RUNCORN a market-town and seaport of Cheshire, is pleasantly situated on the south side of the Mersey and near the terminus in that river of the Bridgewater, the Mersey and Irwell, and the Trent and Mersey Canals, 15 miles S.E. of Liverpool and 15 N.E. of Chester. The Mersey, which here contracts to 400 yards at high water, is crossed by a wrought-iron railway bridge 1500 feet in length. The modern prosperity of the town dates from the completion in 1773 of the Bridgewater Canal, which here descends into the Mersey by a succession of locks. The town was made an independent landing port in 1847, and within recent years large additions have been made to the docks and warehouses. The town possesses shipbuilding yards, iron foundries, rope works, tanneries, and soap and alkali works. The population of the urban sanitary district (area 1490 acres) in 1871 was 12,443, and in 1881 it was 15,126.

Owing to the Mersey being here fordable at low water, the place was in early times of considerable military importance. On a rock which formerly jutted some distance farther into the Mersey Ethelfleda erected a castle in Ö16, but of the building there are now no remains. She is also said to have founded a town, but probably it soon afterwards fell into decay, ns it is not noticed in Domosday. The ferry is noticed in a charter in the 12th century.