Warrington, in the period before the introduction of railways, possessed special advantages through its connexion with the Mersey and Irwell navigation, and it now enjoys unusual facilities for the transit of heavy goods both by canal and railway, while its situation midway between Manchester and Liverpool, and on the main line of the London and North-Western Railway, forms one of the chief sources of its prosperity. It was referred to by Blome in 1683 as “a very fine and large town which hath a considerable market on Wednesday for linen cloth, corn, cattle, provisions, and fish, being much resorted to by the Welshmen.” It was among the earliest of the manufacturing towns of Lancashire,—coarse linens and checks being the manufactures which at first formed its staple goods, and afterwards sailcloth and sacking. Perhaps it is now best known for its trade in heavy leather, the tanneries in its immediate neighbourhood consuming on an average about 10,000 hides a week. It has also a great variety of important iron manufactures, including iron in bar, hoop, and wire rod, and files and tools and pins. There are, besides, soap factories, breweries, maltings, cotton mills, and glass-works. The town is divided into five wards, four of which are in Warrington proper, and one in Latchford. The corporation act as the urban sanitary authority. There is a commission of the peace and a police force. The gas supply is managed by the corporation, but the water supply is in the hands of a company. The population of the parliamentary borough (area 3783 acres) in 1871 was 33,050, and in 1881 it was 45,253. The population of the municipal borough (area 1442 acres) in the same years was 32,144 and 41,452.

Warrington is stated to have been an ancient British and Roman town, but there are no traces of a Roman settlement on the north side of the Mersey. On the south side, however, near Wilderspool there are a considerable variety of remains, which some identify with the station Condate. At Domesday, Warrington, under the name of Walintune, was at the head of a hundred now merged in West Derby. Its present name first occurs in the 12th century, when Matthew de Vilers gave the church of Warrington to the priory of Thurgarton. Shortly afterwards Warrington came into the family of Pincerna, or Boteler, the progenitors of the Butlers, earls and dukes of Ormonde. Sir William Boteler, who was high sheriff of the county, and governor of the castle of Lancaster, obtained for it, in 1255, from Henry III. the grant of a fair of three days’ duration. In the 5th of Edward I. (1277) the charter was renewed, and another was obtained in 1285. About 1592 it was bought by the Irelands, and in 1631 it came into the possession of William Booth, father of Sir George Booth, first Lord Delamere. During the civil war it was held, in 1643, for the king by James, Lord Strange, seventh earl of Derby, who fortified it at great expense, and made it a centre for Royalist excursions, but after a siege of five days it surrendered to the Parliamentary troops. After the battle of Preston in 1648, the remnant of the duke of Hamilton’s army under General Baillie rallied at Warrington, and possessed themselves of the bridge, but surrendered on the approach of Cromwell. Henry Booth, second Lord Delamere, was created earl of Warrington on his retirement from the chancellorship of the exchequer in 1690. The town received parliamentary representation in 1832, and was incorporated in 1847. Among persons of eminence connected with Warrington are Dr Aikin, editor of the Dictionary of General Biography, Lucy Aikin, Mrs Barbauld, John Kay, the clockmaker who assisted Arkwright in his mechanical experiments, and Dr Joseph Priestley.

See Warrington in 1465, in Chetham Society’s Publications, vol. xvii.; Annals of the Lords of Warrington during the first Fite Centuries after the Conquest, ibid., vols. lxxxvi. and lxxxvii.; Homage Roll of the Manor of Warrington, 149l- 1517, in the publications of the Manchester Record Society, 1885; Kendrick, Profiles of Warrington Worthies, 1859.