital city was Wroxeter in the county of Shropshire, at one time the fourth largest Roman town in Britain.
The Roman built City of Chester, which is now the county town of Cheshire, was once part of the Cornovii tribal lands.
4) Historians have classified the Wirral Peninsula as the birthplace of England, after the Battle of Brunanburh - present day Bromborough - in 937 brought together the might of England's combined armed forces for the very first time in order to fight the armies of both Norway and Scotland.
5) In 1376 King Richard II designated the entire peninsula with Royal Park status.
6) The peninsula's Leasowe Lighthouse, built in 1763, is the oldest brick built lighthouse in the U.K. The lighhouse was also the first in the country to have a female lighhouse keeper, when Mrs Mary Elisabeth Williams began her service as keeper in 1908.
7) The Wirral's only recognised holiday resort, New Brighton, is home to the United Kingdom's longest promenade at 3.5 kilometres.
As well as having the country's longest promenade the Wirral seaside resort was also the site of other record breakers during it's heyday of the 19th century.
Classified as one of the most elegant seaside resort of the Regency period the town could boast the highest tower in Britain, the largest theatre stage in the world, the largest open air swimming pool in Europe, Britain's first amusements arcade and was the smallest town in the country to have a league football club.
8) Hilbre Island situated one mile off the Wirral coast at West Kirby covers an area of just 11.6 acres and is the United Kingdom's smallest, inhabited island.
9) The Wirral Country Park was Britain's first ever designated country park when it was opened in 1973.
10) The world's first, commercial hovercraft service began on the Wirral Peninsula during the Summer of 1962, when passengers were ferried from the Wirral seaside town of Moreton to Rhyl in North Wales on a Vickers VA - 3 hovercraft.
11) The Ministry of Defence's tidal activity research for the infamous D - Day landings of June 1944 were all taken at Bidston Observatory.
12) In 1947 the Mersey Ferries were the first boats in the world to be installed with fog radar navigation systems.
13) The charitable organisation, The Guide Dogs For The Blind Association, was formed 1934, three years after Britain's first four guide dogs completed their training by German Shepherd breeders Muriel Crooke and Rosamund Bond, whose business was based in Wallesey.
BIRKENHEAD.
1) The largest town on the Wirral peninsular is Birkenhead, a town which grew up around the Benedictine, Birkenhead Priory built in 1150.
The town's industries first centred around the priory and the River Mersey and since then has been home to an established pottery industry - the Della Robbia pottery - and large areas of docklands and shipbuilding industries.
2) It is unclear as to where the town get's its name from, one theory is that it comes from the peninsula's longest river, the River Birket, which flows from the town of West Kirby and makes it's way eastwards towards the town of Birkenhead, where it drains into the river Mersey at the site of the West Float Docks.
Another theory is that the name comes from the town's Benedictine Priory which was known as Birchen Priory.Birchen means birch forest, which that area of the peninsula was covered by during those days.
3) The town we know today is in part the brainchild of Scots shipbuilder and local entrepreneur John Laird who became both Birkenhead's first mayor and the town's first member of parliament.
Laird was elemental in the building of dockside cottages, the town's St James' church, the Borough Hospital and the Laird School of Art.
As the first mayor of the town Laird was instrumental in improving policing in the town and for implementing the town's market place - originally held in Market Street near Hamilton Square - street cleaning and street lighting. He was also instrumental in creating several public areas for recreation and the arts.
Laird was owner of the largest ship yard in the area and contributed to the income, welfare and health of 80% of the town's inhabitants.
Laird became Birkenhead's first member of parliament in 1861 and remained the local Conservative member until his death in 1874.
Laird,his wife Elisabeth and their three sons William, John and Henry all lived at 63 Hamilton Square.
Laird died after a riding accident on October 29th 1874 and is buried in the grounds of Birkenhead Priory.
A statue erected in Laird's honour was unveiled in the town on the 30th of October 1877 with the unveiling ceremony witnessed by over two thousand of the town's inhabitants.
John Laird is remembered today by way of Birkenhead's Laird Street, Laird Close, Lairdside Technical Park,the Laird Memorial Statue that now stands on Hamilton Square and Liverpool's Laird Place.
4) Birkenhead's Hamilton Square contains the second largest number of listed buildings in the country after Trafalgar Square in London.
5) The town's Birkenhead Park was designed by Joseph Paxton and was the world's first publicly funded municipal park when it was opened on the 5th of April 1847. The idea of publicly donating money for the creation of parks and gardens became the forerunner of the National Parks Movement of Britain.
Today the park is a grade I listed landscape which houses many attractions including the country's only covered, wooden bridge, the 23 foot long Swiss Bridge built in 1847.
The park is also the home of the Wirral Academy of Art.
Paxton's park went on to be the inspiration for the creation of neighbouring Sefton Park in the city of Liverpool and Central Park in New York City, U.S.A.
6) Birkenhead was the site of the country's first ever cross river ferry service, after monks at Birkenhead Priory were granted ferry rights by King Edward III in 1318. This charter made the route taken by the Mersey Ferry classified as a Royal Highway.
7) Birkenhead became the first town in Europe to run a public tram service when the town's public tramway system opened on the 29th of August 1860.
8) Birkenhead was the home of the first two Boy Scout Groups in the world after Lord Baden - Powell held the inaugural meeting of the Boy Scout Movement at the Grange Road YMCA in Birkenhead on the 24th of January 1908.
WIRRAL SPORTING ACHIEVEMENTS.
1 ) The Wirral's league football team is Tranmere Rovers who play their home matches at Prenton Park, Tranmere.
The team was formed in 1884 and have used the Prenton Park ground since 1912.
The team hold an all time football league record for the most goals scored in one match, after a game played on the 26th of December 1935 when Tranmere Rovers beat Oldham Athletic 13 goals to 4 - nine of which were scored by centre forward Robert 'Bunny' Ball - giving the aggregate score of 17 goals the most goals scored in any football match, a record that still stands to this day. The football ground's address is -
Tranmere Rovers Football Club.
Prenton Park, Tranmere. CH42 9PY. Tel - 0151 221 2001.
2) The World Windsurfing speed record was set on the Wirral Peninsula, when windsurfer Dave White attained a speed of 42.16 knots at West Kirby Marine Lake in October 1991.
3) Guinea Gap swimming baths situated in Wallasey has been the site of more swimming records than any other swimming pool in the world.
This amazing feat is due to one man, local born, Olympic bronze medalist, Neil McKechnie who attained no less than thirty English and British swimming records at this Wirral swimming pool during the 1950's and who, by 1958, held every English freestyle swimming record from one hundred metres to one mile during his time as a member of the Wallasey Swimming Club.
His prowess in the water has been attributed to the baths being filled with water from the River Mersey.
4) West Kirby situated on the Wirral's Irish Sea coast is home to the prestigious Wilson Cup, the world's biggest team yacht racing event.
WIRRAL'S OLDEST BUILDINGS.
1) The majority of the Wirral Peninsula's oldest buildings are made from the area's local, red, sandstone and are most prominent in the area's smaller villages such as Caldy, Saughall Massey, Brimstage and Raby.
2) Several of the area's 215 churches have their roots in medieval times with St Hilary's Church in Wallasey and St Bridget's Church in West Kirby both vying for oldest church in the area, both of which have their origins in the 11th century.
3) The peninsula's oldest pub is reputedly that of the Wheatsheaf Pub in Raby, which dates back to 1611.
4) The peninsula's oldest house is a large, two storey, stone built house situated on Limekiln Road, Wallasey which dates back to around 1627.
5) Although the oldest building on the peninsula is Birkenhead Priory, built in 1150, Birkenhead is not the oldest town, that honour goes to Wallasey which was already an established settlement when mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086.
However, some have suggested that the village of Eastham is the oldest permanently inhabited area of the peninsula owing to the site of an aged yew tree that stands in the grounds of the village's St Mary's church, which is reported to be around 1,500 years old.
But the peninsula's record breaker has to be Greasby,where archaeologists have been able to define evidence of human habitation dating back to 7000 BC, when the peninsula was inhabited by it's native people the Cornovii Tribe.
6) The United Kingdom's oldest brick built lighthouse is situated on the Wirral Peninsula, at Leasowe shore. It was built in 1763 by the Liverpool Corporation Docks.
7) The area's oldest railway line was a branch line of the Birkenhead to Chester line, from West Kirby to Hooton, opened in September 1838. Although the line is now defunct, the line lives on in the form of the twelve mile long Wirral Way nature trail.
8) The area's oldest farmhouse is Old Hall Farm situated in Chapel Lane, Moreton believed to have been built in 1719 for a Daniel and Mary Wilson.
9) Brimstage Hall situated in the picturesque village of the same name was apparantly built between the 12th and 14 th century, making it one of the peninsula's oldest buildings and certainly the oldest manorial residence in the area.
