Neston is a village and civil parish on the Wirral Peninsula, in Cheshire, England. It is part of the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester. The village of Parkgate is located to the north west and the villages of Little Neston and Ness Holt are to the south of Neston. At the 2001 census the population of Neston ward was recorded as 3,521, increasing to 4,329 at the 2011 census. The civil parish also includes Little Neston, Parkgate, Willaston and part of Burton and Ness, and had a population of 15,162 in 2001, increasing to 15,221 in 2011. History The name is of Viking origin, deriving from the Old Norse Nes-tún, meaning 'farmstead or settlement at/near a promontory or headland'. Another Nesttun village can be found near Bergen, Norway. It is also mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Nestone under the ownership of a William Fitznigel, with a population of eight households. Civic history A royal charter was granted to Neston in 1728 in support of its status as a market village. Historically, the current settlement was known as Great Neston, in order to be distinct from the smaller nearby hamlet of Little Neston. Before the rise of Birkenhead in the 1820s, it was the largest village in the Wirral Hundred. Created in 1866, the civil parish of Great Neston included the hamlets of Clayhill, Hinderton, Moorside and part of Parkgate. The population of Great Neston was 1,486 in 1801 and 1,524 in 1851. In 1894, both Great Neston and Little Neston were combined to create the Neston-cum-Parkgate civil parish and by 1901, the population had risen to 2,201. Between 1894 and 1974 Neston was governed by its own urban district council. On 1 April 1974, local government reorganisation in England and Wales created the borough of Ellesmere Port and Neston. This remained until 2009, when it became part of Cheshire West and Chester. Port Neston was a major port before the River Dee silted up. The port was then shifted further downstream to the nearby village of Parkgate, although by early nineteenth century, most traffic had ultimately transferred to Liverpool. Mining Neston is also a former mining village with a small extension of the Flintshire Coalfield occurring on its southern edge. There were two periods during which coal seams within these coal measures rocks were mined. Between 1759 and 1855 Ness Colliery worked using shafts largely