Ellesmere Port Travel Guide  

Ellesmere Port is a large industrial town and cargo port in the borough of Ellesmere Port and Neston, Cheshire, England, situated in the south of the Wirral Peninsula on the estuary of the River Mersey, to the north of Chester. The town had a population of 64,100 as of the 2001 Census.
The town is primarily industrial, being dominated by a Shell oil refinery at Stanlow and a former ICI chemical works. The town is also home to the Vauxhall Motors car factory, noted for producing the Astra range of cars in the United Kingdom. The town of Ellesmere Port was founded as an outlet to the sea from Ellesmere, Shropshire and the Welsh border area around Llangollen via a canal initially called as the Ellesmere Canal. The canal was designed and engineered by William Jessop and Thomas Telford as a part of a project to connect the rivers Severn, Mersey and Dee. The canal is connected to the Mersey in the village of Netherpool, and the basin was known as Whitby Locks.