Prenton is a suburb of Birkenhead, Merseyside, England. Administratively, it is also a ward of the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. Before local government reorganisation on 1 April 1974, it was part of the County Borough of Birkenhead, within the county of Cheshire. Situated in the east of the Wirral Peninsula, the area is contiguous with Oxton to the north, Tranmere and Rock Ferry to the east and Higher Bebington to the south east. The M53 motorway marks the western boundary. At the 2001 census, the population of Prenton was 14,429. The population of the ward increased slightly to 14,488 in the 2011 census. History Prenton appears as Prestune in the Domesday Book of 1086, with the name Pren-ton persisting despite the Norman-French accented spelling. Domesday records the presence of a water mill at Prenton, and this has been provisionally identified at Prenton Dell. The Domesday survey also describes Prenton as having a one-league square woodland - which is , if the league is taken in its old English measurement of . The size and importance of the wood may reflect the name of the settlement. Pren is Welsh (British) for the material 'wood' and in the name Prenton there is the Saxon suffix tún for a settlement, which suggests a settlement in a wood. The Welsh/British name for Prenton would thus be Prentre which could easily have changed into Prenton following Anglian penetration of the area in the early seventh century. Note that Landican (one mile distant from Prenton) retained its Welsh/British name even through Anglian and subsequent Norse occupation. Another explanation for the origins of the name is Praen is an Old English personal noun, with Praen-tún meaning "Praen's farm/settlement". The name has been variously spelt over time as Prenton (1260), Prempton (1620) and Printon (1642). Until significant residential development from the beginning of the twentieth century, Prenton remained a rural hamlet centred around Prenton Hall, in the south west of the current suburban area. This was the seat of the former lords of the manor, a title which has passed through several families since the reign of Edward III. It was described as being "in a sheltered dingle, surrounded with trees of large growth". The former Prenton Hall was eventually abandoned and replaced by a large farmhouse of the same name in the seventeenth century. In August 1940, during the Second World War, a house maid working in