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Concept
Wirral Peninsula
Summary
The Wirral Peninsula (ˈwɪrəl), known locally as The Wirral, is a peninsula in North West England. The roughly rectangular peninsula is about long and wide, and is bounded by the Dee Estuary to the west, the Mersey Estuary to the east, and Liverpool Bay to the north.
Historically, the Wirral was wholly in 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 Local Government Act 1972, only the southern third has been in Cheshire, with almost all the rest lying in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside. An area of saltmarsh and reclaimed land adjoining the south-west of the peninsula lies in the Welsh county of Flintshire.
The name Wirral literally means "myrtle corner", from the Old English wir, a myrtle tree, and heal, an angle, corner or slope. It is supposed that the land was once overgrown with bog myrtle, a plant no longer found in the area, but plentiful around Formby, to which the Wirral would once have had a similar habitat. The name was given to the Hundred of Wirral (or Wilaveston) around the 8th century.
The earliest evidence of human occupation of the Wirral dates from the Mesolithic period, around 12000 BC. Excavations at Greasby have uncovered flint tools, signs of stake holes and a hearth used by a hunter-gatherer community. Other evidence from about the same period has been found at Irby, Hoylake and New Brighton. Later Neolithic stone axes and pottery have been found in Oxton, Neston, and Meols. At Meols and New Brighton there is evidence of continuing occupation through to the Bronze Age, around 1000 BC, and funerary urns of the period have been found at West Kirby and Hilbre.
Before the time of the Romans, the Wirral was inhabited by a Celtic tribe, the Cornovii. Artefacts discovered in Meols suggest it was an important port from at least 500 BC. Traders came from Gaul and the Mediterranean localities to seek minerals from North Wales and Cheshire.
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