History
Prenton appears as Prestune in the Domesday Book of 1086, with the name Pren- ton persisting despite the Norman-French accented spelling. Domesday describes Prenton as having a one-league square woodland - which is nine square miles, if the 'League' is taken in its Old English measurement of x3 miles. The size and importance of the wood may reflect the name of the settlement. Pren is Welsh (British) for the material 'wood' and in the name Prenton there is the Saxon suffix tún for a settlement, which suggests a settlement in a wood. The Welsh/British name for Prenton would thus be Prentre which could easily have changed into Prenton following Anglian penetration of the area in the early seventh century. Note that Landican (one mile distant from Prenton) retained its Welsh/British name even through Anglian and subsequent Norse occupation. Domesday also records the presence of a water mill at Prenton, and this has been provisionally identified at Prenton Dell.
Previously a township in Woodchurch Parish, Wirral Hundred, Prenton was added to Birkenhead civil parish in 1933. The population was 81 in 1801, 99 in 1851 and 412 in 1901.
In August 1940, during the Second World War, a house maid working in Prenton became the first fatality of a bombing raid on the Merseyside area.
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