About the town » Poynton, Cheshire East, England, Great Britain

Poynton is a town within the civil parish of Poynton-with-Worth, and the unitary authority area of Cheshire East, England. For ceremonial purposes it is part of the county of Cheshire, but the border between Cheshire and Greater Manchester (Poynton Brook) runs through the town. Poynton is located at the easternmost fringe of the Cheshire Plain, 7 miles north of Macclesfield, 5 miles south of Stockport and 11 miles south-southeast of Manchester. At the time of the United Kingdom Census 2001, Poynton-with-Worth had a population of 14,433, ranking it 44th on the Greater Manchester Urban Area. The name of Poynton is of Old English derivation, indicating ancient settlement by the Anglo-Saxons. From the late middle ages coal has been mined in Poynton. The collieries, under the ownership of the Lords Vernon, from 1832 until their closure in 1935 they were the largest in Cheshire. Consequent urbanisation and socioeconomic development necessitated better transport links; these came with the completion of the Macclesfield Canal through Poynton in 1831 and the arrival of the Manchester and Birmingham Railway in 1845 and the Macclesfield, Bollington and Marple Railway in 1869. By the late 20th century, Poynton had emerged as a commuter town, partly because of the transport links and because it forms part of the Greater Manchester Urban Area.