Whiston Union

In the 1970s I would usually walk from my home in Pottery Lane, up Dragon Lane to the junction with Warrington Road, take a right, then a left up Delph Lane to my school, Whiston County Secondary. The school has been demolished for quite some time now, but the large building on the corner of Dragon Lane and Warrington Road, Whiston Hospital, is still there.

In the parish records I find numerous references to Whiston Union, usually associated with a very young, or very old death. I am making an assumption that Whiston Union is the workhouse that was also referred to as Prescot workhouse that eventually evolved into a County Hospital in the 1930s and then Whiston Hospital in the 1950s. It is now St.Helens and Knowsley Hospital.

This old extract shows the workhouse to the right of Dragon Lane (the vertical road) the tee-junction with Warrington Road and then a right and left into Delph Lane.

It is strange to think that for all those years of secondary school I was oblivious to the importance of the site to the Weldon history (besides the birth of my younger brother Paul in May, 1969) and I think, given time, I hope to document all the Welding/Weldon entries from the Whiston Union.

From 1904, to protect them from disadvantage in later life, the birth certificates for those born in the workhouse gave its address just as 1 Warrington Road, Whiston.