Rainford 4.66

Rainford is a village and civil parish within Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, in Merseyside, England. It is around 5mi north of St Helens. At the 2001 Census the population of the civil parish was 8,344, reducing to 7,779 at the 2011 Census.Historically a part of Lancashire, it is unknown when Rainford was founded, but the earliest record of the village is dated 1189. Rainford formerly constituted an urban district.HistoryRainford is well known for its industrial past when it was a major manufacturer of clay smoking pipes. The nearby coal mines became worked out and closed prior to the Second World War.Until the mid-1960s, it was also a location for sand excavation, for use in the glass factories of St Helens.One of the noteworthy buildings in Rainford is the Rookery, a large 17th-century manor house situated off the 'Pottery Padds'; the house was formerly a school and workhouse and has since become home to a tenant.GeographyRainford lies on a fertile agricultural plain and is effectively an urban island surrounded by large scale farming, mainly arable, but with some livestock herds.The village consists of two main sections – the main body of the village, centred on the parish church; and Rainford Junction, a smaller settlement which has grown up around Rainford railway station. The two parts of the village are separated by a band of farmland, although they come close to meeting at the village's north-western end.