Whiston is a town and civil parish within the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley in Merseyside, England. Previously recorded within the historic county of Lancashire, it is located east of Liverpool. The population was 13,629 at the 2001 Census, increasing to 14,263 at the 2011 Census. A new village, Halsnead Garden Village, was approved with government support in 2017 and will be located in the Halsnead area of the town. The new village will contain over 1,500 houses, a primary school, a country park, and various community and leisure facilities. Construction is estimated to cost around £270 million. History The first record of Whiston comes in 1245, being rendered as "Quistan" and being within the West Derby Hundred in Lancashire. Archeological evidence such as a neolithic polished hand-axe and mesolithic tool fragments suggest that the region was host to pre-historic settlement up to 12,000 years, ago while other archaeological finds include remnants of a Roman tile workshop in nearby Tarbock and a medieval shovel head. The main industry of Whiston's earlier documented history is agriculture, with the first recorded mill in the area being held by local lord Henry Travers from 1190. By 1521, the first documentation of coal mining is made, which would in time become Whiston's primary industry. By 1700, the coalfields of Whiston, Prescot, and Sutton were producing 25,000-50,000 tonnes of coal annually, and this would only increase as the Industrial Revolution progressed and the Whiston area became host to tens of collieries over the 18th and 19th Centuries. The Church of St. Nicholas on Windy Arbor Road was consecrated on 30 July 1868. It hosts a war memorial, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, which was struck by lightning in 1928. The memorial was replaced in 1932. Whiston was previously host to Halsnead Hall, a neoclassical manor that housed the Willis family, chief landholders in Whiston from 1684 until the auctioning of their estate in 1929. Halsnead Hall, demolished in 1932 and now the site of Halsnead static caravan park, was designed by the renowned architect Sir John Soane. Before its demolition, it was the sole example of Soane's work in either Lancashire or Cheshire. Governance Prior to boundary changes in 2016, Whiston consisted of the Whiston North and Whiston South wards of the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley. The North and South wards were separated by the Liverpool to Manchester Railway, which runs directly through the town.