Claughton, Merseyside

Claughton (ˈklɔːtən ) is a village and suburb of Birkenhead, on the Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside, England. It is situated approximately to the west of Birkenhead town centre, adjacent to Birkenhead Park. Administratively, Claughton is 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 county of Cheshire. At the 2001 census, the population of Claughton was 13,723. For the 2011 census the total population of Claughton Ward, which also included Noctorum, was 14,705. The name is of Viking origin, deriving from the Old Norse Klakkr-tun, meaning "hamlet on a hillock". Claughton Manor House was built in about 1850 by local benefactor Sir William Jackson, with its gardens designed by Sir Joseph Paxton. It occupied a site between Egerton Road and Manor Hill until it was pulled down in the 1930s. Recalling his childhood in Claughton in the 1860s, the artist Harry B. Neilson wrote: "My father still wore half-Wellington top boots and the old fashioned stocks. The ladies wore poke bonnets, crinolines, Paisley shawls, and many-flounced, voluminous skirts, while young men of fashion affected peg-top trousers, little pork-pie hats with fluttering ribbons, and Dundreary whiskers. Policemen still wore top hats. Croquet was practically the only outdoor game played by ladies." The Birkenhead Institute was founded in 1889 by a local philanthropist, George Atkin, who established the school as a commercial company with shareholders and directors. Originally situated in Whetstone Lane, Birkenhead, it was relocated in the 1970s to premises on Tollemache Road in Claughton. The school closed in 1994 and was subsequently demolished. Wilfred Owen, the World War I poet, attended the school at its original location. A residential road has been named after him on the Tollemache Road site. Previously a township split between the parishes of Bidston and Woodchurch of the Wirral Hundred, Claughton was a civil parish from 1866 until 1898 when it was added to Birkenhead civil parish and municipal borough.