New interactive graph shows population rise
AN INTERACTIVE tool has shown how Halton’s population has exploded over the past two centuries.
A widget by the Weekly News’s parent company Trinity Mirror plots the growth of residents in Runcorn and Widnes since 1801.
The borough’s population stood at 5,470 people at the turn of the 19th century before doubling to 11,671 by 1831 during the Industrial Revolution.
Numbers grew to 17,657 in 1851, 27,285 in 1861 and 36,912 in 1871 and continued to grow through the 19th century’s final decades with 46,540 in 1881 and 58,457 in 1891.
At the turn of the 20th century, the figures show the area experienced a slight rise in 1901 to 58,755 before dropping for the first time in more than 100 years by 1911 to 57,062 people.
The following decade experienced the most savage conflict in human history with World War One and Spanish flu pandemic ● shortly afterwards. Despite this, Halton’s population rose to 61,039 in 1921 and 65,309 by 1931. The figures for 1941 take in the first few years of World War Two, but Runcorn and Widnes’ population continued to grow to 71,835. The following two sets of figures account for the ‘baby boomer’ generations with 79,026 and 87,168 Halton residents in 1951 and 1961 respectively.
Runcorn was designated a new town by the Government on April 10, 1964, and aimed to provide jobs and homes for residents fleeing slum conditions in Liverpool and north Merseyside.
The 1971 figures show another population rise following the designation to 96,150 before the area broke the 100,000 mark with an increase of more than 25,000 to 121,861 people in 1981.
The number of people living across Runcorn and Widnes grew again in 1991 to 124,915 before dropping by more than 6,000 people in 2000.
The population of 118,215 in 2001 grew once more to its most recent level of 125,722 people by 2011.