Hale, Lancashire
Hale, sometimes known as Hale Village, is a village and civil parish in the far south of Lancashire. It sits on the northern bank of the tidal River Mersey, around 10 miles south-east of Liverpool city centre. Around 2½ to the west is Speke and Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Across the Mersey to the south-east, it faces the confluence with the Weaver, Frodsham Marshes and the surrounding hills in Cheshire.
Hale is notably home to Hale Point, on which a lighthouse overlooks a bend in the Mersey, which is the southernmost point in Lancashire. Also in the village is Manor House, a 17th century country house and former vicarage. John Middleton, a reputedly 9ft tall resident of the village in the 16th-17th centuries sometimes known as the Childe of Hale, is commemorated by a bronze statue in the village.[1]
History
Hale Ford
Due to the width of the Mersey at Hale Point, the flow of Mersey slows down significantly to the point that, historically, the sandbank would rise so much that the river became fordable. Hale Ford was a crossing point of the Mersey for at least 500 years. There are records from 1423 of a son of Peter Walley of Runcorn called John, who crossed the Mersey at Hale Point on horseback. The horse made it across the river but John himself fell from his horse and drowned. The ford was an important crossing during the English Civil War in the 17th century. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland took the ford with prisoners after his siege of Bolton.[2]