About Merseyside
Country: England
Region: North West England
Established: 1974
Largest town: Liverpool, (37k pop.)
Area: 645 km2 (249 sq mi)
Population: 1423,065
Merseyside is a county in North east England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Greater Manchester to the east, Cheshire to the south, the Welsh county of Flintshire across the Dee Estuary to the southwest, and the Irish Sea to the west.
Merseyside was created on 1 April 1974 from areas previously part of the administrative counties of Lancashire and Cheshire, along with the county boroughs of Birkenhead, Wallasey, Liverpool, Bootle, and St Helens.
Following the creation of Merseyside, Merseytravel expanded to take in St Helens and Southport.
What is now Merseyside was a largely rural area until the Industrial Revolution, when Liverpool and Birkenhead's positions on the Mersey Estuary enabled them to expand. Liverpool became a major port, heavily involved in supplying cotton to the mills of Lancashire, and Birkenhead developed into a centre for shipbuilding.
Innovations during this period included the first inter-city railway, the first publicly-funded civic park, advances in dock technology, and a pioneering elevated electrical railway.
The port of Liverpool docks, at Seaforth. Merseyside lies on the Mersey Estuary
The Mersey Ferry has operated since the 1200s, currently between Wirral and Liverpool City Centre at Seacombe, Woodside and Liverpool Pier Head.
The Port of Liverpool handles most commercial shipping, but several other ports on the Wirral peninsula, such as Great Float and Queen Elizabeth II Dock, operate too.
The Port of Liverpool is container ports that handles over 33 million tonnes of freight cargo per year and serves more than 100 global destinations including Africa, Australia, China, India, the Middle East and South America. Imports include grain and animal feed , timber, steel, coal, cocoa, crude oil, edible oils, liquid chemicals and exports of scrap metal. A second container terminal doubled the port's capacity when it opened in 2016.
