Place:Hoylake cum West Kirby, Cheshire, England

Hoylake cum West Kirby was a civil parish established in 1894 covering the western part of the north coast of the Wirral Peninsula. The area had previously been covered by a number of smaller civil parishes all established in 1866 from townships which were part of the ancient parish of West Kirby. The townships were as follows:

• Hoose (now known as Hoylake)
• West Kirby
• Great Meols
• Little Meols
• Grange (only a part of this parish took part in this merger)

In 1915 a further area of Grange parish and some of Saughall Massie was also added. The original name for the urban district containing Hoylake cum West Kirby civil parish was Hoylake cum West Kirby, but it was changed to Hoylake Urban District in 1933.

The population of the civil parish was 10,911 in 1901, and 17,892 in 1951. Wikipedia reports that the population of the equivalent area in 2001 was 7,680.

Hoylake cum West Kirby continued to be part of Cheshire until 1974 when, as part of a nationwide reorganization of municipalities, the entire Wirral Peninsula, with the exception of the municipal borough of Ellesmere Port and urban district of Neston at the southern end, became the Metropolitan Borough of the Wirral in the new administrative county of Merseyside.

Hoylake cum West Kirby is commonly referred to as either Hoylake or West Kirby.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article West Kirby.

Research Tips

• Diagram of Sanitary Districts in Cheshire showing Civil Parishes 1888 produced by the Ordnance Survey and provided by A Vision of Britain through Time
• An Ordnance Survey map of Cheshire circa 1944 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time
• GENUKI references for Hoylake-cum-West Kirby
• A description of Hoylake-cum-West Kirby from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 (courtesy of A Vision of Britain through Time)