For the past 13 years we have been beavering away on our Town's local history. We're between Chester and Liverpool and their 'poor relation' with little of our back history recorded.
We have an actual Society membership of around 100 and a virtual one of 1,000 on Facebook, mainly locals - the elderly and retired - but we're open to all and just love youngsters enthusiastic about history.
We're all passionate about Ellesmere Port and its surrounds, doing all we can to preserve its unique story.
The Port of Ellesmere was first named as such by Thomas Telford in the autumn of 1795 with the opening of a canal and a canal port. Expansion came in 1843 to meet the Midlands' trade. In 1891 a massive canal, the Manchester Ship Canal, opened to Ellesmere Port bringing heavy industry: oil refining, steel makers, cement works, chemical works, nuclear, cars, etc. The Town has always been at the heart of manufacturing and, in its heyday, it wasn't a pretty expansion. Heavy industry close to our fast-growing population (and the housing they so desperately needed) gave the Town a bad name with pollution, excessive noise and obnoxious smells!
Today, within the Town's former boundaries, we have some large, thriving industrial parks along with a massively successful retail park - Cheshire Oaks. These have become much-prized commercial areas under the auspices of Cheshire West and Chester Council.
We've cleaned up the Town, added some attractive areas and are keen to continue this improvement. We're proud of what we have achieved but need to do more and let the world know how we got there. Our unique back story should be used to contribute to our future as will help improve the perception of Ellesmere Port. We're doing all we can to retrieve it, but without our own premises or strong champions to push our development forward, its a frustratingly slow journey.
A short, sharp way of doing this, and making our population proud of our achievements, is creating our very own video on the development of the Town. One we can broadcast far and wide to tell people who we are and what we have achieved. We're hopeful this can be financed by crowd-funding which is where you come in. It's a real need and we're hoping we've found just the people to do it.