St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England, with a population of 102,629. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, which had a population of 176,843 at the 2001 Census.
St Helens is in the south west of the historic county of Lancashire, 6 miles north of the River Mersey. The town historically lay within the ancient Lancashire division of West Derby known as a "hundred". The town initially started as a small settlement in the township of Windle but by the mid 1700s the town had become synonymous with a wider area, and by 1838 was formally made responsible for the administration of the four townships of Eccleston, Parr, Sutton and Windle. In 1868 the town was created by incorporation as a municipal borough and later became a county borough in 1887 and a metropolitan borough in 1974 with an expanded administrative responsibility for towns and villages in close proximity.
The area developed rapidly in the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries into a significant centre for coal mining and glassmaking.