Stanlow and Thornton railway station

Stanlow Refinery is an oil refinery owned by Essar Energy in Ellesmere Port, North West England. Until 2011 it was owned by Shell UK. The refinery is situated on the south bank of the Manchester Ship Canal, which is used to transport seaborne oil for refining and chemicals for Essar and Shell.Stanlow has a refining capacity of 12 million tonnes per year with a barrel per day capacity of 296,000. Consequently, it is the second largest in the United Kingdom after Fawley Refinery, and produces a sixth of the UK's petrol needs. Stanlow is also a large producer for commodities such as jet fuel and diesel.Although situated in North West England, the refinery serves much of England as it is linked to the UK oil pipeline network. Oil is delivered to the Tranmere Oil Terminal via ship, then pumped to Stanlow for refining and stored for delivery.

Ince Hall was a country house near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England. It stood in the grounds of the ruined Stanlow Abbey. It was a house in Italianate style that was extended by the Lancaster firm of architects Sharpe and Paley in 1849. The extension cost at least £7,448 (equivalent to £820,000 in 2021). At this time it was occupied by Eliza Jane Waldegrave, daughter of the architect Edmund Sharpe's godfather Edmund Yates. The hall was demolished in the middle of the 20th century, and its site is now occupied by the Stanlow Refinery.During the second world war Ince Hall was used by the Shell Oil company to house operations which had been evacuated from London. This included a team working on Operation Pluto ("pipelines under the ocean"), a project to supply fuel to the Allies after the 1944 Normandy landings.

St Mary's Church is a redundant Anglican church in the small village of Thornton-le-Moors, Cheshire, England. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and it is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Thornton-le-Moors is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. At the census of 2001 it had a population of 260, reducing slightly to 253 at the 2011 census.The village is seven miles north east of the city of Chester. It is situated to the south of the A5117 road. To the north of the village is the Stanlow Refinery. To the west is the nearest town of Ellesmere Port and to the north east is the nearest village, Elton.

St James' Church is in the village of Ince, Cheshire, England. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building. It is an active Anglican parish church in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Chester and the deanery of Frodsham. Its benefice is united with that of St Mary, Thornton-le-Moors.

Ince Manor or Ince Grange is a former monastic grange in the village of Ince in Cheshire, England. The remains of the manor house, consisting of the old hall and the monastery cottages, are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and a scheduled monument It is one of only two surviving monastic manorial buildings in Cheshire, the other being Saighton Grange Gatehouse.

Ince is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is situated immediately to the east of the Stanlow Oil Refinery. It shares Ince & Elton railway station with the village of Elton, which it runs into. According to the 2001 census it was recorded as having a population of 209. By the 2011 census this had marginally reduced to 203.Ince Park is being developed near the village.

The River Gowy is a river in Cheshire, England, a tributary of the River Mersey. It rises in western Cheshire in the hills near Peckforton Castle, very close to the source of the River Weaver. While the Weaver flows south initially, the Gowy flows north and for several miles provides the valley used by the Shropshire Union Canal. It runs just to the east of Chester and passes through a syphon under the Manchester Ship Canal to meet the Mersey near Stanlow. Its total length is around 20 miles (32 km). Perennially popular with fishermen and home to several rare invertebrates, it has been polluted in its lower reaches in recent decades, due in part to the oil refinery at Stanlow and the arrival of the nearby M53 and M56 motorways, leading to schemes by environmental groups to clean up the area and to restock the fish population. The Gowy Meadows Nature Reserve, founded in 2002 and stretching from the A5117 to the M56, is an area of river valley peat covered with wet grassland or grazing meadows. This area of 160 hectares (395 acres), owned by Shell UK, has been created as a nature reserve by Cheshire Wildlife Trust. Surveys by the Environment Agency show that the Gowy's eel population has held up well despite a Europe-wide massive decline in numbers. The reasons for this are unclear but local anglers suggest that eel in the river may not follow normal migration patterns because of the partially closed nature of the river flow caused by the system of syphoning under the ship canal. At one time the river provided power for up to 20 watermills. Today only a few remain: Bates Mill and Walk Mill (both in private ownership), Bunbury Mill (now owned by a Trust) and Trafford Mill. The latter is owned by United Utilities plc. Bunbury Mill is open to the public at times. Trafford Mill is being developed as a museum and an educational and training resource concentrating on conservation-related activities. The river's length has been increased over the centuries as land has been reclaimed by draining the marshes. It was on the marshes at Gibbet’s Field near Mickle Trafford that James Brown and Thomas Price were hanged in January 1795 for the abduction and robbery of a mail boy.

Gowy Meadows Nature Reserve is a 165.8-hectare (410-acre) nature reserve near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England. It consists of low-lying meadows immediately to the east of the River Gowy near its confluence with the River Mersey, south of Stanlow Oil Refinery and west of the village of Thornton-le-Moors (from where a public footpath follows Thornton Brook across the site). It is managed by the Cheshire Wildlife Trust on behalf of the landowner, Shell UK, and was founded in 2002. The M56 motorway runs along the southern edge of the reserve.The reserve consists mainly of low-lying wet pasture divided by ditches. It is part of the Gowy & Mersey Washlands Living Landscape initiative. Before the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal the Gowy would have been tidal in this area and much of the reserve would have consisted of saltmarsh with brackish creeks, whose traces can still be seen in places.

The Abbey of St. Mary at Stanlaw (or Stanlow as it has been posthumously known since a Victorian cartographical error), was a Cistercian foundation situated on Stanlaw - now Stanlow Point, on the banks of the River Mersey in the Wirral Peninsula, Cheshire, England (grid reference SJ427773), near Ellesmere Port, 11 km north of Chester Castle and 12 km south-west of Halton Castle.

Stanlow Island is a small island found on the Manchester Ship Canal outside the Stanlow Oil Refinery. The island was occupied until the 1990s when the locals left due to isolation and the hazards of living nearby the refinery. Notable structures are the remains of Stanlow Abbey founded in 1178 that still remain at Stanlow Point. Access to the island using a 24-hour request ferry that links the Essar refinery to Stanlow Island with special permission.

Elton is a village and civil parish in Cheshire West and Chester, Cheshire, England, 13 km (8.1 mi) northeast of Chester, between Helsby and Ellesmere Port, near the River Mersey. Its proximity to the Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal have contributed to its industrial character. The village is on the north-western edge of the Cheshire Plain, 2.5 km (1.6 mi) from Stanlow Refinery. At the 2011 census, the village had a population of 3,586.