"The surface, at a distance, looks black and dirty, and will bear neither horse nor man….. What nature meant by such a useless production 'tis hard to imagine, but the land is entirely to waste" are the words of Daniel Defoe as he rode through Risley in 1724.

With the advent of the Second World War, 927 acres (3.8 km2) of agricultural land was changed into a large Royal Ordnance Factory, ROF Risley.

[2] A number of bunkers were built (some can still be seen today) to house the munitions, to protect them from potential bombing, and also to segregate the site and reduce the consequences of any accidental explosions during manufacture or storage.

Although these bunkers are on the surface, they are covered with soil and turf and so give the impression of being underground.

After the war, the factory no longer had a purpose other than as a storage depot, so in 1956 the north-west of the site was sold to the Atomic Energy Authority.

Birchwood railway station is operated by Northern with trains stopping bound for Manchester, Liverpool and Warrington Central as well as long-distance services to Norwich which are operated by East Midlands Railway during peak hours only.

The 17 and 25 operate through all parts of Birchwood to Warrington, with the Gorse Covert SPAR shop (25) or Oakwood Keyes Close (17) acting as termini.

Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC North West and ITV Granada.

[9] To the north of the Royal Ordnance Factory, Risley was the site chosen for the design offices and headquarters of the Department of ATomic ENergy (DATEN) after the Second World War.

Following on from the weapons program, the Risley offices were responsible for the building of the Magnox and AGR designs of reactor in the UK.

BNFL (now represented by Sellafield Ltd and Nexia Solutions) maintains a large office of the site, which is something of a nuclear nexus, with AMEC (Formerly NNC), Nuvia (formerly NUKEM Engineering Limited), WS Atkins Design, Environment & Engineering, Nuclear Technologies plc, Serco and Assurance Quintessa (among others) based on Birchwood Park.

WS Atkins has one office in Birchwood, at Chadwick House, containing various business units including Water, Highways and Transportation, Design Solutions, Rail, Nuclear and Faithful+Gould.

The majority of the population describe their race as White (97.05%), while minorities are mixed (0.9%), Black (0.4%) and Asian (0.9%).

28.2% of the total population are economically inactive (due to retirement, ill health, or full-time carer status).

It is now a large, lively, suburban residential area with a mixture of good quality housing.

At the 2001 census (the next one scheduled for 2011), there were 2791 residents living in 1191 properties (statistic areas 005B and 004B – Gorse Covert, Risley South and Locking Stumps East).

Of these properties 81% are owner occupied, with the remainder being rented, either from the council, local housing authority or private landlords.

It is a relatively large district with a shop, public house (The Turf and Feather), takeaway shop, primary school (Locking Stumps Community Primary School), and a modern church (Thomas Risley United Reformed Church).

4,200 people are employed on the park, and a free bus service runs twice each morning from Warrington Bank Quay Station.