Overpool

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Overpool is a village on the Wirral Peninsula in England.

Overpool is an area close to Ellesmere Port and as such is a part of Ellesmere Port, although until the 1920s it was a part of the parish of Eastham. Historically, there were three settlements or small villages - Poole, Over Poole and Nether Poole - but these no longer exist except Overpool which remains but not as a town. The area is separated by a roundabout at Cemetery Gates.

St Francis's Church stands at the top of Seymour Drive and there is a Methodist Church in nearby Rossmore Road. In the 1980s a railway station Overpool_railway_station was opened although this is merely a drop off/pickup stop with no ticket office and is on the branch line that runs to Ellesmere Port from Liverpool.

Until it closed in the 1970s Rivacre Baths, an open air swimming pool, was popular and people from as far away as Liverpool visited the baths. The site of the baths is now occupied by local authority housing that backs on to Rivacre Valey.

There is a small but basic shopping area at Overpool that was augmented in the 1960s with some new units, but the old Post Office (that shared accommodation with a butcher's shop) still exists.

Housing in the area is split between owner occupied and local authority and on the north side of the roundabout is an estate of post-war prefabs built in the 1950s.

The area underwent considerable change after Vauxhalls Motors factory opened nearby: several farms that had supplied milk and other dairy produce to the area were replaced by local authority housing.

Bowaters Mersey Paper Mill which produced newsprint from the 1930s stood close by and had a social club at Overpool that was a popular venue in the 1960s and 1970s.

Rivacre Valley has been for some time a conservation area and wildlife park.