St. Helens

St Helens is a metropolitan borough in North West England, centred on the town of St Helens and covering settlements including Rainhill, Earlestown, Thatto Heath and Sutton. The district lies on the Lancashire plain and bears the imprint of 18th- and 19th-century industry: coal mining, glassmaking and chemical works shaped the pattern of towns and transport links. Canals, disused collieries and railway cuttings remain part of the landscape alongside housing, business parks, farmland and areas of planted woodland.

Glass manufacture has been central to the local economy since the 19th century; Pilkington established works here and the World of Glass museum on Corporation Street records that history. In Rainhill the 1829 trials of Stephenson’s Rocket took place on the local stretch of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, an event still referenced in local heritage. Short sections of the Sankey Canal and conserved industrial sites provide visible reminders of the technologies that shaped the borough and feed current regeneration and community initiatives.