page_title: Bidston
section_title: Churches
hierarchical_section_title: Bidston / Community / Churches
caption_attribution_description: Boarded-up church (former Holy Cross Church) on the A553 Hoylake Road at Bidston, Birkenhead, Wirral, Merseyside, England.
context_page_description: Bidston is a village, a parish and a suburb of Birkenhead, on the Wirral Peninsula, in the modern county of Merseyside. The area is a mixture of the well-preserved Bidston Village, Bidston Hill, a modern housing estate, and the Bidston Moss nature reserve, industrial estate and retail park.
  Administratively, it is also a ward of the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. Before local government reorganisation on 1 April 1974, it was part of the County Borough of Birkenhead, within the geographical county of Cheshire. At the 2001 Census, the population of Bidston was 10,446, consisting of 4,725 males and 5,721 females. By the time of the 2011 Census the electoral ward was called Bidston and St. James. This ward includes Beechwood to the south of Bidston and extends into much of Birkenhead to the east, including all of the south side of the Great Float. The total population of this ward at this Census was 15,216 of which 7,117 were males and 8,099 were female.
context_section_description: St Oswald's Church is Bidston's Church of England church, and dates back to the 13th century. The current building has a 16th-century tower, with the rest of the church rebuilt in the mid to late-19th century. Holy Cross Church, the last designed by F. X. Velarde and built in 1959, is a Grade II listed building located at the junction of Hoylake Road and Worcester Road. This church is Bidston's local Catholic church but is now closed and boarded up. Bidston also has a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, located in School Lane.
caption: Holy Cross Church
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