page_title: Wirral Peninsula
section_title: The 16th, 17th and 18th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Wirral Peninsula / History / The 16th, 17th and 18th centuries
caption_attribution_description: Leasowe Lighthouse stands on Leasowe Common and is a well known landmark on Wirral. It is built of brick, several feet thick and is solid at the base, tapering as it goes up to a height of one hundred and one feet. There are seven floors which can be reached by a cast iron staircase of one hundred and thirty steps. Over the entrance there is a tablet bearing the inscription M.W.G. 1763, this is commemorating the then mayor of Liverpool, William Gregson. Two lighthouses were erected on the coast of Leasowe in 1763 a 'lower light' on the shore and an 'upper light' on the site of the present building. The theory was, that the approaching ships master had only to line up the two lights to achieve a safe entrance to the Rock Channel and the port of Liverpool. The 'lower light' was troubled by erosion and the building collapsed. The present lighthouse at Leasowe was used as the lower light when the previous lower lighthouse collapsed and the upper light was built on Bidston Hill in 1771, three miles away. The light at Leasowe were lit for the last time on July 14th 1908, and the light at Bidston ceased to function in 1913. The lighthouse now houses a Visitor Centre and is the base for the Coastal Rangers.
context_page_description: Wirral, also known as The Wirral, is a peninsula in North West England. The roughly rectangular peninsula is about 15 miles long and 7 miles wide and is bounded by the River Dee to the west that forms a boundary with Wales, the River Mersey to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north.
  Historically, Wirral was wholly within Cheshire; in the Domesday Book, its border with the rest of the county was placed at "two arrow falls from Chester city walls." However, since the passing of the Local Government Act 1972, only the southern third has been in Cheshire, with the rest in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in the modern county of Merseyside, which is part of the Liverpool City Region.
  The main urban development is on the eastern side of the peninsula. Wirral contains both affluent and deprived areas, with affluent areas largely in the west, south and north of the peninsula, and deprived areas concentrated in the east, especially within Birkenhead.
context_section_description: A Subsidy Roll of 1545 shows that the population of Wirral was no more than 4,000. The peninsula was divided into 15 parishes (Wallasey, Bidston, Upton, Woodchurch, West Kirby, Thurstaston, Heswall, Bebington, Bromborough, Eastham, Neston, Burton, Shotwick, Backford and Stoke). Most parishes were subdivided into smaller townships, of which the largest in terms of population were Neston, Burton, Wallasey, Tranmere (then within the parish of Bebington) and Liscard, and were the same size as small rural villages.
  Wirral's proximity to the port of Chester influenced the history of the Dee side of the peninsula. From about the 14th century, Chester provided facilities for trade with Ireland, Spain, and Germany, and seagoing vessels would "lay to" in the Dee awaiting favourable winds and tides. As the Dee started to silt up, harbouring facilities developed at Shotwick, Burton, Neston, Parkgate, Dawpool, and "Hoyle Lake" or Hoylake. However, there was not a gradual progression of development, and downstream anchorages such as that at Hoyle Lake (which replaced Meols) were in occasional use from medieval times, depending on the weather and state of the tide. The main port facilities were at Neston and Parkgate.
  At the same time, larger ships and economic growth in Lancashire stimulated the growth of Liverpool. The first wet dock in Britain was opened in Liverpool in 1715, and the town's population grew from some 6,000 to 80,000 during the 18th century. The need to develop and protect the port led to a chain of lighthouses being built along the north Wirral coast. The commercial expansion of Liverpool, and the increase in stage coach traffic from Chester, also spurred the growth of ferries across the River Mersey. By the end of the 18th century the Wirral side of the Mersey had five ferry houses, at Seacombe, Woodside, the Rock, New Ferry and Eastham.
  Other communications were also improving. Turnpike roads linking Chester with Eastham, Woodside, and Neston were built after 1787. In 1793, work began on the Ellesmere Canal, connecting the Mersey with Chester and Shropshire through the fluvioglacial landform known as the Backford gap, and the town of Ellesmere Port began to develop.
  The excavation of the New Cut of the Dee, opened in 1737, to improve access to Chester, diverted the river's course to the Welsh side of the estuary and took trade away from the Wirral coastline. Although plans were made to overcome its gradual silting up, including one in 1857 to cut a ship canal from a point between Thurstaston and Heswall to run along the length of Wirral to Chester, this and other schemes came to nothing, and the focus of general trade moved irrevocably to the much deeper Mersey. However, from the late 18th century there was coal mining near Neston, in tunnels stretching up to two miles under the Dee, and a quay at Denhall was used for coal exports.
caption: Leasowe Lighthouse,
  built in 1763 and the oldest
  brick-built lighthouse in Britain
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