Hesketh Bank is a village in the

West Lancashire West Lancashire is a local government district with borough status in Lancashire, England. The council is based in Ormskirk, and the largest town is Skelmersdale. The district borders Fylde to the north, over the Ribble Estuary; South Ribbl ...

district of

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

, England. It is situated approximately north-east of Southport and south-west of Preston. The village is within the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

of Hesketh-with-Becconsall, which includes the village of Becconsall immediately to the south and which borders the

Ribble Estuary Ribble may refer to: * River Ribble, in North Yorkshire and Lancashire, England ** Ribble and Alt Estuaries * River Ribble, West Yorkshire, England * Ribble Motor Services, a former bus company in North West England * Ribble Valley, a local gove ...

to the north. The parish had a population of 4,187 at the 2021 census. Hesketh Bank, Becconsall, and the village of

Tarleton Tarleton is a village and civil parish in the West Lancashire district of Lancashire, England. It is situated approximately north-east of Liverpool and south-west of Preston. The parish includes the village of Mere Brow and the hamlets of ...

to the south form a single built-up area with a population of 8,755.

Etymology

''Hesketh'' was first recorded in 1288 as ''Heschath''. The name is derived either from

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

''hest shei'' meaning "race course", or from a plural of the Welsh ''hesg'', meaning "sedges".

History

The village of Hesketh is known to have existed in the 13th century. Hesketh Bank had a substantial

brick A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a unit primarily composed of clay. But is now also used informally to denote building un ...

-making industry using the local

boulder clay Boulder clay is an unsorted agglomeration of clastic sediment that is unstratified and structureless and contains gravel of various sizes, shapes, and compositions distributed at random in a fine-grained matrix. The fine-grained matrix consists o ...

, bricks being transported by the

West Lancashire Railway The West Lancashire Railway (WLR) ran northeast from Southport to Preston in northwest England. History The Act of Parliament that established the company received Royal Assent on 17 August 1871. The first sod was cut by Alderman Samuel Sw ...

which opened in 1878. Due to its geographical location, close to the cities of Preston and

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

, the village suffered during the Second World War. Stray bombs hit the old church in 1943, and landed along Becconsall Lane, causing extensive damage to the housing there.

Landmarks

The village has some architectural gems such as Becconsall Old Church which was hit by bomb shrapnel during World War II, All Saints Church on Station Road replaced the old church and is of some architectural significance as is the Becconsall Public House, which shut in June 2009 and was subsequently demolished. The former pub site was redeveloped as housing, keeping the name alive as Becconsall Gardens. The West Lancashire Light Railway is a

narrow gauge railway A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

that is located in Hesketh Bank at the site of the former brick works, near but not on the line of the former railway.

Geography

Hesketh Bank lies just to the north of the larger village of

and the village of Banks (

North Meols North Meols () is a civil parish and Wards and electoral divisions of the United Kingdom, electoral ward in the West Lancashire district of Lancashire, England. The parish covers the village of Banks, Lancashire, Banks and the hamlet of Hundred ...

Economy

Booths Store Hesketh Bank Underconstruction April 2010

Due to the village's position on the

West Lancashire Coastal Plain The West Lancashire Coastal Plain is a large area in the south west of Lancashire, England. The plain stretches from the Rimrose Valley in Seaforth, near Liverpool on the Mersey, to the south, to Preston on the Ribble, to the north. To the e ...

it has a rich soil, suitable for the farming of flowers and vegetables – this is still the main economic activity in the area. A

Booths E. H. Booth & Co., Limited, trading as Booths, is a chain of high-end supermarkets in Northern England. Most of its branches are in Lancashire, but there are also branches in Cheshire, Cumbria, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. It has been ...

supermarket opened on 11 November 2010.

Transport

The village is located just off the A59 Preston to

road and the A565 Southport Road has meant it has also developed as a commuter town. Hesketh Bank railway station was once a stop on the

, which ran between Preston and Southport. The railway opened in 1878 was closed almost a century later, in 1964. The station site is now occupied by a housing estate.

Leisure

The village is home to football, cricket, badminton and

crown green bowls Crown green bowls (or crown green) is a code of bowls played outdoors on a grass or artificial turf surface known as a bowling green. The sport's name is derived from the intentionally convex or uneven nature of the bowling green which is tradi ...

clubs, the Hesketh Bank Silver Band and the West Lancashire Light Railway.

References

External links

Hesketh Bank commercial website

Hesketh-with-Becconsall Parish council website
{{authority control Villages in Lancashire Geography of the Borough of West Lancashire Populated coastal places in Lancashire