Уайтхейвен: История и современность кумрийского города

Town in Cumbria, England

Whitehaven is a town and port on the English north west coast and near to the Lake District National Park in Cumberland, Cumbria, England. It lies by road 38 mile (61 km) south west of Carlisle and 45 mile (72 km) to the north of Barrow in Furness. It was the administrative seat of the former Borough of Copeland, and has a town council for the parish of Whitehaven. The population of the town was 23,986 at the 2011 census. The town's growth was largely due to the exploitation of the extensive coal measures by the Lowther family, driving a growing export of coal through the harbour from the 17th century onwards. It was also a major port for trading with the American colonies, and was, after London, the second busiest port of England by tonnage from 1750 to 1772. This prosperity led to the creation of a Georgian planned town in the 18th century which has left an architectural legacy of over 170 listed buildings. Whitehaven has been designated a "gem town" by the Council for British Archaeology due to the historic quality of the town environment. Whitehaven was the site of a major chemical industry after World War II, but both that and the coal industry have disappeared, and today the major industry is the nearby Sellafield nuclear complex, which is the largest local employer of labour and has a significant administrative base in the town. Whitehaven includes a number of former villages, estates and suburbs, such as Mirehouse, Woodhouse, Kells and Hensingham, and is served by the Cumbrian coast railway line and the A595 road.

Although there was a Roman fort at Parton, around 1.2 mile (2 km) to the north, there is no evidence of a Roman settlement on the site of the present town of Whitehaven. The area was settled by Irish Norse Vikings in the 10th century. The area name of Copeland, which includes Whitehaven, indicates that the land was purchased from the Kingdom of Strathclyde, possibly with loot from Ireland. Following the arrival of the Normans, in about 1120 St Bees Priory was founded by William de Meschin, which was granted a large tract of land from the coast at Whitehaven to the river Keekle, and then south down the River Ehen to the sea. This included the small fishing village of Whitehaven.

James Pit is a pit in Whitehaven. The school "St James' Juniors" is on the site of the old pit.

The earliest reference to coal mining in the Whitehaven area is in the time of Prior Langton (1256–82) of St Bees Priory, concerning the coal mines at Arrowthwaite. St Bees Priory was dissolved in 1539, and the lands and mineral rights passed to secular owners. The first of these, Sir Thomas Chaloner, granted leases of land in 1560 for digging coal, and in 1586 he granted St Bees School liberty "to take 40 loads of coal at his coal pits in the parish of St Bees for the use of the school". Such workings were small scale and near the surface, using adits and bell pits. But the Lowther family later developed and dominated the coal industry in Whitehaven from the mid 17th century to the early 20th century.

Sir John Lowther, 2nd Baronet (1642–1706) significantly developed the coal industry and the trade with Ireland. He spent over £11,000 in expanding the Lowther holdings in the area, and considerably improved the drainage of his pits; thus allowing mining at greater depths. By the 1740s Lowther was the dominant exporter at every harbour in the Cumberland coalfield Consequently, a small (17 inch diameter cylinder) Engine No. 5, built by Thomas Newcomen and John Calley, was erected. It was so successful that in 1727 Lowther bought an additional pumping engine. With this proven method of pumping Lowther was able to exploit the coal measures under the sea by sinking a pit at Saltom on land below the cliffs south of the harbour, to a depth of 456 ft (138m). Work began early in 1730, and the pit was officially opened in May 1732 with great celebration. Carlisle Spedding had charge of the design and construction, and successfully sank only the second sub sea pit in Britain. It was reported that "A shaft twelve foot by ten had been sunk seventy seven fathoms" (141 metres) "(the deepest a pit had been sunk in any part of Europe) to a three yard thick coal seam (the Main Band) in twenty three months, using thirty barrels of gunpowder, and without any loss of life or limb by the workforce'. Saltom Pit ceased working coal in 1848, and is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument (SM 27801) and is the best known surviving example of an 18th century colliery layout. Evidence of the shaft, horse gin, stable, winding engine house, boiler house and chimney, cottages, cart roads and retaining walls, all survives. Coal excavated from Saltom Pit was raised by horse gin to the surface, then transported by tramway through a tunnel to Ravenhill Pit for lifting to the cliff top. Saltom Pit was used as a central pumping station, draining many of the other local mines via a drift driven in the 1790s, and continued in use long after it had ceased to work coal.

To counter the considerable danger of methane gas explosion, Carlisle Spedding invented a forerunner to the Davy Lamp, known as the Spedding Wheel or Steel Mill. This used the sparks generated by a flint against a rotating steel wheel to provide light, on the basis the sparks were not quite hot enough to ignite the gas. On occasions it caused explosions or fires but it was a major improvement over the naked flame. Haig was the last pit to operate in Whitehaven.

In 1983, a major geological fault was encountered at Haig pit which increased the difficulty of operation. This, combined with the political situation, and the miners' strike in 1984–85, contributed to problems at the colliery. The workforce attempted to open a new face, but a decision had been taken to close, and after two years of recovery work, Haig finally ceased mining on 31 March 1986. Today there is no mining carried out in Whitehaven though there is a proposal to sink a new mine out under the sea for coking coal. In November 2019 the UK government gave the green light for this mine to go ahead.

In 2007, Copeland Council declared that it could no longer afford to maintain the remaining Saltom Pit buildings, and preserve them from damage by the sea. But after an online campaign by myWhitehaven. net, the council changed their mind. They teamed up with the National Trust to try to save Saltom Pit, and obtained the necessary funding from various sources, including a 50% grant from the European Union. On Monday 8 December 2007, Saltom Pit was reopened as an historic monument. The pit buildings have been conserved and are now part of the 'Whitehaven Coast' project, a scheme to regenerate the coastal area of Whitehaven.

The existence of a harbour or landing place at Whitehaven can be traced back to 1517, when quay dues, otherwise known as wharfage, were recorded. The purchase of the manor of St Bees in 1630 by the Lowther family started the development of Whitehaven harbour primarily to export coal. Sir Christopher Lowther built a stone pier in 1631–34, and it survives, albeit very modified, as the Old Quay. By the 1660s the pier was suffering from storm damage and by the 1670s it was considered too small for the growing number of vessels wanting to use it. In 1677 a description refers to "a little pier, in shallow water, built with some wooden piles and stones". April 1778 saw the harbour as the first site of an American attack on the British Isles during the American War of Independence. The port's trade waned rapidly when ports with much larger shipping capacity, such as Bristol and Liverpool, began to take over its main trade. Its peak of prosperity was in the 19th century when West Cumberland experienced a brief boom because haematite found locally was one of the few iron ores that could be used to produce steel by the original Bessemer process. Improvements to the Bessemer process and the development of the open hearth process removed this advantage. In the 20th century, as in most mining communities, the inter war depression was severe; this was exacerbated for West Cumbria by Irish independence which suddenly placed tariff barriers on its principal export market. The harbour lost its last commercial cargo handling operation in 1992 when Marchon ceased their phosphate rock import operations. Drivers Jonas and marine consulting engineers Beckett Rankine drew up a new master plan to impound the inner basins of the harbour to create a large marina and fishing harbour, and refocus the town on a renovated harbour. The harbour has seen much other renovation due to millennium developments, and the rejuvenation project cost an estimated £11.3 million. This has provided 100 more moorings within the marina. Another £5.5 million has been spent on developing a 40 m (130 ft) high crow's nest and a wave light feature that changes colour depending on the tide, together with The Rum Story on Lowther Street, voted Cumbria Tourism's small visitor attraction of the year 2007. A picture of the harbour was used on the front page of the Tate Modern's promotional material for an exhibition of Millennium Projects in 2003. In June 2008, Queen Elizabeth II visited Whitehaven as part of the 300th Anniversary Celebrations. The Queen and Prince Philip then officially re opened the refurbished Beacon museum at the harbour; 10,000 people attended the event.

Whitehaven was, with Falmouth, the first post medieval new planned town in England. It is the most complete example of planned Georgian architecture in Europe and there are over 170 listed buildings. Whitehaven's planned layout was with streets in a right angled grid which it is thought was imitated by the new towns of the American Colonies, with which there were strong trade links. Although Sir Christopher Lowther initially purchased Whitehaven it was his son, Sir John Lowther, 2nd Baronet, who was responsible for its growth and development. Sir John acquired a market charter in 1660 for the town, but the urban expansion did not start until the 1680s when he laid out a spacious rectangular grid of streets to the north east of the existing tiny hamlet. Sir John specified that the houses were "to be three storeys high, not less than 28 feet from the street level to the square of the side walls, the windows of the first and second storeys to be transomed and the same, together with the doors to be of hewn stone." Ample provision was made for gardens. One block was left vacant for a new church and in 1694 another site was given for a Presbyterian chapel. Most of the streets were relatively narrow, about ten yards, but the principal thoroughfare, Lowther Street, which ran through the town centre from the Lowther family residence to the waterfront, was 16 yards wide. The old St Nicholas chapel was demolished in 1693 to make way for Lowther Street, and its materials used to build a new school. On the southern side of the town, the first section of the Whitehaven and Furness Junction Railway (W&FJR) opened on 1 June 1849 from a terminus at Whitehaven (Preston Street) to Ravenglass, and thereafter gradually in stages until Barrow in Furness and ultimately Carnforth were reached. This gave access to the south onto the main West Coast line, and later became the main line of the Furness Railway. The two lines were separated by the town centre, and a tramway was constructed through the market place allowing goods wagons to be horse drawn from Preston Street to the harbour, but there was still no through route for passenger trains. In 1852, a tunnel long was built under the town, and in 1854 the W&FJR passenger trains ran through to the Bransty station from a new station at Corkickle. Preston Street became a goods only station and served as the main goods depot for the town.

As in other colliery areas, horse drawn tramways and then locomotive powered railways were used extensively to move coal. The first steam locomotive made an early appearance in 1816, to a design similar to the noted Steam Elephant built by William Chapman of Newcastle. However this pioneering engine was not too successful and was converted to a pumping and winding engine. Nonetheless, the harbour and collieries eventually developed an extensive network of industrial railways within the constraints of the steep valley sides and the coast. The system had two roped inclines. The Howgill incline connected Ladysmith pit on the steep north western side of the valley to Wellington pit at the harbour, and operated to the 1970s, and on the south of the town the Corkickle incline, known locally as "The Brake", was built in 1881 from the Furness Railway main line to Croft Pit. This closed in 1931 but was reopened in May 1955 to serve Marchon Products' chemical factory. It was in length with gradients of between 1 in 5.2 and 1 in 6.6.

The nearby Lowca engineering works began to produce locomotives in 1843, including the first Crampton locomotives, which became the fastest locomotives of the day; one was reported to have reached 62 mph. Over the life of the works, some 260 locomotives were produced – mainly for industrial lines. The works entered shipbuilding in 1842–3, producing Lowca, the first iron ship launched in Cumberland.

In 1941, Fred Marzillier and Frank Schon relocated Marchon Products Ltd from London to Whitehaven, which was a special development area, after their offices were destroyed by German bombing. At Whitehaven they started manufacturing firelighters, then in 1943 they moved production to the site of the Ladysmith pit coke ovens at Kells, where they formed a sister company, "Solway Chemicals", to produce liquid fertilisers and foaming agents. At the end of the war, a number of chemists and engineers were released after the closure of the Royal Ordnance Factories at Drigg and Sellafield. This helped drive the pioneering expansion into detergent bases to include some of the first soap substitutes to reach the UK market. The new detergents were a big success, as soap was in short supply after the war; however the original reason for moving to Whitehaven, remoteness from Europe, was now a serious handicap as the site was remote from raw materials. The answer was to manufacture as much processed raw material as possible on the site. New plants were built for the production of fatty alcohols in a pioneering process; tripolyphosphate was produced on site using phosphate rock from Casablanca imported via the harbour; and sulphuric acid was produced using anhydrite from the specially created Sandwith mine adjacent to the factory. Production diversified further into specialist additives and chemicals, and continued to expand to become the town's largest employer, with 2,300 employees. The intention was to manufacture high quality silk and rayon fabrics for the fashion trade, but during World War II they mainly produced parachute nylon. After the war, it became Sekers Fabrics and reverted to its original purpose. It supplied material to the great fashion houses such as Edward Molyneux and Bianca Mosca in London and Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin and Givenchy in Paris. At the same time it supplied luxury style dress materials within the purchasing power of most home dressmakers working in nylon. The company was awarded the Duke of Edinburgh prize for elegant design in 1962, 1965 and 1973, and a Royal warrant was awarded as suppliers of furnishing fabric to Her Majesty the Queen. In 1964, they established a large showroom at 190 192 Sloane Street, London. Miki Sekers was appointed an MBE in 1955 for services to the fashion industry, and was knighted in 1965 for services to the arts. reporting that: "The common view is that the term is insulting because it implies people could not afford to buy meat for their sandwiches, so they had to eat jam instead." The original article had summed up the situation in terms of the long term rivalry between Whitehaven and nearby Workington: "Legend has it that one town's miners had jam on their sandwiches and the other did not, but no one agrees on which town it was or whether they did it because they were snobs or peasants." A reader from Maryport, a few miles further up the Cumbria coast (which, as occasionally mentioned in discussions on the topic, used to have a jam factory) reported that he had understood the term originally referred to people from Whitehaven, and this was echoed in the comments on the Whitehaven News article, suggesting that a former distinction between the Whitehaven "jam eaters" and Workington "high siders" had gradually been lost in the trading of insults across the rugby pitch.

Whitehaven has also played host to a Maritime Festival, which started in 1999 and was held every two years, and then annually (the last being in 2013) attracting an estimated 350,000 people to the small town. Attractions included tall ships, air displays which included the Red Arrows and various modern and old planes, street entertainment and firework displays. At the 2003, 2005 and 2007 festivals the local Sea Cadets were very much in evidence, conducting the traditional Evening Colours ceremony each evening aboard one of the visiting tall ships, and also taking part in the festival's official closing ceremony during the late Sunday afternoon each year. The 2005 festival also marked the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, in which Whitehaven had been designated Cumbria's official commemoration celebration. Up to 1,000 veterans and ex service personnel took part in the parade from the town's Castle Park to the harbour side, led by members of three military bands. Services were held on the harbour side, and aircraft from the Royal Air Force provided a tribute display above the harbour. The Maritime Festivals were founded by Gerard Richardson and organised by the Whitehaven Festival Company, made up of a board of volunteers, who organised 17 major events between 1999 and 2015. The company was closed in 2016. They organised the Queen's visit to Whitehaven in June 2008, followed by the Status Quo gig in August of that year. The company staged two events in August 2009. The first was the redesigned festival (known for this year as the Whitehaven Food Festival, although it did still feature tall ships) which offered the usual wide variety of attractions, both around the southern half of the harbour and at St. Nicholas' Church, on 8–9 August. The second event, the following week, was the Here and Now Gig (a music concert with 1980's pop icons). For the June 2010 festival, which was similar in format to 2009, the music performances (Status Quo, N Dubz and Katherine Jenkins) were moved to the harbour area. The 2011 festival (featuring Razorlight plus several 1980s acts including Madness) continued the successful culinary theme, with the return of Jean Christophe Novelli and other favourites. In 2012 the date of the festival was changed to the first weekend in June, to make it part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebration (with a red, white and blue themed firework display).

Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC North East and Cumbria and ITV Border. Television signals are received from the local relay transmitter. Whitehaven's local radio stations are BBC Radio Cumbria on 104.1 FM, Greatest Hits Radio Cumbria & South West Scotland on 103.4 FM and Hospital Radio Haven, a community based radio that broadcast from the West Cumberland Hospital in the town. The Whitehaven News is the town's local newspaper.

On 2 June 2010, Whitehaven became a focus in the international media in relation to gun laws in the United Kingdom, following a killing spree targeting people living in the western area of the county. After killing his twin brother in Lamplugh, and his family solicitor in Frizington, taxi driver Derrick Bird began the spree in Whitehaven, shooting several people on the streets and at the taxi rank where he worked, killing 12.

On 20 July 2006, Broadcasting Minister Shaun Woodward and Industry Minister Margaret Hodge announced that Whitehaven would be the pilot site for the switchover to digital terrestrial television in the United Kingdom. The selection of a pilot site followed on from trial switchovers held in Ferryside and Bolton.