  The goal of this study is to determine a distance to Westerlund 1 independent
of the characteristics of the stellar population and to study its neutral
environment, using observations of atomic hydrogen. The HI observations are
taken from the Southern Galactic Plane Survey to study HI absorption in the
direction of the HII region created by the members of Westerlund 1 and to
investigate its environment as observed in the HI line emission. A Galactic
rotation curve was derived using the recently revised values for the Galactic
centre distance of $R_\odot = 7.6$ kpc, and the velocity of the Sun around the
Galactic centre of $\Theta_\odot = 214$ km s$^{-1}$. The newly determined
rotation model leads us to derive a distance of $3.9\pm 0.7$ kpc to Westerlund
1, consistent with a location in the Scutum-Crux Arm. Included in this estimate
is a very careful investigation of possible sources of error for the Galactic
rotation curve. We also report on small expanding HI features around the
cluster with a maximum dynamic age of 600,000 years and a larger bubble which
has a minimum dynamic age of 2.5 million years. Additionally we re-calculated
the kinematic distances to nearby HII regions and supernova remnants based on
our new Galaxic rotation curve. We propose that in the early stages of the
development of Wd 1 a large interstellar bubble of diameter about 50 pc was
created by the cluster members. This bubble has a dynamic age similar to the
age of the cluster. Small expanding bubbles, with dynamical ages $\sim 0.6$ Myr
are found around Wd 1, which we suggest consist of recombined material lost by
cluster members through their winds.
