Maghull | |
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Town | |
Central Square, Maghull |
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Maghull shown within Merseyside | |
Population | 20,444 (2011) |
OS grid reference | SD373027 |
Civil parish |
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Metropolitan borough | |
Metropolitan county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | LIVERPOOL |
Postcode district | L31 |
Dialling code | 0151 |
Police | Merseyside |
Fire | Merseyside |
Ambulance | North West |
EU Parliament | North West England |
UK Parliament | |
Maghull (/məˈɡʌl/ mə-GUL) is a town and civil parish in Sefton, Merseyside. Historically in Lancashire, the town is north of Liverpool and south of Ormskirk in West Lancashire. The area also contains HM Prison Kennet and Ashworth Hospital. Maghull had a population of 20,444 at the 2011 Census. Housing in the town is almost entirely a 20th-century settlement of semi-detached and detached housing although remains of the original town do exist. The town has had an elected council since the Local Government Act 1894 when the government set up a network of local governance across England. Following the Local Government Act 1974, the council changed its name from a parish to a town council.
The original settlement, consisting of fifty people and six square miles of agricultural settlement, was established prior to the Domesday Survey of 1086 where the town is recorded as Magele on a ridge of high ground, that can be most clearly seen at Red Lion Bridge towards the centre of the town and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal follows it on the plain and the A5147 on the brow. This ridge marks the edge of the flood plain of the River Alt, providing protection from flooding and access to this fertile pasture of the plain. The name Maghull may have been derived from the Celtic word "magos", the Old Irish "Magh" and the Old English "halh", meaning "flat land in a bend of the river". Another theorised origin is Anglo-Saxon mægðehalh = "nook of land where mayweed grows". A church is known to have existed in the area in 1100 although it has been rebuilt at least once and the chapel still stands, in the churchyard of the Victorian St Andrew's and is the oldest ecclesiastical building in Merseyside still in regular use for worship but in 1756 the mediaeval nave of Maghull Chapel was pulled down with a Roman Catholic dual-purpose school-chapel opening in 1890 near Massey's Barn.