St Helens owes its name to a chapel of ease, some 12 miles east of Liverpool, and its development into a major town to its rich underlying coal seams and to its water-courses which, forming the Sankey Brook, flow into the Mersey. St Helens was thus linked to the Mersey and England's first industrial canal was built and urban growth was triggered. " ... like other Lancashire volumes in the Phillimore series, it is of excellent quality ... " Lancashire Local Historian