St Helens is an industrial town between Liverpool and Manchester, and close enough to the former that it forms part of Merseyside. It has a six-figure population and not much of a history before the 18th century. It's best known for glass and rugby, specifically rugby league, of which more later. It has a 10,000 word Wikipedia entry which could really do with trimming down. And it's only seven miles northwest of Warrington so I hopped on the 329 bus and fitted in a trip to both. [Visit St Helens][20 photos]
glass
Pilkingtons started out in 1826 as the St Helens Crown Glass Company, a family business ideally situated on the Lancashire coalfield. It grew and grew, becoming the sole British manufacturer of plate glass and the dominant producer of sheet glass, so you may have a lot of St Helens in your house. In the 1950s an employee called Pilkington discovered how to produce float glass - still the global industry standard - and despite a Japanese takeover in 2006 more than a thousand people are still employed here. If you've ever bought Ravenhead Glass for your kitchen it was named after the St Helens neighbourhood where the factories were, and where the skyline is still mostly chimneys.
A lot of towns created a millennial attraction with the aid of a lottery grant, and in St Helens that was World of Glass. It brought together a historic production site and a museumsworth of artefacts, right on the edge of the town centre, and 25 years later is still the best thing to do in St Helens. You enter via a tall brick cone, inside which is an artwork created by local comic Johnny Vegas, and proceed into an airy atrium with a lot of glass walls. The approved route is into a gallery that weaves briefly through a history of the town, then delivers as many concepts related to glass as the museum's creators could think up.
The main sweep is a selection of glass items from ancient bottles to intricate studio glass sculptures, like a miniature outpost of the V&A, plus a few examples of cosmic glass that arrived here in a meteorite. Most of the rest is physics-based, optics being particularly suited to hands-on educational exhibits... twirl this, look through that, laugh at the special mirrors. Upstairs are more examples of gorgeous arty glass, including one of the four chandeliers that once graced Manchester Airport, and downstairs a proper art gallery where the latest exhibition is local architecture-y photos.
Initially I thought that was it, other than the cafe, until I worked out that the glass footbridge across the canal had doors you could push. On the other side is the Tank House, the world's first regenerative glassmaking furnace, a huge chamber with a vast flue above an irregular floor of bricky stacks. It's all explained if you stop to watch the film. For added fun you also get to walk underneath through a narrow brick tunnel (the hardhats aren't really necessary) and see further wiggly tunnels that were crucial to the means of production. Midweek I got all this to myself, and therein lies the rub.
World of Glass used to be a paid-for attraction but that only works for so long before everyone's been so the only way to retain footfall has been to make admission free. Inevitably it's been losing money - the glassmaking demos and gift shop aren't sufficiently supporting - so earlier this year everything was placed under threat of closure unless additional funds were raised. Thankfully local people came together to donate a five figure sum and, on the very day I visited, the government granted an extra six figures from the Arts Everywhere Fund. The National Glass Centre in Sunderland may be closing for good next summer but St Helens floats on.
other industry
In 1757 a desire to transport coal from here to Liverpool inspired the building of the Sankey Brook Navigation, England's first canal. It followed the Sankey Brook from St Helens round to Warrington, then ran parallel to the Mersey before entering the estuary near Widnes, and didn't fully close until 1963. At the St Helens end several sections have been filled in but others restored to create a genial waterside walk starting round the back of World of Glass. This section of the canal was once known as 'The Hotties' because waste water from Pilkingtons glassworks warmed the cut to an appealing temperature for bathing, though I wouldn't recommend it today.
Another industrial first was the brainchild of laxative supremo Thomas Beecham who in 1859 opened the world's first factory built specifically to produce medicine. His Beecham's Pills became a global brand marketed under the tagline "worth a guinea a box", which is one of the very earliest advertising slogans. The company grew to become a pharmaceutical giant, its name long swallowed up within GSK Ltd (formerly GlaxoSmithKline, formerly SmithKline Beecham), while the St Helens factory evolved into the company's HQ. It's now part of St Helens College campus and partly flats, while Beecham's gothic clocktower faces off against sweaty students pumping in a top deck gym.
rugby
St Helens have been playing top level rugby league since 1873 and are one of the twelve teams in the Super League, recently finishing mid-table. Their 18,000 seater stadium opened on a derelict glass factory site in 2012, part funded by flogging half the land to a monster Tesco superstore, and was originally called Langtree Park. But in 2017 the naming rights were sold to a Blackburn-based vaping and e-cigarettes company, hence it's now called the Totally Wicked Stadium and there are grinning red devils on the exterior. This is particularly inappropriate for a team nicknamed the Saints, but that's lowbrow capitalism for you.
The town's motto 'Ex Terra Lucem' is also emblazoned around the stadium, meaning 'From the Earth, Light'. It references the coalfield that brough local industries to life and is cited by local writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce as a key inspiration for the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony. I find it amazing that the first team's fixture list for 2025 includes just 13 home games, but that'll be why the club are so keen for you hire one of their suites for a party, wedding, conference, awards dinner, prom or wake. Only Saints need apply.
The Town Hall can be found in Victoria Square, its clocktower patently missing something on top (a steeple lost to fire in 1913). The building's not listed but the two telephone kiosks out front are. Any urban character slips away somewhat as you head downhill towards the chunky parish church, which has had the misfortune to be surrounded on three sides by a postwar shopping centre long past its prime. The council have already swept away the town's second shopping mall which is now an unnervingly large pile of rubble anticipating rebirth as a hotel, offices and new market hall. Other northern towns are way ahead in the regeneration game and it shows.
Sights unfamiliar to a Londoner include multiple branches of the same pawnbroker, a darts megastore, a family butchers called the Womble Inn and estate agents' windows offering 2-bed terraces for £90,000. I was particularly taken by the food options where fancy pastries play second fiddle to proper pies and rolls. Imagine kicking off the day with a Brekky Barm of bacon, sausage, spam and egg, then grabbing a jelly pork pie for dinner and taking home a family hotpot for tea. Life expectancy in Town Centre ward is ten years below the national average. I've been to several towns that felt more run down, both in fabric and in spirit, but St Helens has a lot of catching up to do.
