Ellesmere Port
Coordinates: 53 ° 17 ′ N , 2 ° 54 ′ W
Ellesmere Port is an industrial city in the English Cheshire . Ellesmere Port is located near Liverpool in the south of the Wirral Peninsula on the south bank of the mouth of the River Mersey . The nucleus of the city is the former village of Netherpool . The city belongs to the Unitary Authority Cheshire West and Chester . The population is 64,100 (as of 2001).
history
The name Ellesmere Port did not come about until the early 19th century. He is therefore not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. This is in contrast to some of today's suburbs, whose names go back to old settlements.
In 1795 the first section of the Ellesmere Canal , constructed by William Jessop and Thomas Telford , was opened. This connected to the Mersey in the village of Netherpool and led via Ellesmere to the River Dee near Chester . As the name suggests, today's town was created as a port for Ellesmere , Shropshire, further inland . Because after the opening of the canal, the name Netherpool was gradually replaced by Port of Ellesmere ("Port of Ellesmere"), and in the early 19th century it became Ellesmere Port .
The canal was originally intended to be extended further south to the Severn , but was never completed; today it belongs to the Shropshire Union Canal, which extends to Wolverhampton. The boat museum, built in 1976 and recently called the “National Waterway Museum”, recalls the history of canal construction in the region.
military
The Royal Air Force Station Hooton Park , RAF Hooton Park for short , was an airfield last used as a military airfield by the Royal Air Force (RAF) northeast of Ellesmore Ports near the Manchester Ship Canal .
It was built during the First World War in 1917 as a training airport for the Royal Flying Corps and served in the early and mid-1930s as one of two commercial airports in the Merseyside region alongside Liverpool-Speke (now John Lennon Airport) . The airfield became the base of interceptors of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force (RAuxAF) in 1935 . During the Second World War , an aircraft assembly and maintenance unit was located here, and in 1941 a 1,800 m long concrete runway was built. After the war ended, the station was again used by RAuxAF squadrons. As a result of the dissolution of RAuxAF, Hooton Park airfield was closed in 1957.
The Vauxhall company acquired most of the site in 1960 and built a car factory here. In the northern area, however, there are still remains of the airfield. This includes parts of the flight operations areas and three hangars from the time of the First World War.
economy
Several large companies have set up shop in Ellesmere Port. Particularly noteworthy are the Essar Energy refinery in Stanlow , a plant of the chemical company ICI and a plant of the car manufacturer Vauxhall , which produces the Astra here and employs around 1,600 people.
The German company Progroup , one of the largest corrugated cardboard manufacturers in Europe, has been operating a location in Ellesmere Port with two corrugated cardboard plants since 2009 . The newer plant, which was inaugurated in 2019, has an annual production capacity of 235,000 tons of corrugated board.
leisure
Important leisure facilities include: the “National Museum for Waterways” with daily boat trips on the Shropshire Union Canal, the “Blue Planet” aquarium, which opened in 1995 and “Cheshire Oaks”, the largest English designer outlet center with 145 shops on over 25,000 m² “With the adjoining leisure center“ Coliseum ”and a flea market in the central shopping center.
traffic
Ellesmere Port can be reached from the M53 and M56 motorways. A branch of the Wirral Line of the S-Bahn-like Merseyrail system connects the city with Birkenhead and Liverpool every half hour . Helsby on the main Chester-Manchester line can also be reached from the station with four daily connections.
Local bus routes lead u. a. to Chester , Liverpool and North Wales County Flintshire . In addition to the Shropshire Union Canal, the city is also connected to the Manchester Ship Canal. In the district of Hooton there was an airport from 1917 to 1957/1962, which was also used for military purposes.
Personalities
The writer Lillian Beckwith (1916-2004) comes from Ellesmere Port , as well as the soccer players Joe Mercer (1914-1990), after whom a street in the city is named, Stan Cullis (1916-2001) and Ralph Gubbins (1932-2011) ).
The singer Lee Latchford-Evans (* 1975) lives in the city . British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott attended Ellesmere Port's Grange Secondary Modern School but was not originally from the city.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Stanlow | Essar Oil Uk. Retrieved January 6, 2018 .
- ↑ Information on the Opel website , accessed on February 15, 2017