Burtonwood

Burtonwood is a village in the civil parish of Burtonwood and Westbrook, in the Borough of Warrington, Cheshire, England. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, the name Burtonwood is known worldwide as the location of the former RAF Station Burtonwood military camp. Burtonwood village itself is a few miles away from the site of the former station. The civil parish also includes Westbrook, which is a council ward and suburb of Warrington. At the 2001 census, the population of the civil parish was 11,265.

==History== Burtonwood was a chapelry in the ancient parish of Warrington, in the West Derby Hundred of Lancashire. It was later created a civil parish and was part of the Warrington Poor Law Union and then the Warrington Rural District. By 1974 the village of Burtonwood became part of Warrington District and is now part of the Warrington Unitary Authority. It is still a civil parish (now named Burtonwood and Westbrook) and thus has its own parish council. Burtonwood's population rose from 990 in 1861 to 2,408 in 1911 as the mining and brewing industries grew. The village of Burtonwood saw its greatest increase in housing and population post 1945 when the locally named 'miners estate' was built and vast numbers of people took employment in the collieries of Bold and Clockface both in the neighbouring Parish of Bold in St Helens. The population of the parish of Burtonwood continued to grow in 1951 partly due to the arrival of the United States Air Force (USAF) personnel and the but dropped from 8,238 to 4,899 in 1971, before rising to 11,265 today as a result of housing development on the old RAF station site. Nowadays, there is work being done on the station and two of the camps have been knocked down. This is because of the Omega Project.