title: Red Star F.C.

text: Red Star Football Club, also known simply as Red Star (), is a French association football club founded in Paris in 1897, and is the fourth oldest French football club, after Standard AC of Paris, Le Havre AC and Girondins de Bordeaux. In the 2019–20 season the club plays in the Championnat National, the French third tier, after being relegated from Ligue 2 at the end of the 2018–19 season. It plays matches at Stade Bauer. The team is managed by Habib Beye.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: Despite the club's long spell under a semi-pro status, Red Star has a rich history. The club was founded in 1897 under the name "Red Star Club Français" by French football legend Jules Rimet. Rimet later went on to serve as president of both the French Football Federation and FIFA. The original FIFA World Cup Trophy was named in his honour. Red Star was one of the founding member clubs of Ligue 1 and has spent 19 seasons in the first division; the club's last top tier stint being in 1974–75. In cup competitions, the club has won five Coupe de France titles, which is tied for fifth-best among all French clubs.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: While the club have enjoyed only modest success on the field, the club is widely recognised for its distinctive social culture. Red Star supporters are strongly identified with their support of left-wing politics, social activism and a party atmosphere they create at the club's matches.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: The club was purchased by US-based private investment firm 777 Partners in May 2022, a move which saw demonstrations from fans leading to the postponement of a Championnat National match in April 2022.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: Red Star Football Club was founded on 21 February 1897 in a Parisian café by Jules Rimet and Ernest Weber under the name "Red Star Club Français". The derivation of the name is uncertain; it is possibly taken from the red star of Buffalo Bill or possibly in reference to Miss Jenny, a British governess based in Paris who was adopted as the godmother of the club, who recommended the club be named after the historic shipping line, the Red Star Line. Upon its creation, Rimet installed Jean de Piessac as club president and one of his younger brothers as club secretary. The club was officially inaugurated on 12 March 1897 after Rimet signed the club's statutes and sent them to the USFSA, which, during this time, served as the head of French football. Members of the club were required to pay ₣100 a month to help the club meet its daily quota. Red Star officially joined the USFSA in 1898 and was inserted into the third-tier of the association's football league system. In the club's infancy, the team played in navy blue and white at the Champ de Mars. However, soon after, Red Star moved to Meudon playing on a terrace overlooking the Seine Valley. Midway through the year, de Piessac left his post as club president. Rimet quickly succeeded him and, by 1904, Red Star were playing in the first division of the USFSA league.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: In 1907, Red Star changed its name to "Red Star Amical Club" after merging with Amical Football Club. Due to the merger, the club departed Meudon and moved to Grenelle. After three years in Grenelle, the club moved to Saint-Ouen in Seine-Saint-Denis to play in the newly built Stade de Paris. On 25 October 1909, the stadium was inaugurated following a match between Red Star and English club Old Westminsters. The stadium was later renamed to its present name today. With the USFSA becoming disorganised in the early 1900s, Red Star joined the newly created Ligue de Football Association (LFA) in 1910. In 1912, the club earned its first honour after winning the association's "Ligue Nationale". In the same year, the club also finished runner-up to Étoile des Deux Lacs in the Trophée de France.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: In 1919, the French Football Federation was created and months later, the Coupe de France. From 1920–34, Red Star embarked on a remarkable uprising in which the club won four Coupe de France titles, achieved professional status, and were founding members of the French Division 1. The club's first Coupe de France victory came in 1921, when the club, led by French internationals Pierre Chayriguès, Paul Nicolas, Juste Brouzes, Lucien Gamblin and Maurice Meyer, defeated Olympique de Paris 2–1, courtesy of goals from Marcel Naudin and Robert Clavel. In the ensuing two seasons, Red Star won back-to-back Coupe de France titles. In 1922, the club defeated Stade Rennais UC 2–0 and, in 1923, Red Star beat Cette 4–2 to complete the hat trick. In 1926, Red Star completed a second merger, this time with its local rivals Olympique de Paris whom it had defeated just five years ago in a Coupe de France final. Due to the merger, Red Star changed its name to "Red Star Olympique" and dropped its navy blue and white combination for a simple white blouse. In 1928, Red Star won its fourth Coupe de France title of the decade defeating CA Paris 3–1 at the Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir in Colombes.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: In July 1930, the National Council of the French Football Federation voted 128–20 in support of professionalism in French football. Red Star were among the first clubs to adopt the new statute and, subsequently, became professional and were founding members of the new league. In the league's inaugural season, Red Star were relegated after finishing in the bottom three of its group. As a result, the club played the following season in the inaugural season of the Division 2. Red Star won the league and returned to the first division for the 1934–35 season. Following the club's return to Division 1, Red Star switched its colours from white to the green and white that exists today. In 1967, they merged with Toulouse FC (not the current club) out of the latter club's financial reasons and bought Toulouse's place in the top division. The merged club last played in first division in the 1974–75 season.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: After a long spell in the lower leagues, following a successful 2014–15 campaign, the team won promotion to Ligue 2, the second tier of French football.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: In their first season back in Ligue 2, Red Star finished 5th on the table missing promotion to Ligue 1 by a single point. In the 2016–17 Ligue 2 season, Red Star finished 19th and were relegated back to the third division of French football.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: Due to safety regulation issues with Stade Bauer, Red Star has been forced to play at different stadiums the past few seasons when in Ligue 2. They have employed Stade Jean-Bouin in the past and then used Stade Pierre Brisson located in Beauvais. Since returning to the third tier in 2019, the club has returned to playing home matches at Stade Bauer.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: In 2018, Red Star were promoted back to Ligue 2 as champions of the Championnat National. They were relegated again the following season, finishing bottom of Ligue 2. Their relegation was confirmed on 27 April 2019 after losing 2–1 to champions FC Metz.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: The club has relatively modest but loyal support, mostly centered around Saint-Ouen and the northern suburbs of Paris. Overtly antifascists, most of the fans are left-wing, and the club identifies itself as a banlieue working-class club. Attendances usually oscillate between 1,000 and 2,000 spectators per match.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: The club has several ultras groups; "Red Star Fans", ""Gang Green"", ""Perry Boys"" and the smaller ""Splif Brothers"".


title: Red Star F.C.

text: Red Star have rivalries with fellow Parisian derby rivals; with US Créteil and a fierce rivalry with Paris FC.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: Red Star unearthed several talented players during its early existence, most notably Paul Nicolas, who spent nine years at the club, Nicolas later became a catalyst towards the development of professional football in France and was partly responsible for the creation of the Ligue de Football Professionnel. Football manager Roger Lemerre started his managerial career with the club before leading France to titles at UEFA Euro 2000 and the 2001 FIFA Confederations Cup.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: Red Star's youth academy was once very productive. The likes of Alex Song, Moussa Sissoko and Abou Diaby, all renowned players in English football, came through the club's youth system. As a matter of fact, no less than five players at the 2014 World Cup had played in the club's youth teams. Nevertheless, during the years spent in lower amateur divisions, the loss of professional status led to the dismantling of the youth academy setup, and although a project to rebuild it has been in the air for a few years, it has yet to be done despite the club's return to professional football.


title: Red Star F.C.

text: Below are the notable former players who have represented Red Star in league and international competition since the club's foundation in 1897. To appear in the section below, a player must have played in at least 100 official matches for the club or have played for his country's team.


title: Sphingidae

text: The Sphingidae are a family of moths (Lepidoptera) called sphinx moths, also colloquially known as hawk moths, with many of their caterpillars known as “hornworms”; it includes about 1,450 species. It is best represented in the tropics, but species are found in every region. They are moderate to large in size and are distinguished among moths for their agile and sustained flying ability, similar enough to that of hummingbirds as to be reliably mistaken for them. Their narrow wings and streamlined abdomens are adaptations for rapid flight. The family was named by French zoologist Pierre André Latreille in 1802.


title: Sphingidae

text: Some hawk moths, such as the hummingbird hawk-moth or the white-lined sphinx, hover in midair while they feed on nectar from flowers, so are sometimes mistaken for hummingbirds. This hovering capability is only known to have evolved four times in nectar feeders: in hummingbirds, certain bats, hoverflies, and these sphingids (an example of convergent evolution). Sphingids have been much studied for their flying ability, especially their ability to move rapidly from side to side while hovering, called "swing-hovering" or "side-slipping". This is thought to have evolved to deal with ambush predators that lie in wait in flowers.


title: Sphingidae

text: Sphingids are some of the faster flying insects; some are capable of flying at over . They have wingspans from to over .


title: Sphingidae

text: Antennae are generally not very feathery, even in males. They lack tympanal organs, but members of the group Choerocampini have hearing organs on their heads. They have a frenulum and retinaculum to join hindwings and forewings. The thorax, abdomen, and wings are densely covered in scales. Some sphingids have a rudimentary proboscis, but most have a very long one, which is used to feed on nectar from flowers. Most are crepuscular or nocturnal, but some species fly during the day. Both males and females are relatively long-lived (10 to 30 days). Prior to flight, most species shiver their flight muscles to warm them up, and, during flight, body temperatures may surpass .


title: Sphingidae

text: In some species, differences in form between the sexes is quite marked. For example, in the African species "Agrius convolvuli" (the convolvulus or morning glory hawk moth), the antennae are thicker and wing markings more mottled in the male than in the female. Only males have both an undivided frenular hook and a retinaculum. Also, all male hawkmoths have a partial comb of hairs along with their antennae. Females call males to them with pheromones. The male may douse the female with a pheromone before mating.


title: Sphingidae

text: Some species fly only for short periods either around dusk or dawn, while other species only appear later in the evening and others around midnight, but such species may occasionally be seen feeding on flowers during the day. A few common species in Africa, such as the Oriental bee hawk ("Cephonodes hylas virescens"), "Macroglossum hirundo", and "Macroglossum trochilus", are diurnal.


title: Sphingidae

text: A number of species are known to be migratory, all in the Sphingini and Macroglossinae, and specially in the genera "Agrius", "Cephonodes", "Macroglossum", "Hippotion" and "Theretra".


title: Sphingidae

text: In studies with "Manduca sexta", moths have dynamic flight sensory abilities due to their antennae. The antennae are vibrated in a plane so that when the body of the moth rotates during controlled aerial maneuvers, the antennae are subject to the inertial Coriolis forces that are linearly proportional to the angular velocity of the body. The Coriolis forces cause deflections of the antennae, which are detected by the Johnston's organ at the base of each antenna, with strong frequency responses at the beat frequency of the antennae (around 25 Hz) and at twice the beat frequency. The relative magnitude of the two frequency responses enables the moth to distinguish rotation around the different principal axes, allowing for rapid course control during aerial maneuvers.


title: Sphingidae

text: Most species are multivoltine, capable of producing several generations a year if weather conditions permit. Females lay translucent, greenish, flattened, smooth eggs, usually singly on the host plants. Egg development time varies highly, from three to 21 days.


title: Sphingidae

text: Sphingid caterpillars are medium to large in size, with stout bodies. They have five pairs of prolegs. Usually, their bodies lack any hairs or tubercules, but most species have a "horn" at the posterior end, which may be reduced to a button, or absent, in the final instar. Many are cryptic greens and browns, and have countershading patterns to conceal them. Others are more conspicuously colored, typically with white spots on a black or yellow background along the length of the body. A pattern of diagonal slashes along the side is a common feature. When resting, the larva usually holds its legs off the surface and tucks its head underneath (praying position), which, resembling the Great Sphinx of Giza, gives rise to the name "sphinx moth". Some tropical larvae are thought to mimic snakes. Larvae are quick to regurgitate their sticky, often toxic, foregut contents on attackers such as ants and parasitoids. Development rate depends on temperature, and to speed development, some northern and high-altitude species sunbathe. Larvae burrow into the soil to pupate, where they remain for two to three weeks before they emerge as adults.


title: Sphingidae

text: In some Sphingidae, the pupa has a free proboscis, rather than being fused to the pupal case as is most common in the macrolepidoptera. They have a cremaster at the tip of the abdomen. Usually, they pupate off the host plant, in an underground chamber, among rocks, or in a loose cocoon. In most species, the pupa is the overwintering stage.


title: Sphingidae

text: Sphingid larvae tend to be specific feeders, rather than generalists. Compared to similarly sized saturniids, sphingids eat soft young leaves of host plants with small toxic molecules, and chew and mash the food into very small bits. Some species can tolerate quite high concentrations of specific toxins. Tobacco hornworms ("Manduca sexta") detoxify and rapidly excrete nicotine, as do several other related sphinx moths in the subfamilies Sphinginae and Macroglossinae, but members of the Smerinthinae that were tested are susceptible. The species that are able to tolerate the toxin do not sequester it in their tissues; 98% was excreted. However, other species, such as "Hyles euphorbiae" and "Daphnis nerii", do sequester toxins from their hosts, but do not pass them on to the adult stage.


title: Sphingidae

text: Most adults feed on nectar, although a few tropical species feed on eye secretions, and the death's-head hawkmoths steal honey from bees. Night-flying sphingids tend to prefer pale flowers with long corolla tubes and a sweet odor, a pollination syndrome known as "sphingophily". Some species are quite general in visitations, while others are very specific, with the plant only being successfully pollinated by a particular species of moth. Orchids frequently have such specific relations with hawk moths and very long corolla tubes. The comet orchid ("Angraecum sesquipedale"), a rare Malagasy flower with its nectar stored at the bottom of a tube, was described in 1822 by Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars, and later, Charles Darwin famously predicted there must be some specialized moth to feed from it:


title: Sphingidae

text: Alfred Russel Wallace published a sort of "wanted poster" (properly, a drawing in a book) of what this lepidopteran might look like, and, concurring with his colleague, added:


title: Sphingidae

text: The predicted sphingid was discovered 21 years later and described as a subspecies of the one African species studied by Wallace: "Xanthopan morganii praedicta", for which, the subspecific name "praedicta" ("the predicted one") was given. The Madagascan individuals had a pink, rather than white, breast and abdomen and a black apical line on the forewing, broader than in mainland specimens. Molecular clock models using either rate- or fossil-based calibrations imply that the Madagascan subspecies "X. morgani praedicta" and the African subspecies "morgani" diverged 7.4 ± 2.8 Mya (million years ago), which overlaps the divergence of "A. sesquipedale" from its sister, "A. sororium", namely 7.5 ± 5.2 Mya. Since both these orchids have extremely long spurs, longspurs likely existed before that and were exploited by long-tongued moths similar to "Xanthopan morganii praedicta". The long geological separation of subspecies "morgani" and "praedicta" matches their morphological differences in the color of the breast and abdomen.


title: Sphingidae

text: The Sphingidae is sometimes assigned its own exclusive superfamily, Sphingoidea, but is alternatively included with the more encompassing Bombycoidea. Following Hodges (1971) two subfamilies are accepted, namely the Sphinginae and Macroglossinae. Around 1,450 species of hawk moths are classified into around 200 genera. Some of the best-known hawk moth species are:


title: Football player

text: A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby league and rugby union.


title: Football player

text: It has been estimated that there are 250 million association football players in the world, and many play the other forms of football.


title: Football player

text: Jean-Pierre Papin has described football as a "universal language". Footballers across the world and at almost any level may regularly attract large crowds of spectators, and players are the focal points of widespread social phenomena such as association football culture.


title: Football player

text: Footballers generally begin as amateurs and the best players progress to become professional players. Normally they start at a youth team (any local team) and from there, based on skill and talent, scouts offer contracts. Once signed, some learn to play better football and a few advance to the senior or professional teams.


title: Football player

text: Wages in some top men's leagues are significantly higher than other jobs. Players in the Premier League earn average wages of about $1 million per year. In the wealthiest clubs in European football leagues, some players earn an average wage up to $6 to $8 million per year. The best players of those clubs can earn up to $70 million per year.


title: Football player

text: However, only a fraction of men's professional football players are paid at this level. Wages may be much more moderate in other divisions and leagues, and a significant number of players are semi-professional. For example, the average annual salary for footballers in Major League Soccer for the 2013 season was $148,693, with significant variations depending on player position (goalkeepers for example earned $85,296, whereas forwards earned $251,805).


title: Football player

text: Popularity and average salaries in women's leagues are far lower. For example, players in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) (which started in 2012) earn $15,000 to $40,000 per year as of January 2017.


title: Football player

text: A minority of retired footballers continue working full-time in football, for instance as football managers. A 1979 study reported that former first-team ballplayers were over-represented as top-ranking executives in their companies and had greater income mobility than second-teamers and reserves. However, some experience chronic health issues, see below.


title: Football player

text: In association football there are four traditional types of specialties (positions): goalkeepers (goalies), defenders (full-backs), midfielders (half-backs), forwards (attackers). Special purpose positions include such performers like sweepers, stoppers, second forwards (under-attackers), wingers, insiders, etc.


title: Football player

text: The American football teams' positions are categorized by a form of play where each of it has own spectrum of positions. Those are offensive, defensive and special teams.


title: Football player

text: Research shows that association football players that take less than 200ms after the referee blows their whistle for a penalty kick are significantly more likely to miss scoring than those that take over a second.


title: Football player

text: An Irish 2002 study of association and Gaelic football players characterized players as "lean and muscular with a reasonably high level of capacity in all areas of physical performance". The opposite is the case for American football, where obesity could be the cause of grave health problems.


title: Football player

text: Although levels of depression and pain in retired football players are on par with the societal average, some players suffer from post-retirement chronic injuries. Head injuries are a particular concern.


title: Football player

text: Studies have long shown former American football NFL players have a higher life expectancy than the general public or males with a similar age and race distribution, but a higher rate of cardiovascular issues. A study comparing the deaths of former Major League Baseball players found baseball players lived longer still, perhaps suggesting a "healthy worker" bias where NFL athletes lived less long than they would otherwise have, despite their longer than average life expectancy. A 2009 review of the evidence in the American Journal of Medicine concluded the existing evidence "did not suggest an increased mortality" but does "suggest increased cardiovascular risk..., particularly the heavier linemen."


title: Football player

text: As for association football, a 2011 German study found that German national team players live 1.9 years less than the general male population.


title: Football player

text: A 1983 study of rugby players found that the life expectancy of All Blacks is the same as for the general population.


title: Football player

text: American football players are prone to head injuries such as concussions. In later life, this increases the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. Professional American football players self-reporting concussions are at greater risk for having depressive episodes later in life compared with those retired players self-reporting no concussions.


title: Football player

text: Probably due to the repeated trauma associated with heading balls, professional association football has been suggested to increase the incidence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In a 1987 study of former Norwegian association football national team players, one third of the players were found to have central cerebral atrophy, "i.e." brain damage. A 1999 study connected soccer to chronic traumatic head injury (CTHI):


title: Football player

text: Anterior cruciate ligaments are particularly vulnerable in most types of football due to injuries that can be sustained during tackles.


title: Football player

text: An increased incidence of osteoarthritis in the hip joint has been found in retired football players.


title: Football player

text: A 2012 study of association football injuries found that 19% of all injuries were muscle injuries, of which 54% affected the thigh muscles.


title: Football player

text: In a 2009 study, association football was found to be associated with favourable sleep patterns and psychological functioning in adolescent male football players.


title: Football player

text: In 2012, FIFA released a paper intended to identify key risk factors for association football players.


title: Football player

text: In 2015, a systematic review of a sample of fifty-four peer-reviewed publications and three articles on elite athletes’ mortality and longevity, resulted in major longevity outcomes for the elite athletes (baseball, football, soccer, basketball, and cycling) "compared to age-and sex-matched controls from the general population and other athletes." The span longevities were influenced by factors like the type of sport, the playing position, the race, and the energy system.


title: Football player

text: An observational study held from professional footballers -active (during career) and recently retired (post career, aged more that 45 years)- of 70 countries between 2007 and 2013, elaborated on data of the World Footballers' Union (FIFPro), recorded 214 deaths of which 25% was caused by accidents, 11% by suicides and 33% by a suspected cardiac pathology (on an overall 55% of deaths caused by a some sort of disease).


title: Football player

text: Clinical evaluation, ECG and echocardiography are required for the athletes as pre-participation tools in order to prevent sudden cardiac deaths on people aged less than 35. To evaluate the risk of myocardial fibrosis, may use and recommended the additional use of alte gadolinium enhancement (LGE) with pre- and post-contrast and extracellular volume fraction (ECV) images. Even encouraged, it wasn't yet made mandatory.


title: Football player

text: In 2015, it was conducted an analysis of 205 deaths among North American professional athletes who were registered as active at the time of their decease. Data were collected by the four major sports: National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL), and Major League Baseball (MLB). The NFL and NBA active players resulted in "a higher likelihood of dying in a car accident" and in a significantly higher likelihood of dying from a cardiac-related illness compared to the NHL and MLB active populations.


title: Football player

text: In 2013, a study on 3.439 retired athletes of the National Football League s with at least 5 credited playing seasons between 1959


title: Football player

text: and 1988 didn't show any statistical correlation between suicide mortality and professional activity and particularly football-related compared with the general control sample. No stratification was reported between speed and non-speed position players.


title: Football player

text: Until the 2000s a very limited number of formal studies has been published on mortality from all causes in soccer players, despite the high interest of the public to the matter.


title: Football player

text: An extended study held in Italy between 1975 and 2003 on a total of 5.389 players, age 14–35 years, highlighted that, while the mortality for cancer and cardiovascular diseases among the soccer players cohort was significantly lower than the general Italian population, the "mortality rates for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and car accidents were significantly higher than expected, and for ALS the risk is 18 times than expected."


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovator, as did his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature. Only after his death did Robert Bridges publish a few of Hopkins's mature poems in anthologies, hoping to prepare for wider acceptance of his style. By 1930 Hopkins's work was seen as one of the most original literary advances of his century. It intrigued such leading 20th-century poets as T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, Essex (now in Greater London), as the eldest of probably nine children to Manley and Catherine Hopkins, née Smith. He was christened at the Anglican church of St John's, Stratford. His father founded a marine insurance firm and at one time served as Hawaiian consul-general in London. He was also for a time churchwarden at St John-at-Hampstead. His grandfather was the physician John Simm Smith, a university colleague of John Keats, and close friend of the eccentric philanthropist Ann Thwaytes. One of his uncles was Charles Gordon Hopkins, a politician of the Hawaiian Kingdom.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: As a poet, Hopkins's father published works including "A Philosopher's Stone and Other Poems" (1843), "Pietas Metrica" (1849), and "Spicelegium Poeticum, A Gathering of Verses by Manley Hopkins" (1892). He reviewed poetry for "The Times" and wrote one novel. Catherine (Smith) Hopkins was the daughter of a London physician, particularly fond of music and of reading, especially German philosophy, literature and the novels of Dickens. Both parents were deeply religious high-church Anglicans. Catherine's sister, Maria Smith Giberne, taught her nephew Gerard to sketch. The interest was supported by his uncle, Edward Smith, his great-uncle Richard James Lane, a professional artist, and other family members. Hopkins's initial ambition was to be a painter – he would continue to sketch throughout his life and was inspired as an adult by the work of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Hopkins became a skilled draughtsman. He found his early training in visual art supported his later work as a poet. His siblings were much inspired by language, religion and the creative arts. Milicent (1849–1946) joined an Anglican sisterhood in 1878. Kate (1856–1933) would help Hopkins publish the first edition of his poetry. Hopkins's youngest sister Grace (1857–1945) set many of his poems to music. Lionel (1854–1952) became a world-famous expert on archaic and colloquial Chinese. Arthur (1848–1930) and Everard (1860–1928) were highly successful artists. Cyril (1846–1932) would join his father's insurance firm.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Manley Hopkins moved his family to Hampstead in 1852, near where John Keats had lived 30 years before and close to the green spaces of Hampstead Heath. When he was ten years old, Gerard was sent to board at Highgate School (1854–1863). While studying Keats's poetry, he wrote "The Escorial" (1860), his earliest extant poem. Here he practised early attempts at asceticism. He once argued that most people drank more liquids than they really needed and bet that he could go without drinking for a week. He persisted until his tongue was black and he collapsed at drill. On another occasion he abstained from salt for a week. Among his teachers at Highgate was Richard Watson Dixon, who became an enduring friend and correspondent. Of the older pupils Hopkins recalls in his boarding house, the poet Philip Stanhope Worsley won the Newdigate Prize.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Hopkins studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford (1863–1867). He began his time in Oxford as a keen socialite and prolific poet, but seems to have alarmed himself with resulting changes in his behaviour. There he forged a lifelong friendship with Robert Bridges (later Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom), which would be important to his development as a poet and in establishing his posthumous acclaim. Hopkins was deeply impressed with the work of Christina Rossetti, who became one of his great contemporary influences. The two met in 1864. During this time he studied with the writer and critic Walter Pater, who tutored him in 1866 and remained a friend until Hopkins left Oxford for the second time in October 1879.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: In a journal entry of 6 November 1865, Hopkins declared an ascetic intention for his life and work: "On this day by God's grace I resolved to give up all beauty until I had His leave for it." On 18 January 1866, Hopkins composed his most ascetic poem, "The Habit of Perfection". On 23 January, he included poetry in a list of things to be given up for Lent. In July, he decided to become a Roman Catholic and travelled to Birmingham in September to consult the leader of the Oxford converts, John Henry Newman. Newman received him into the Roman Catholic Church on 21 October 1866.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: The decision to convert estranged Hopkins from his family and from a number of acquaintances. After graduating in 1867, he was provided by Newman with a teaching post at the Oratory in Birmingham. While there he began to study the violin. On 5 May 1868 Hopkins firmly "resolved to be a religious." Less than a week later, he made a bonfire of his poetry and gave it up almost entirely for seven years. He also felt a call to enter the ministry and decided to become a Jesuit. He paused first to visit Switzerland, which officially forbade Jesuits to enter.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: In September 1868 Hopkins began his Jesuit novitiate at Manresa House, Roehampton, under the guidance of Alfred Weld. Two years later he moved to St Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst, for philosophical studies, taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience on 8 September 1870. He felt that his interest in poetry had stopped him devoting himself wholly to religion. However, on reading Duns Scotus in 1872, he saw how the two need not conflict. He continued to write a detailed prose journal in 1868–1875. Unable to suppress a desire to describe the natural world, he also wrote music, sketched, and for church occasions, wrote "verses", as he called them. He later wrote sermons and other religious pieces.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: In 1874 Hopkins returned to Manresa House to teach classics. While studying in the Jesuit house of theological studies, St Beuno's College, near St Asaph in North Wales, he was asked by his religious superior to write a poem to commemorate the foundering of a German ship in a storm. So in 1875 he took up poetry once more to write a lengthy piece, "The Wreck of the Deutschland", inspired by the "Deutschland" incident, a maritime disaster in which 157 people died, including five Franciscan nuns who had been leaving Germany due to harsh anti-Catholic laws (see Kulturkampf). The work displays both the religious concerns and some of the unusual metre and rhythms of his subsequent poetry not present in his few remaining early works. It not only depicts the dramatic events and heroic deeds, but tells of him reconciling the terrible events with God's higher purpose. The poem was accepted but not printed by a Jesuit publication. This rejection fed his ambivalence about his poetry, most of which remained unpublished until after his death.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Hopkins chose the austere and restrictive life of a Jesuit and was gloomy at times. His biographer Robert Bernard Martin notes that "the life expectancy of a man becoming a novice at twenty-one was twenty-three more years rather than the forty years of males of the same age in the general population." The brilliant student who had left Oxford with first-class honours failed his final theology exam. This almost certainly meant that despite his ordination in 1877, Hopkins would not progress in the order. In 1877 he wrote "God's Grandeur", an array of sonnets that included "The Starlight Night". He finished "The Windhover" only a few months before his ordination. His life as a Jesuit trainee, though rigorous, isolated and sometimes unpleasant, at least had some stability; the uncertain and varied work after ordination was even harder on his sensibilities. In October 1877, not long after completing "The Sea and the Skylark" and only a month after his ordination, Hopkins took up duties as sub-minister and teacher at Mount St Mary's College near Sheffield. In July 1878 he became curate at the Jesuit church in Mount Street, London, and in December that of St Aloysius's Church, Oxford, then moving to Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. While ministering in Oxford, he became a founding member of The Newman Society, established in 1878 for Catholic members of the University of Oxford. He taught Greek and Latin at Mount St Mary's College, Sheffield, and Stonyhurst College, Lancashire.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: In the late 1880s Hopkins met Matthew Russell of the "Irish Monthly", who introduced him to Katharine Tynan and W. B. Yeats.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: In 1884 he became a professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin. His English roots and disagreement with the Irish politics of the time, along with his small stature (), unprepossessing nature and personal oddities, reduced his effectiveness as a teacher. This and his isolation in Ireland deepened a gloom that was reflected in his poems of the time, such as "I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, not Day". They came to be known as the "terrible sonnets", not for their quality but according to Hopkins's friend Canon Richard Watson Dixon, because they reached the "terrible crystal", meaning they crystallised the melancholic dejection that plagued the latter part of Hopkins's life.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Several influences led to a melancholic state and restricted his poetic inspiration in his last five years. His workload was heavy. He disliked living in Dublin, away from England and friends. He was disappointed at how far Dublin had fallen from its Georgian elegance of the previous century. His general health suffered and his eyesight began to fail. He felt confined and dejected. As a devout Jesuit, he found himself in an artistic dilemma. To subdue an egotism that he felt would violate the humility required by his religious position, he decided never to publish his poems but Hopkins realised that any true poet requires an audience for criticism and encouragement. This conflict between his religious obligations and his poetic talent made him feel he had failed at both.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: After several years' ill health and bouts of diarrhoea, Hopkins died of typhoid fever in 1889 at the age of 44 years and was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, after a funeral in St Francis Xavier Church in Gardiner Street, located in Georgian Dublin. He is thought to have suffered throughout his life from what today might be labelled bipolar disorder or chronic unipolar depression, and battled a deep sense of melancholic anguish. However, his last words on his death bed were, "I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life."


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: According to John Bayley, "All his life Hopkins was haunted by the sense of personal bankruptcy and impotence, the straining of 'time's eunuch' with no more to 'spend'... " a sense of inadequacy, graphically expressed in his last sonnets. Toward the end of his life, Hopkins suffered several long bouts of depression. His "terrible sonnets" struggle with problems of religious doubt. He described them to Bridges as "[t]he thin gleanings of a long weary while."


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: "Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord" (1889) echoes "Jeremiah" 12:1 in asking why the wicked prosper. It reflects the exasperation of a faithful servant who feels he has been neglected, and is addressed to a divine person ("Sir") capable of hearing the complaint, but seemingly unwilling to listen. Hopkins uses parched roots as a metaphor for despair.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: The image of the poet's estrangement from God figures in "I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day", in which he describes lying awake before dawn, likening his prayers to "dead letters sent To dearest him that lives alas! away." The opening line recalls Lamentations 3:2: "He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light."


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Much of Hopkins's historical importance has to do with the changes he brought to the form of poetry, which ran contrary to conventional ideas of metre. Prior to Hopkins, most Middle English and Modern English poetry was based on a rhythmic structure inherited from the Norman side of English literary heritage. This structure is based on repeating "feet" of two or three syllables, with the stressed syllable falling in the same place on each repetition. Hopkins called this structure "running rhythm", and although he wrote some of his early verse in running rhythm, he became fascinated with the older rhythmic structure of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, of which "Beowulf" is the most famous example.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Hopkins called his own rhythmic structure sprung rhythm. Sprung rhythm is structured around feet with a variable number of syllables, generally between one and four syllables per foot, with the stress always falling on the first syllable in a foot. It is similar to the "rolling stresses" of Robinson Jeffers, another poet who rejected conventional metre. Hopkins saw sprung rhythm as a way to escape the constraints of running rhythm, which he said inevitably pushed poetry written in it to become "same and tame". In this way, Hopkins sprung rhythm can be seen as anticipating much of free verse. His work has no great affinity with either of the contemporary Pre-Raphaelite and neo-romanticism schools, although he does share their descriptive love of nature and he is often seen as a precursor to modernist poetry, or as a bridge between the two poetic eras.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Hopkins was a supporter of linguistic purism in English. In an 1882 letter to Robert Bridges, Hopkins writes: "It makes one weep to think what English might have been; for in spite of all that Shakespeare and Milton have done... no beauty in a language can make up for want of purity." He took time to learn Old English, which became a major influence on his writing. In the same letter to Bridges he calls Old English "a vastly superior thing to what we have now."


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: He uses many archaic and dialect words but also coins new words. One example of this is "twindles", which seems from its context in "Inversnaid" to mean a combination of "twines" and "dwindles". He often creates compound adjectives, sometimes with a hyphen (such as "dapple-dawn-drawn falcon") but often without, as in "rolling level underneath him steady air". This use of compound adjectives, similar to the Old English use of compound nouns via kennings, concentrates his images, communicating to his readers the instress of the poet's perceptions of an inscape.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Added richness comes from Hopkins's extensive use of alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia and rhyme, both at the end of lines and internally as in:


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Hopkins was influenced by the Welsh language, which he had acquired while studying theology at St Beuno's near St Asaph. The poetic forms of Welsh literature and particularly cynghanedd, with its emphasis on repeating sounds, accorded with his own style and became a prominent feature of his work. This reliance on similar-sounding words with close or differing senses means that his poems are best understood if read aloud. An important element in his work is Hopkins's own concept of "inscape", which was derived in part from the medieval theologian Duns Scotus. Anthony Domestico explains,Inscape, for Hopkins, is the charged essence, the absolute singularity that gives each created thing its being; instress is both the energy that holds the inscape together and the process by which this inscape is perceived by an observer. We instress the inscape of a tulip, Hopkins would say, when we appreciate the particular delicacy of its petals, when we are enraptured by its specific, inimitable shade of pink."


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: "The Windhover" aims to depict not the bird in general, but instead one instance and its relation to the breeze. This is just one interpretation of Hopkins's most famous poem, one which he felt was his best.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: During his lifetime, Hopkins published few poems. It was only through the efforts of Robert Bridges that his works were seen. Despite Hopkins burning all his poems on entering the Jesuit novitiate, he had already sent some to Bridges, who with some other friends, was one of the few people to see many of them for some years. After Hopkins's death they were distributed to a wider audience, mostly fellow poets, and in 1918 Bridges, by then poet laureate, published a collected edition; an expanded edition, prepared by Charles Williams, appeared in 1930, and a greatly expanded edition by William Henry Gardner appeared in 1948 (eventually reaching a fourth edition, 1967, with N. H. Mackenzie).


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Notable collections of Hopkins's manuscripts and publications are in Campion Hall, Oxford; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and the Foley Library at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: In 1970, Timothy d'Arch Smith, antiquarian bookseller, ascribed to Hopkins suppressed homoerotic impulses which he views as taking on a degree of specificity after Hopkins met Robert Bridges's distant cousin, friend, and fellow Etonian Digby Mackworth Dolben, "a Christian Uranian".


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: In 1991, Robert Bernard Martin wrote in his biography "Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life", that when Hopkins first met Dolben, on Dolben's 17th birthday in Oxford in February 1865, it "was, quite simply, the most momentous emotional event of [his] undergraduate years, probably of his entire life." According to Robert Martin, "Hopkins was completely taken with Dolben, who was nearly four years his junior, and his private journal for confessions the following year proves how absorbed he was in imperfectly suppressed erotic thoughts of him." Martin considered it "probable that [Hopkins] would have been deeply shocked at the reality of sexual intimacy with another person."


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Hopkins had composed two poems about Dolben, "Where art thou friend" and "The Beginning of the End". Robert Bridges, who edited the first edition of Dolben's poems as well as Hopkins's, cautioned that the second poem "must never be printed," though Bridges himself included it in the first edition (1918).


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Another indication of the nature of his feelings for Dolben is that Hopkins's high Anglican confessor seems to have forbidden him to have any contact with Dolben except by letter. Hopkins never saw Dolben again, and any continuation of their relationship was abruptly ended by Dolben's drowning two years later in June 1867. Hopkins's feeling for Dolben seems to have cooled by that time, but he was nonetheless greatly affected by his death. "Ironically, fate may have bestowed more through Dolben's death than it could ever have bestowed through longer life ... [for] many of Hopkins's best poems – impregnated with an elegiac longing for Dolben, his lost beloved and his muse – were the result." Hopkins's relationship with Dolben was explored in the 2017 novel "The Hopkins Conundrum".


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Some of Hopkins's poems, such as "The Bugler's First Communion" and "Epithalamion", arguably embody homoerotic themes, although the second poem was arranged by Robert Bridges from extant fragments. In 2006, M. M. Kaylor, argued for Hopkins's inclusion with the Uranian poets, a group whose writings derived, in many ways, from prose works of Walter Pater, Hopkins's academic coach for his Greats exams and later a lifelong friend.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Some critics have argued that homoerotic readings are either highly tendentious, or that they can be classified under the broader category of "homosociality", over the gender, sexual-specific "homosexual" term. Hopkins's journal writings, they argue, offer a clear admiration for feminised beauty. In 2000, Justus George Lawler criticised Robert Martin's biography by suggesting that Martin "cannot see the heterosexual beam... for the homosexual biographical mote in his own eye... it amounts to a slanted eisegesis". The poems that elicit homoerotic readings can be read not merely as exercises in sublimation but as powerful renditions of religious conviction, a conviction that caused strain in his family and even led him to burn some poems that he felt were unnecessarily self-centred. In 2000, Julia Saville viewed the religious imagery in the poems as Hopkins's way of expressing the tension with homosexual identity and desire.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Christopher Ricks noted that Hopkins engaged in a number of penitential practices, "but all of these self-inflictions were not self-inflictions to him, and they are his business – or are his understanding of what it was for him to be about his Father's business." Ricks takes issue with Martin's apparent lack of appreciation of the importance of the role of Hopkins's religious commitment to his writing, and cautions against assigning a priority of influence to any sexual instincts over other factors such as Hopkins's estrangement from his family. In 2009, biographer Paul Mariani found in Hopkins poems "an irreconcilable tension – on the one hand, the selflessness demanded by Jesuit discipline; on the other, the seeming self-indulgence of poetic creation."


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Hopkins spent the last five years of his life as a classics professor at University College Dublin. Hopkins's isolation in 1885 was multiple: a Jesuit distanced from his Anglican family and his homeland, an Englishman teaching in Dublin during a time of political strife, an unpublished poet striving to reconcile his artistic and religious callings. The poem "To seem the stranger" was written in Ireland between 1885 and 1886 and is a poem of isolation and loneliness.


title: Gerard Manley Hopkins

text: Ricks called Hopkins "the most original poet of the Victorian age." Hopkins is considered as influential as T. S. Eliot in initiating the modernist movement in poetry. His experiments with elliptical phrasing and double meanings and quirky conversational rhythms turned out to be liberating to poets such as W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas. The American author Ron Hansen's novel, "Exiles", who held the Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, Professorship in English at Santa Clara University, dramatizes Hopkins' composition of "The Wreck of the Deutschland."


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens () is a town in Merseyside, England, with a population of 102,629. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, which had a population of 176,843 at the 2001 Census.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens is in the south-west of the historic county of Lancashire, north of the River Mersey. The town historically lay within the ancient Lancashire division of West Derby known as a "hundred". The town initially started as a small settlement in the township of Windle but, by the mid 1700s, the town had become synonymous with a wider area; by 1838, it was formally made responsible for the administration of the four townships of Eccleston, Parr, Sutton and Windle. In 1868, the town was created by incorporation as a municipal borough and later became a county borough in 1887; it became a metropolitan borough in 1974, with an expanded administrative responsibility for towns and villages in close proximity.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The area developed rapidly in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries into a significant centre for coal mining and glassmaking. It was also home to a cotton and linen industry (notably sail making) that lasted until the mid-19th century as well as salt, lime and alkali pits, copper smelting and brewing.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Glass producer Pilkington is the town's only remaining large industrial employer; previously, it was home to Beechams, the Gamble Alkali Works, Ravenhead glass, United Glass Bottles, Triplex, Daglish Foundry and Greenall's brewery.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The southern part of what became the traditional county of Lancashire was at least partially settled by the Brigantes, a Celtic tribe, who were subjugated by the Romans during their 1st Century conquest, with nearby Wigan suggested as a location for the Roman settlement of Coccium. Eccleston in St Helens appears to derive its name from either the Latin "ecclesia" or the Welsh "eglwys", both meaning "church", suggesting a common link to a place of worship although none is known in that township until the 19th century.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The first recorded settlements are the Manors, Parishes and Titled Lands listed in the Domesday Book in the 11th century. The titled lands would have encompassed the modern townships of Sutton, Windle and Parr as part of their fiefdoms, though it may be inferred from the listed tithes that the land was populated before then.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens did not exist as a town in its own right until as late as the middle of the 18th century when it is referenced in Parliament. The development of the town has a complex history: it was spurred on by the rapid population growth in the region during the Industrial Revolution. Between 1629 and 1839, St Helens grew from a small collection of houses surrounding an old chapel, to a village, before becoming the significant urban centre of the four primary manors and surrounding townships that make up the modern town.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Domesday Book of 1086 reveals that several manors existed at that time, although there are no specific references to "St Elyn", or mentions of the particular "vill" or villages. Windle is first recorded on some maps as "Windhull" (or variations thereof) in 1201, Bold in 1212 (as Bolde) and Parr (or Parre) in 1246, whilst Sutton and Ecclestone composed part of the Widnes "fee" (a hereditary entitlement of ownership) under a Knight or Earl. It is known that the Hospitallers held lands in the area of Hardshaw as early as 1292, known as Crossgate (which may be referred to by the long built-over Cross Street in the town centre beneath the modern College campus) and many of the original parishes, townships and local areas are named after the families that owned the land between the 11th and 18th centuries.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Ecclestone family owned the Eccleston township. Their ancestral home dates to 1100; it was built by Hugh Ecclestone. The family is referred to throughout the period until the 18th century when they departed for nearby Southport.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The manor of Parr remained in control of the Parr family and their descendants from the 13th to the early 15th century when a distant relative of the original family line, William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton (brother of Henry VIII's wife Catherine Parr) sold the manor to the Byroms of Lowton. The family later supported the Royalists during the English Civil War, and Henry Byrom (son of the Lord of the Manor) died at the Battle of Edgehill.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The extensive lands of Sutton Manor stretched across the open and flat land leading towards the Mersey. The manor's name is of unknown origin, but the land within the estate referred to several leading families, including Eltonhead, Ravenhead, and Sherdley. In 1212, William de Daresbury was the title holder of the manors. The Sherdley family can be traced back to the Northales, who had been settled in the area since at least 1276 when they were referred to as plaintiffs in a boundary dispute with the Lords of Rainhill.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Windle contained the smaller Hardshaw, described as a berewick in the Domesday Book. It was in Hardshaw that Chapel Lane was constructed. The Windle Family were Lords of the Manor and Township from the Norman period onward before ceding control to the Gerards of Bryn.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In 1139, the "earldom of Derby", in the Peerage of England, was created: Norman descendant Robert De Ferrers was the first Earl. Subsequently, the region passed to John of Gaunt, and eventually the Stanley family. Their ancestral home was eventually established in the nearby Knowsley area (to the west of the modern St Helens borough), with the foundation of a hunting lodge in the 15th century and subsequently Knowsley Hall in the 18th century. The Earl of Derby's lands encompassed a region from Liverpool to Manchester, and to the north beyond Lancaster and were primarily turned to meeting the pastoral needs of the people.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Throughout this period, the area was predominantly arable land and was noted for its large swathes of moss, heath and bog land while elsewhere in parts, it was covered by the greater Mersey Forest (the larger "Community Forest" was not established until much later).


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: 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 was 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 was originally in Chapel Lane, near the site of the modern pedestrianised Church Street. Historically this would have fallen within the berewick of Hardshaw, within the 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.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In 1552, the Chapel of St Elyn was noted as "consisting only of a challis and a lytle bell". The chapel was described as being at the crux of the four townships of Eccleston, Parr, Sutton and Windle, and lay on the intersecting roads that criss-crossed the area and linked Lancashire towns such as Liverpool, Ormskirk, Lathom and the Cheshire region south of the River Mersey. The transport link is attested to by the existence of Chester Lane (the modern B5419 is much foreshortened) that originally wound through the west of the town heading south to the Mersey crossing point of Warrington and beyond to the ancient Chester Road (that now makes up part of the modern A56) that stretched between the historic town of its name and the Manchester townships. The Chapel also sat directly between the port town of Liverpool, and the landlocked Manchester townships that would become important in the development of the greater area of both St Helens and Wigan.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: As a busy thoroughfare it is suggested by historian and genealogist William Farrer that a village existed in the vicinity for centuries, later sharing the name of the Chapel. It is known from the diaries of a local Puritan by the name of Adam Martindale that by the time the King's Head Inn was constructed in 1629 on "the great road" (taken to refer to all or part of Chester Lane) between Warrington and Ormskirk, a number of houses, farms and manors counted amongst the properties in the local vicinity and general area. Martindale notes that by 1618 that the original chapel had been demolished and rebuilt in the same vicinity. In 1678 a building was converted for use as a meeting place for the Society of Friends by George Shaw of Bickerstaffe. Local historians believe the building had been used for another purpose long before 1678. The Quaker Friends' Meeting House, as it is now known, is a Grade II listed building.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The strong link to Roman Catholicism in the area was maintained throughout this period by the eventual Lords of Sutton Manor, the De Holland family, starting in 1321. Thomas Holland, a local Jesuit priest, was arrested and tried for high treason in October 1642 as "taking orders by authority of the see of Rome and returning to England". The first step toward his beatification was allowed by Pope Leo XIII in 1886. Conversely Roger Holland was burnt at the stake for heresy when he continued his professed belief in the Reformed churches some 100 years earlier in 1558 during the persecution of Mary I. It is suggested that Ravenhead Hall was the site of a Catholic chapel during the most severe of Catholic persecutions during the 17th and 18th centuries. Whilst the Lathom family maintained Rainfords close connections, as did the Ecclestons.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Less well-known is the Windle connection to witches. In 1602, two women were sent to Lancaster for trial, while a decade later Isobel Roby was submitted to Sir Thomas Gerard, accused of upsetting the ship upon which James VI and I's Queen Consort Anne of Denmark was arriving. Roby was finally executed at Lancaster, along with the Pendle and Salmesburg witches, on 20 August 1612.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: By 1746, St Helens, composed of the greater area of the four townships (and their collieries) beyond Prescot, was referred to in a statement in Parliament related to the extension of the Liverpool to Prescot Turnpike.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The rapid growth of St Helens at the centre of the townships is attested to by several authors. The "Penny Cyclopaedia" states in 1839 that "Saint Helen's, Lancashire, is in the township of Windle, in the chapelry of St Helen's, Prescott parish. The township contains , and had in 1831 a population of 5,825. The town has risen into importance of late years" In contrast by 1844 (30 years before the borough of St Helens was established) Cyrus Redding mentions a reversal of the roles: "St Helens, originally an inconsiderable village, is now a very thriving town"; and he later states that the town "... may be said to contain the four townships of Sutton, Parr, Windle and Eccleston". The composition of the town described by Redding largely mirrors those observations made by Samuel Lewis in 1848 and later still in 1874 by John Marius Wilson and John Bartholemew in 1887.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Census figures from 1801 suggest the population of the District Area of St Helens to be 12,500; by 1861 it was between 37,631 and 55,523 (John Marius Wilson gives the lower number, with total households at the specific figure of 6,539) in the wider area with St Helens itself comprising a population of 20,176 in 3,577 households. The Ordnance Survey map of 1843 shows St Helens as the significant urban centre


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The original Town Hall was constructed in 1839 and described by Wilson in 1874 as "in the Italian style, with a Corinthian portico; and contains a lock-up, a newsroom, and a large hall for courts, concerts, balls, and public meetings". It was not until 1852 that the Civil Parish of St Helens was instituted (noted in 1874 by Wilson as "more extensive than the town"). The Mill Street Barracks were completed in 1861.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: On 2 February 1868, Queen Victoria granted a Charter of Incorporation, defining St Helens officially as a Municipal Borough. The first election of Councillors took place on 9 May the same year, followed by the first Town Council meeting on 18 May. About 20 years later in 1887 St Helens became a County Borough, with two Members of Parliament.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In 1894, the Parish of St Helens was incorporated under the 1893 St Helens Corporation Act. This was achieved by the abolition of the Civil Parishes of Parr, Sutton and amalgamation of their townships. The Civil Parishes of Eccleston and Windle both ceded portions of their areas over to St Helens.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The modern Borough of St Helens includes areas historically not associated with the town. The 1974 creation of the Ceremonial County of Merseyside appended the former urban districts of Haydock, Newton-le-Willows and Rainford, and parts of Billinge-and-Winstanley and Ashton-in-Makerfield urban districts, along with part of Whiston Rural District, all from the administrative county of Lancashire. The urban sprawl of St Helens was already extended up to the boundary lines of places such as Haydock and Rainhill, where inhabitants may consider themselves either part of either both St Helens the 'Town' or 'Borough', or just the Borough.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Until the mid-18th century, the local industry was almost entirely based on small-scale home-based initiatives such as linen weaving. The landscape was dotted with similarly small-scale excavation and mining operations, primarily for clay and peat, but also notably for coal. It is the coal to which the town owes both its initial growth and development and the subsequent development of the coal-dependent industries of copper smelting and glass.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Sitting on the South Lancashire Coalfield, the town was built both physically and metaphorically on coal; the original motto in the borough council's coat of arms was ""Ex Terra Lucem"" ("From the Ground, Light") and local collieries employed up to 5,000 men as late as the 1970s. During the boom years of the British coal industry (1913 was the peak year of production, with 1 million employed in UK mining industry) the St Helens division of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation (the local miners' union) had the largest membership (10%) of that federation.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The discovery of winnable coal seams is mentioned in 1556, referred to as "Beds of cinders or coke ... have been discovered three feet thick" during the digging of a clay pit and is commonly attributed to the Eltonhead family (Elton Head Road, the modern B5204, shares the name of the family) whilst reference to the significant distribution of "potsherds" during excavation suggests that some light industry had been underway for some time before (perhaps as far back as the 13th century) and the clay and pottery industries lasted in the area through to the early 20th century. A dispute arose between the landlord Bolds and the tenant Eltonheads, eventually resulting in an agreement to compensate the Bold family.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The majority of the land had been turned over to arable farming since at least the 12th century, according to the historical family records of William De Daresbury. The township of Sutton was recorded as "by itself being assessed at four plough-lands". Plow or ploughlands are assessed at apiece. The pastoral use of the local land was common even in 1901, with William Farrer noting of Eccleston that the "country is of an undulating nature and principally dedicated to agriculture, fields of rich and fertile soil being predominant" and describing the produce as "chiefly potatoes, oats, and wheat on a clayey soil which alternates with peat". Even so, Farrer also notes that several old quarries and shafts still existed within the area while also making reference to a "brewery at Portico, and a pottery near Prescot, while glass, watchmakers' tools, and mineral waters are also manufactured".


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Two hundred years earlier, Farrer may well have seen a different sight: St Helens was scarred and pitted by shallow mining operations, often quickly abandoned, left to flood and exceedingly prone to collapse. The primitive mining techniques, and limited ability to bail out gathering water, meant many pits had short lifespans. Complaints are recorded in Sutton Heath in particular about the plans to expand mining across the town, but the lure of a stable income ultimately won out against the objections. 100 years later, the Council rejected a planning application for an open cast mine — underlining the finality of the decline of coal mining in the area.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In the 18th century, however, coal was an enabling force for the town that opened up opportunities for further commercial and industrial developments, which in turn drove demand for the rapid movement of raw goods not simply out of the town (coal to Liverpool to fuel its shipping and steel works for instance, but also its salt works) but also in promoting an influx of raw products for processing. The dependence of St Helens on its transport links is evident from claims made to Parliament in 1746 for maintenance and extension of the turnpike road after local flooding had damaged it.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: It is clear that St Helens' development owes as much to its location on the south Lancashire Coalfield as it does the fact that Liverpool, Chester and other centres of industry were not, and yearned for the fossil fuel of choice.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: It was essential therefore for the town to maintain, and invest further in, transport links and promote itself as a hub for the growth of Liverpool, with its provision of raw materials benefiting from its location and promising transport links. Liverpool, recognising the need for a ready supply of coal for its forges, responded with a petition for the extension of the Liverpool to Prescot Turnpike. This soon developed into a far more forward thinking development which was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution: canals.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: It was originally proposed merely to make the Sankey Brook navigable, but the eventual outcome was a complete man-made canal linking St Helens to the River Mersey and the city of Liverpool. The Sankey Canal was opened in 1757, and extended in 1775, to transport coal from the pits in Ravenhead, Haydock and Parr to Liverpool, and for raw materials to be shipped to St Helens.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The transport revolution centred on the region encouraged an influx of industry to the hitherto sparsely populated area. With industry came job opportunities and population growth. Between 1700 St Helens grew from a sparsely populated array of manor houses and their tenants into a sprawling span of mining operations.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Owing primarily to the abundance of coal reserves, the quality of local sand, and the availability of salt in nearby Cheshire, glass making is known to have been ongoing in the Sutton area since at least 1688, when the Frenchman John Leaf Snr is recorded as paying the Eltonhead family £50 for a lease of 2½ acres (1 hectare) of Sutton's Lower Hey. The glass industry got a significant lift with the Crown-authorised "British Cast Plate Glass Company" established in Ravenhead in 1786; it latched onto the success of similar enterprises to set the region as the market leader for glass.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The foundation of the companies owed as much to industrial leaders from outside the town (and the finance they provided) as to its natural resources but the synchronous development of the steam engine was a significant development, with James Watt's stationary steam engine design leading the way. Water could be pumped from deeper than ever before, and mines could be driven to find even more dense seams. At the same time, the growth in use of machinery (e.g. for mills, forges, and ships) rapidly increased the demand for coal - to which the town responded.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Land exchanged hands in St Helens rapidly, as established families moved out of the growing towns filled with the working classes to more gentrified and less industrially developed places. In their place came self-made wealthy industrialists such as John Mackay (who first leased land in St Helens in the 1760s from King George III before buying the land constituting Ravenhead Farm from the Archbishop of York), Michael Hughes, the Gambles, and later Thomas Beecham, Thomas Greenall and the Pilkingtons. A few established families remained, such as the Gerards of Windle Hall. They made their land available for industrial use.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: One of the first major industries to grow out of the transport innovations in the region was copper smelting. The Parys mining company, led by Michael Hughes, leased land from John Mackay close to the newly constructed Sankey Canal at Ravenhead (where Ravenhead Colliery had since been established). This allowed copper ore carried from the Parys Mountain mine in Amlwch in Anglesey, North Wales to arrive in the St Helens region via the Mersey directly at the point where coal was being excavated to fire the forges of industry. Some 10,000 tons of copper ore yielding over 1,300 tons of copper passed along this route. At the same time the Gerards were renting out land in Blackbrook to Patten & Co. from nearby Warrington. The company smelted using the Gerards 'own coal, then moved the coal downstream from a private wharf on the navigable brook.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The boom did not last: by 1783, coal industry leaders such as Mackay, Sarah Clayton and Thomas Case were all dead, penniless or both as a global constriction on coal shipments stifled the industry. An over-reliance on shipping to the USA during the American War of Independence (1775–1783) ruined many people, and led to the permanent loss of several smaller industries. It took partnership and coordination with other industries for the mining industry to recover; with the US embargo lifted, the town's troubles were soon overcome if not forgotten, although this was not the last troubling incident.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The demand for chemicals such as alkali from the glass industry soon led the Gamble family to start their lime and alkali pits, saving on import costs. The growing demand for chemical processing also contributed heavily to the growth of Widnes.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830. It passed through the southern edge of the town at Rainhill and St Helens Junction, and furthered its economic development as a centre of industry.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The last coal mine located close to the town centre (Ravenhead Colliery) and those located in the outlying districts of St Helens, including those that were just outside the original 1887 County Borough boundary, such as Clock Face (Clock Face Colliery), Sutton (Bold Colliery), Sutton Heath (Lea Green Colliery), Sutton Manor (Sutton Manor Colliery) and Haydock (Lyme Pit, Wood Pit, Old Boston), were all closed between the nationalisation of the deep coal mining industry in 1947 and 24 May 1991, when Sutton Manor Colliery, the last to go in the immediate St Helens area, finally closed its gates.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The coal mining industry in St Helens and elsewhere had collapsed because the government maintained that the deep mining of coal was no longer an economically viable proposition in most British coalfields. The closures were opposed by the National Union of Mineworkers during the year-long Miners' Strike of 1984–85. After the collapse of the miners' strike in March 1985, St Helens was just one of dozens of towns in the UK that was immediately set to lose a long-standing employer. In the case of both Sutton Manor and Bold Collieries, it was estimated by some that when they were closed they each still had up to 40 years of winnable coal reserves. The last colliery in the modern metropolitan borough, and in the St Helens area of the South Lancashire Coalfield, was Parkside, in Newton-le-Willows, which was closed in 1993.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The glass industry is no longer the major employer it once was; however, it still employs over a thousand people in the town. The large Pilkington Brothers works, founded in 1826, dominates the town's industrial quarter and still produces all the UK's output of flat glass.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In 1994, planning permission was sought out for a link road connecting the M62 directly with the town centre. The development included a £5m retail and commercial property project in the Ravenhead area that had seen successive business closures with the folding of UGB and Ravenhead Glass.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The town's shopping area is centred on the parish church of St Helens, the original site of St Mary's open market. The open market was later replaced by an awned covered market that populated Chapel Lane and the locale.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The current Church Square shopping centre surrounds St Helens on three sides. Church Street, the main high street, runs parallel to Church Square and is sandwiched by the town's second shopping centre known as The Hardshaw Centre. The other main shopping streets in the town centre include the more traditional small store based Bridge Street, Duke Street and Westfield Street populated by independent specialists. Church Square was bought by St Helens Council in 2017 for £26.6m as part of local regeneration plans.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The town centre has several supermarkets including mainstream stores such as Asda and Tesco, as well as smaller stores such as Lidl. Morrisons retain two stores located in the Eccleston and Sutton areas of the town. There is also a Tesco superstore in Earlestown, which is on a former Safeway site and many smaller Tesco Express and Tesco Metro stores. A new Tesco Extra store opened in October 2011 on the outskirts of the town centre to replace the existing Chalon Way superstore, which has now been taken over by new retail Home & Leisure outlet, The Range.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens has two major retail parks, one on either side of the St Helens Linkway. The older of these, St Helens Retail Park, is home to several discount stores and wholesale retailers.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The larger Ravenhead Retail Park houses more large-scale mainstream retail stores, and a number of restaurants, fast food outlets and cafes. The same area (in particular the old United Glass Bottles site) has been used for development of the new St Helens RLFC stadium and the construction of a Tesco Extra supermarket, to replace the smaller Tesco supermarket in the town centre. At 140,000 square metres, this Tesco Extra store is one of the biggest in England


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Major investment is transforming former industrial land for use as hotels, shopping areas and housing after an initial landscape grading and character assessment project was concluded in late 2005 by Land Use Consultants on behalf of St Helens Council.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Since the millennium St Helens has become a focus for a whole borough scheme of Urban Regeneration initiatives in coordination with local Housing Authorities, Business and Art Projects in addition to European, Regional and Central Government funding such as the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, the North West Regional Development Agency and The Mersey Partnership as part of the European Regional Development Fund


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The whole project is coordinated by St Helens Council under their umbrella corporate branding "St Helens; The Heart of the North West" with an emphasis on promoting the location of the town as a vital hub of the region, to encourage investment and the development of business links.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In 2007, the Brand New St Helens project was launched and published their Development Review Document. The report set out the achievements in the years since the millennium and set out the future development projects for the town including the wholly rebuilt College Campus, and Cowley Language College (formerly Cowley High). The document also lays out retail, leisure and tourism developments for the Town.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In 2009, a MultiAarea Agreement (MAA) was made with the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens agreeing to form part of the Liverpool City Region, a cross boundary cooperation of 5 adjoining authorities in Merseyside and the Halton Borough on strategic policy areas such as economic growth, transport, tourism, culture, housing, and physical infrastructure.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Local Projects such as "Re:new St Helens" operated in conjunction with Helena Housing was originally set up in 2006 in an effort to initially "make the Parr area of St Helens a better place to live, work and be part of". The scheme's success led to it being expanded to other identified areas in need of redevelopment including Four Acre (in Clock Face), Thatto Heath and the North of the Town Centre.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Re:new projects coordinate a Partnership Board to meet the needs of local residents in conjunction with local service providers such as the Council, Local Education Authority, Local Healthcare, Housing Associations and the Police to help improve services, identify local priorities and make changes with an aim to tackle "the quality of life issues which matter most to local people". The scheme has been responsible for the redevelopment of The Duckeries and Gaskell Park in Parr that both achieved Green Flag status in 2008


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens Town Hall built in 1876 to replace the original (damaged by a fire in 1871); its clock tower originally had a steeple but this was destroyed in a fire in 1913.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In the centre of the modern town centre, adjacent to the town hall, is the Gamble Institute, built in 1896 and named after Sir David Gamble, who was the first mayor and who also gifted the land for the building. Today, the Gamble Institute building serves as the central library and also houses other municipal offices and archives.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Friends' Meeting House, Church Street. This attractive stone-built Grade II listed hall has been used for Quaker worship for over 300 years since its establishment, in 1678, by George Shaw of Bickerstaffe. A sign at the front of the building reads "so used" since 1678, partly leading local historians to believe the building had been used for another purpose for quite a number of years before 1678. The building and garden have been recently restored and are an important element of the George Street Conservation Area. The sundial over the door of the meeting house is dated 1753, while a curiosity in the garden is a huge glacial boulder, said to have been deposited from the Lake District following the last ice age.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Beecham Clock Tower, Westfield Street - which is now part of St Helens College. This was the original headquarters of the Beecham pharmaceutical empire.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Mary's Lowe House Catholic Church, North Road is a Grade II listed building, opened in 1929, the second on this site (the land having been donated by Winifred Gorsuch Lowe - hence the name 'Lowe House'). The church is an unusual and striking landmark with a 130 ft (40 m) tower and a dome of a mixed Romanesque and Gothic style. The major feature is the historic Carillon (bells playable using a keyboard, rather than by pulling ropes). It is the largest in the North West of England, housing 47 bells.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Roman Catholic Church of St Anne and Blessed Dominic, Monastery Road, Sutton, is a pilgrimage site for Roman Catholics. The Victorian missionary Blessed Dominic Barberi is buried in the church. Alongside Blessed Dominic, Father Ignatius Spencer is buried. The son of the 2nd Earl Spencer, he was a famed convert to the Roman Catholic faith. Elizabeth Prout, foundress of the religious order, the Sisters of the Cross and Passion, is also buried with them.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The St Helens Borough covers roughly 30 km² (12 sq miles) of soft rolling hills used primarily for agricultural purposes, mainly arable. The highest point in the borough, and in the whole of Merseyside, is Billinge Hill, north of the town centre. From the top of this hill the cities of Manchester and Liverpool are visible on a clear day, as well as the towns of Wigan, Bolton and Warrington. The Mill Brook/Windle Brook runs through Eccleston and connects with the disused St Helens branch/section of the Sankey Canal in the town centre. St Helens is around above sea level.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Carr Mill Dam is Merseyside's largest body of inland water, with lakeside trails and walks. It is used for national competitive powerboating and angling events.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Moss Bank, a suburb of St Helens, is about north of the town centre. It has a community library and St David's


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Burgies are two tailings on the site of the old Rushy Park coal mine. They were created by dumping toxic chemical waste from the manufacture of glass; they have since been covered with tall grass and woodland.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens was struck by an F1/T2 tornado on 23 November 1981, as part of the record-breaking nationwide tornado outbreak on that day. Damage from the tornado occurred in St Helens town centre.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens is located to the east of Liverpool and from the centre of Manchester. The borough shares borders with the towns or boroughs of Prescot in Knowsley, Skelmersdale, Warrington, Widnes and Wigan; it has direct transport links by road and two main railway lines. Its centralised location has formed the basis of the local authority's promotional literature.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens is well served by motorway links with the east–west corridors of the M58 and M62 to the north and south of the town respectively. The town is also served by the parallel-running north–south routes of the M57 and M6 to the east and west.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The M6 runs a few miles to the eastern side of the town centre, with J23 at Haydock serving both northbound and southbound traffic and J24 at Ashton in Makerfield serving southbound exit and northbound access.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The M62 runs a couple of miles to the south of the town with J7 at Rainhill Stoops. The M57's J2 lies several miles south-west of St. Helens, at Prescot. The M58 is several miles north, at the north-western end of the A570 Rainford by-pass dual carriageway.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The A580 "East Lancashire Road" runs north of the town centre alongside Eccleston, Moss Bank and through Haydock. It is a dual-carriageway former trunk road taking traffic from Manchester to the Liverpool Docks. It was built between 1929 and 1934 and was opened by King George V. It was intended to take pressure away from the A58, a major road running from Prescot (M57) through St Helens to the A1(M) at Wetherby, West Yorkshire.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Rainford by-pass is a section of the A570, between the East Lancashire Road and the M58; it is part of the transport route from Southport, in Sefton, through west Lancashire and St Helens to the M62 J7 at Rainhill.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: A major development in communication was the opening of the dual-carriageway "St Helens Linkway" (classified as part of the A570) in 1994, which linked the town centre directly with the M62 (at Rainhill). The A572 takes traffic from the town centre through Parr to Earlestown and Newton-le-Willows. In July 2020, the St Helens Linkway grass verge was chosen by St Helens Council as a site on which to plant yellow flowers in a large heart shape, in memory of all who had died during the coronavirus pandemic.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In 2010, St Helens was proclaimed "UK's most car-friendly town" measured on variables such as "petrol prices, parking costs and the number of speed cameras in an assessment carried out by Virgin Money Car Insurance" in research conducted by "The Independent" newspaper.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Bus services to Wigan, Liverpool, Widnes and Warrington operate from the town centre. St Helens has a central bus station that sits between Bickerstaffe Street and Corporation Street. A Merseytravel office is located on Bickerstaffe Street, where bus passes and advice can be sought.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: From 1890, St Helens Corporation Transport organised public network services throughout the area, providing bus and trolleybus services. Following local government re-organisation in 1974, the Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive (Merseytravel) was expanded to cover St Helens. After privatisation in 1986, the town was served by several locally-branded operations under the umbrella of Merseyside Transport Limited (MTL), in which Merseytravel retained shares until 1993.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Arriva purchased MTL in 2000 and has operated the majority of the routes since. Several smaller operators run specific routes within the town area, such as Cumfybus, Hattons, HTL Buses, Red Kite Stagecoach Merseyside & South Lancashire and local municipal bus companies. There were also three zero-fare services operated by battery-electric minibuses in and around the town centre, ferrying passengers to nearby retail parks such as Ravenhead, which were provided on behalf of Merseytravel by Selwyns Travel. From 22 February 2014, these buses were withdrawn from service as part of a Merseytravel programme of spending cuts and due to the buses being at end of their operational lives.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens Central station serves the town centre. The stations of Thatto Heath, Eccleston Park and Garswood are on the Liverpool to Wigan Line that runs from Liverpool Lime Street to Wigan North Western.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The Liverpool to Manchester line serves the St Helens area at Rainhill, Lea Green and St Helens Junction before passing on to Earlestown and Newton-le-Willows. The St Helens Junction and Rainhill buildings are two of the original stations that were built when the line opened in 1830.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: A major redevelopment of St Helens Central station was completed in 2007 at a cost of £6.2 million, which the council hoped would encourage investment, create more jobs and improve the gateway into the town. The building has been constructed using copper on the fins, in reference to the town's early industrial heritage.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In 2010, it was confirmed by the government that electrification both of the Liverpool to Manchester and Liverpool to Wigan lines would be implemented, with national body Network Rail announcing a projected overall completion date of 2014. Electrification work was eventually completed in 2015 and Northern Rail, the train operating company, announced the introduction of electric services on the line from the commencement of the new timetable changeover on 17 May 2015. The Liverpool to Wigan service is now operated by 4-car Class 319 electric units.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens is a landlocked town, but it has easy access to the ports of Liverpool, on the River Mersey and Mostyn, and north Wales on the River Dee. The Sankey Canal, including the St Helens section, is no longer used for transporting goods; it consists of several short sections only, with the remainder being drained and filled.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The nearest airport is Liverpool John Lennon Airport, located about 12 miles (19 km) south-west of the town and is connected by a frequent service from St Helens bus station (the 89 service). By road, it is accessed via the St Helens Linkway to M62 westbound J7 at Rainhill. There is no direct rail connection at present, although some trains calling at St Helens Central now go to Liverpool South Parkway station, which has shuttle buses connecting with the airport.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Manchester Airport is approximately 25 miles (40 km) away. By road, it is accessed via the St Helens Linkway to M62 eastbound J7 at Rainhill and by rail; the Manchester Airport train service serves St Helens Junction station.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: An extensive tram and trolleybus system operated between 1880 and 1936. Trolleybus services commenced in 1927 and ceased 30 June 1958, when the last Prescot Circle trolleybus was replaced by a bus service. From 1919, the service was operated by the St Helens Corporation Tramways; prior to this, it had been operated by the St Helens and District Tramways Company and subsequently the New St Helens and District Tramways Company. Originally horse drawn, they became steam powered by 1890 and then electric by 1899. The original lines were all removed during the war for steel for the war effort. The only tram tracks left can be seen in the Transport Museum and one isolated trolleybus pole that carried the power lines can still be seen in Warrington Road, Peasley Cross.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens first became responsible for the administration of the wider area in 1836 when made a Registration sub-district of the Prescot Parish as part of the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 that devolved control down to the more localised Parish control (spurred on by the Reform Act 1832).


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens, in Hardshaw of Windle, constructed its original Town Hall in 1839 that served as a legal court, meeting house, and administrative centre. It also held Council meetings for Aldermen and Parishioners alike.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: In 1868, St Helens was incorporated as a borough (covering the 4 Townships). In response to the old, smaller, hall suffering fire damage in 1872 a new hall was planned. This current town hall was built between 1872 and 1876. In 1889 St Helens was again reformed, this time as a county borough with greater responsibility over an increased area of land. This was part of an ongoing process of local government restructure during the Victorian era, this time as part of the Municipal Corporations Act 1882.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: As a county borough, St Helens was, from 1889 to 1974, inside the administrative county of Lancashire. On 1 April 1974, under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972, St Helens became the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens in the newly created Merseyside Metropolitan county. At this time St Helens Council replaced all the local Councils within the prescribed area.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The old Town and Borough Council coat of arms were granted on 17 January 1876. The coat of arms is an Argent (white or silver) Field common to earlier coat of arms in the area. The black cross is referenced from the family of the Ecclestons. The saltires in the first and fourth quarters are from the arms of the Gerards of Windleshaw. The "second and third a griffon segreant" meanwhile are taken from the Bold family. The blue bars are from the arms of the Parr family, Marquises of Northampton. The lion is from the crest of the Walmsleys and the two fleurs-de-lys refer to Sir David Gamble, first Mayor and benefactor of the town, and the Haydock family.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: As the council ceased to exist in 1974, these arms are since then no longer in use. The coat of arms of the present council of Metropolitan Borough of St Helens has taken over part of its design.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The motto was the Latin "Ex Terra Lucem". A literal translation would be "From the Ground, Light" whilst more descriptive translations might be "Light out of the earth" or "Out of the earth comes light". The phrase refers to both the abundant and winnable coal resources (which can be burnt, to produce "light") in addition to their use in local industry such as Glass (through which light passes).


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The motto of the town and larger borough was changed in 1974 to "PROSPERITAS IN EXCELSIS" ("Success in the highest"or "Flourishing well"), which is included on the arms of the Metropolitan borough Council.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: After the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, Frank Cottrell Boyce the creative writer behind Danny Boyle's opening ceremony revealed that the town motto was a significant influence to the Olympic cauldron designed by Thomas Heatherwick. The cauldron petals, once lit, started on the floor and rose up to form one torch.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: The success and high profile of the games led the Council and local residents to consider re-adopting "Ex Terra Lucem". It was felt that it was more appropriate to the town's history and had more meaning for local people, representing hope for the future. A number of people had raised this and requested that the Council consider replacing the motto.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: A public consultation commenced on 17 January 2013 and at its meeting held on 17 April 2013, Council resolved to revert to the original motto of "Ex Terra Lucem". The Coat of Arms remained the same.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: St Helens is represented by the St Helens South and Whiston and St Helens North constituencies. Both contain areas outside of the town boundary, but within the greater Borough. Each constituency sends 1 representative to Parliament.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: At the general election in 2015 both Dave Watts and Shaun Woodward stood down from their seats. David Watts MP (St Helens North) had been incumbent since 1997, whilst Shaun Woodward MP (St Helens South and Whiston) had retained his seat since 2001. Watts received a life peerage and became Baron Watts in December 2015.


title: St Helens, Merseyside

text: Conor McGinn (St Helens North) and Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) were selected as Labour Party candidates and both were elected as MPs in 2015.