The Whitehaven Colliery Through Time

by Alan Routledge

  Alabaster, Barrowmouth and Gypsum

  Not far from Croft Pit, almost at sea level in the small bay called Barrowmouth, gypsum was mined via a small drift into the 300 foot high cliffs. The rock was extracted, along with some alabaster or soapstone, and moved up to the top of the cliffs to join Croft Pit’s railway link to the main line by way of a very steep incline. This can still be seen, in the new image, as a straight line going from bottom to top. As a boy in the 1940s I can remember, with the help of friends, dragging the scouts’ large barrow, loaded with camping gear, up to the top of that wagon-way on our way home from a weekend’s camp. This was long before Marchon Chemical Works began to run off their waste to the sea in that lovely peaceful spot.

  Aaron Wedgewood and the Local Potteries

  The one thing Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven did, after his pits got into commercial production, was to try to attract new forms of industry into the town, especially those which would use coal from his mines on an industrial scale. One of the first to respond to his pressure was the pottery industry. Early production by the fairly unskilled work force was of such a low quality that, in 1698, Aaron Wedgewood, a member of the great potteries family, was persuaded to come to Whitehaven and to make a number of trials using different local clays. Before returning to Burslam he reported that he had found that Whitehaven clays were suitable for the manufacture of redware (terracotta), stoneware, clay smoking pipes and a type of semi-china. William Gilpin, Lowther’s estate agent, was charged with the task of finding suitable types of coal to fire the kilns. The Wilkinson family operated the pottery on Pottery Road, just off Coach Road, and produced some very good semi-china, decorated in blue or brown, much of which found its way to Maryland and Virginia. A fine collection of Whitehaven pottery is held by the Beacon Museum.

  Shipbuilding

  Another of the industries attracted to Whitehaven by Lowther was that of ship-building. With five or six shipyards operating at the same time, it’s not surprising that well over 1,000 vessels were built before the yards finally closed in 1889. The demand for locally-built ships to carry coal to Ireland never seemed to end and the Whitehaven vessels were built with coal in mind. The strong ships had wide and flattish bottoms (often copper-plated) to enable them to sit comfortably on the bottom of the muddy harbour when the tide was out. The yards worked continuously from 1650 to 1889 – almost 250 years. Over those years the demand was for bigger and bigger craft and it was due to the problems associated with getting the largest vessel, the 3,000-tons Alice A Leigh, into the water in 1889 that the yards finally gave up. The old photograph of the vessel gives some idea of her size. The move towards the tourist industry and the building of the marina has led to the establishment of a new boatyard, ironically on the exact spot where the yard of T. & J. Brocklebank stood before they moved to Liverpool in 1856.

  Croft Pit, Ladysmith Pit and Marchon

  Croft Pit was sunk in 1774 to a depth of 910ft and taken deeper through time. Croft Pit is on the left, and the Ladysmith shaft under construction is over to the right. One of Whitehaven Colliery’s most important pits, Croft stayed open until 1903 when it took on a second shaft and changed its name to Ladysmith Pit. The Ladysmith complex of pit, tar works, by-product chemicals and coke ovens continued in production until 1931. From 1943 the old site was occupied by the fledgling Marchon Products Ltd, a chemical manufacturing company. As the new chemicals company grew it occupied several of the old buildings and built new ones, eventually covering the whole of the area of the pit and next door farm. The multisided phosphate rock storage building sat almost exactly on the top of the two mine shafts. The old pit produced coal for 155 years but, sadly, the giant chemical plant lasted a mere 66 years before closing, largely due to its location – too far from its customers and its suppliers, but also to ill-informed pressure from environmental groups.

  The Croft Pit Incline

  Coal from Croft/Ladysmith Pit was taken down to the harbour by a wagon way using steam engines such as this to take it along the cliff tops to the Brake and then using the gravity system for the run down the cliff. In later years a rail line was constructed from the pit to the brake-house at the top of the New Road. Using a similar, but modernised, system to that of the Howgill Brake, the coal, in railway wagons, was lowered down the steep side of the valley to the main line goods yard at Corkickle. Years later, when the volume of trade required it, Marchon Products also used the Croft Pit Incline as the line was called. The line of the curving railway can still be seen near to St Mary’s Church. It is the slightly raised grassy embankment shown in today’s image.

  Explosions and the Pit Head at Croft

  Croft Pit was not immune to the accidents and explosions which were an ever present danger in the Whitehaven area. Between 16th July 1822 and 26th March 1864 there were no fewer than 8 recorded explosions or fires. The worst occurred on 12th November 1831 when 22 men and boys died. Their bodies were brought back to the surface via the pit head seen in the old image. The families would have to wait until the bodies had been officially identified and an inquest carried out before they were released to be taken home. Today there is very little left of Croft Pit or the giant chemical works built on the site.

  Coal Washing, Detergents and Bubble-baths

  Long after Ladysmith Pit closed in 1931, its coal washery and colliery waste removal systems continued to be used by Haig Pit until the construction of their own modern coal preparation plant in 1975. The old washery was then demolished. In the left background of the old image, a conveyor system for moving phosphate rock is under construction. The scale of the phosphate rock storage and conveyor system becomes evident in the photograph of the north-west corner of the chemical works below. The blue building was called S5 and was used for the preparation of bubble-bath, shampoo, and toothpaste raw materials, of which the company was the country’s leading manufacturer. The slightly taller building to the centre right was known as S4 and was where many of the packed detergent powders on sale in the UK and around the world were produced.

  Duke Pit & Mount Pleasant

  Duke Pit was sunk on Mount Pleasant in 1749, overlooking the town and harbour. A second production shaft was sunk on the harbourside, close to the hurries. Production of coal ceased in 1844 after three explosions with loss of life of both miners and horses. The higher shaft, on the mount, was converted into a ventilation shaft for the ever-growing Wellington Pit. During 2010/11 the remains of the ventilation fan house were restored as part of the Whitehaven Coast Scheme carried out by the National Trust. The whole area was carefully tidied up and several viewing platforms were erected. Alongside the restored fan house is a small white building – the Wellington Pit Gatehouse, now the Whitehaven Coast Guard Station – and over on the right is the Beacon Museum sitting directly on top of the lower shaft of the Duke Pit.

  The Duke Pit, Ventilation & a Guibal Fan

  The plaque erected on the remains of the Duke Pit fan house nicely tells the story of the ventilation of Wellington Pit. After coal production ceased at Duke Pit in 1844, following a series of explosions, the shaft was converted for use as a ventilation channel by fitting an 8-foot-diameter Guibal fan, powered by a high pressure steam engine. It drew 23,000 cubic feet of stale air per minute from the pit. Twenty-five years later the fan was replaced by one of 36-foot-diameter which extracted 30,000 cubic feet per minute of air. Between 1842 and 1844 there were three explosions at the Duke Pit, the last one leading to the deaths of eleven men and eleven horses. It was as a direct result of these explosions that the Duke was closed as a production unit.

  The Hurries and the Beacon Museum

  The first coal to be shipped to Ireland was loaded from the West Strand in around 1620 and such was the quantity being moved by 1632, Christopher Lowther built a ‘peer’ to handle it. This is now known as the Old Quay. A series of hurries were built over the West Strand to allow ships to be loaded directly. Essentially, these are large chutes down which coal thundered into the ship’s hold. Th
ere were five hurries in all, enabling five vessels to be loaded at the same time. Even as late as 1880 some coal was still being brought to the harbour from the outlying collieries in bags! These hurries remained in use until new facilities were built at the Queens Dock in 1875. Today the hurries are gone, along with many of the buildings and pubs (there are three in the old photograph). They have been replaced by the Beacon Museum, opened in 1995 and standing on top of the lower shaft of the Duke Pit. The Beacon has just undergone an extensive and expensive refit and is now open for visitors once again.

  Hurries, Coal, Silos and Rock

  The hurries were in constant use for 250 years, loading coal into ships at the South Harbour from wagons brought down from the mines. The wagons were positioned over the chutes which led directly into the ship’s hold and the hurries are said to have got their name from the speed with which the coal travelled down the chutes into the ships. In later years coal was loaded at the Queens Dock for Dublin, Belfast, Ramsey and several other ports along the Irish Sea coastline. By the 1970s Marchon were unloading phosphate rock at the same dock by means of two large cranes. They dropped the rock down a chute onto a conveyor system, which transported it into two giant concrete silos. From there it was taken by specially designed lorries to the rock stores on the old Croft Pit site.

  Ships in Variety

  Dating from around 1900, the old postcard gives an indication of the variety of vessels loading or topping up their bunkers with coal. Sitting in the South Harbour, close to the hurries, are a steam paddle vessel, a sailing brig and a steam-powered collier. The image also gives an idea of just how crowded the Mount was with housing built by William Hogarth for his weavers. Note the various terraces for rail sidings behind the ships. The slopes allowed much of the marshalling of the wagons to be done by gravity. The new image, taken from the same place and in the same direction, shows the Beacon Museum standing where the hurries once stood. Where the ships were berthed has now been converted to a marina with space for 140 boats, a space which is rapidly filling up. There are many Whitehaven folk who would have preferred the harbour to have been left in its original state.

  A Ship, a Plaque and a Lost Trade

  The Eleanor Dixon, a locally built brig, tied up at the Old Quay at low tide, waiting its turn at the hurries. The vessel was locally owned by a long-established Whitehaven family of traders and moved goods to the New World and eastern Europe, trading for timber, flax, tobacco and many other commodities. The Eleanor Dixon also moved coal to Dublin when general trade was slack. Considering the tonnage of coal shipped out of Whitehaven, there is surprisingly little left around the harbour to show the extent of that trade except for a plaque, on a seat at a picnic table, on the Lime Tongue. It shows a couple of baskets full of coal, the old North Wall hurries and the word Dublin – not much really to show for such a great and important industry.

  William and Henry Pit and the Lonsdale Ironworks

  Built by John Bateman for the Lowther family, William Pit was sunk on the north side of Whitehaven in 1804 and although the shaft reached the main band of coal in 1805, it was not until 1812 that the pit was considered complete. By then Whitehaven Colliery (Croft, Kells, Moss, Saltom, Wilson, North and William pits) was producing 3,502 tons of saleable coal each week. The image, dating back to the 1930s, shows William Pit and its second shaft, Henry Pit, the coke ovens and the town gas plant. William Pit earned the name of ‘The Most Dangerous Pit in the Kingdom’ as a result of many accidents and explosions, which led to a considerable number of fatalities. Today, very little remains of the entire complex or of the Lonsdale Haematite ironworks, just to the north except for some of its slag bank. The coal industry provided the coke to produce the iron which, in turn, was used to make the iron hulls of the large sailing ships built on the North Shore. Ship building ended in 1889 and the iron works closed not long afterwards. William Pit closed in 1955 after 151 years of more or less continuous production.

  William Pit, aka ‘The Most Dangerous Pit in the Kingdom’

  William Pit was sunk in 1804 and closed in 1955 and was the pride and joy of John Bateman, agent to the Lowther family; by the time it closed, the workings had reached a point almost 5 miles from the shaft bottom. The pit got its alternate name from the large number of fatalities which occurred at the mine during its lifetime. It endured many explosions and fires, each leading to a loss of life, the greatest of which was in 1947 when 104 men and boys perished. Not a very great deal remains of William and Henry, built as a second shaft to improve safety and production. The old sandstone wall, which supports a steel merchant’s storage shed, is one little remnant. It’s perhaps fitting that a steel stockholder is making use of a site not far from the old ironworks and coke ovens. In 1900 William Pit employed some 1,058 men, women and boys and produced 246,850 tons of coal, the highest tonnage of any of the individual Whitehaven Pits at that time.

  The Bransty Arch

  This is often referred to as a triumphal arch celebrating the achievements of the Lowther family in Whitehaven. The Arch was actually built by John Bateman as the means of getting wagonloads of coal from James Pit across Tangier Street onto the harbourside for loading onto ships for Dublin. The arch was opened with much pomp and ceremony but not really used for moving coal for any length of time. Nevertheless it stood as an impressive entry to the town until the council decided to knock it down. Despite many protests and qualified engineers’ objections the arch was felled on 10 March 1927 to widen the road for almost non-existent traffic. The older image looks south and the newer looks north. Today the only reminder there of the edifice is a large pub called ‘The Bransty Arch’ which stands near the same spot.

  Coal Handling at the Queens Dock

  After the opening of the harbour’s only wet dock – The Queens Dock – in 1875 and the construction of railway lines round the entire harbour, coal was loaded on to ships at the new wet dock and not at the hurries. After travelling round the harbour from the bottom of the Brake in wagons, the coal was lowered via a chute, which was protected by a shed from the vagaries of the weather. Even then, some coal continued to arrive by horse and cart! The older image, taken near the Duke Street entrance to the docks, shows the coal handling area, with the Grand Hotel in the background, and near the right-hand side are a few local coal merchants’ sheds, from which domestic deliveries were made. Today we can see the many changes 100 years have brought to the harbour side – flats, offices and shops. The harbour itself has been given a facelift, with many works of art scattered all around, many of which took the old industrial past as their inspiration.

  The North Wall Hurries and The Beacon Mills

  Before the Queens Dock had been built to allow loading of coals at any time of the day, regardless of the state of the tide, the north side was catered for by a couple of mechanical/hydraulic machines capable of handling wagons or chaldrons of coal. In later years those facilities were used, after modification, to unload and blow grain into the Beacon Flour Mills. The grain was brought up to Whitehaven by the mill’s own ships from Liverpool. John Pattinson’s Beacon Mills had come to the site from Penrith via the old barracks in Catherine Street and then onto the site of Brocklebank’s shipyard. Clearly the mill burned coals in its boilers. It was eventually bought out by the Quaker Oats Company of America but was finally closed down in the 1980s.

  Wellington Pit and John Peile

  The Whitehaven Colliery agent, John Peile, made his biggest contribution to the Lowther family wealth from coal mining when he sank Wellington Pit between 1840 and 1845, one shaft having reached the Main Band and the other the Bannock Band, and both reached the Six Quarters Seam by 1845. From there, two parallel, level drifts were driven seawards to intersect with the Main Band coal at a distance of 2,700 feet from the shaft bottoms. By then the shafts had reached a depth of 840 feet. The castellated pit boosted the Colliery’s production in 1900 to 536,493 tons. Between them the pits employed 2,181 men, women and children. The newer image shows just how clos
e to the beach the Wellington Pit lay. The pit did not escape its share of the disasters in the Whitehaven Colliery, and had to deal with the biggest disaster of them all when 136 men and boys lost their lives on 11 May 1910.

  Wellington Pit and the Red Flag Inn

  The old newspaper image shows the Wellington Pit sitting on the South Beach below the Red Flag Inn, formerly known as the High Bowling Green Inn and today as Jonathan Swift House. To the right is the Candlestick Chimney, which stands on top of the original Wellington Pit ventilation shaft. It now forms a focal point on the Whitehaven Coast Reclamation Scheme, a scheme in which the National Trust has made a more than creditable effort to preserve and, where possible, restore the clifftop path between Whitehaven and St Bees. The Red Flag Inn was closed in 1906 under the government’s redundant pubs closure scheme because it was impossible for the police to control. There were too many escape routes for after-hours drinkers, who could run rings round their pursuers. It is known today as Jonathan Swift House because it is thought that the infant Swift, who was brought to Whitehaven by his runaway nurse from Dublin, came here to live for a few years.