RUNCORN  , a

market town and river-port in the Northwich parliamentary division of Cheshire, England, on the S. of the estuary of the Mersey 16 m. above Liverpool . Pop. of urban district (1901) 16,491 . It is served by the London & North-Western railway, and has extensive communications by canal . The modern prosperity of the town dates from the completion In 1773 of the Bridgewater Canal, which here descends into the Mersey by a flight of locks . Runcorn is a sub-port of Manchester, with which it is connected by the Manchester Ship Canal, and has extensive wharfage and warehouse accommodation . The chief exports are coal, salt and pitch; butthere is also a large traffic in potters' materials . A trans-porter bridge between Runcorn and Widnes, with a suspended car worked by electricity to convey passengers and vehicles (the first bridge of the kind in England) was constructed in 1902 . The town possesses shipbuilding yards, iron foundries, rope works, tanneries, and soap and alkali works . Owing to the Mersey being here fordable at low water, Runcorn was in early times of considerable military importance . On a rock which formerly jutted into the Mersey iEthelfleda erected a castle in 916, but of the building there are now no remains; while the rock was removed to further the cutting of the ship canal . AEthelfleda is also said to have founded a town, but it is not noticed in Domesday .