| Whitehaven came into the hands of the Lowther
family around 1630 and Christopher started developing its mining industry. This was the
greatest turning point in the history of the town. John Lowther, his son, soon took over
and completely transformed the town with a planned layout of its streets which his son
James developed along with an expansion of the harbour. Before this Whitehaven was just a small fishing village of only a few cottages - merely an adjunct to the religious settlement at St. Bees, the village that produced Archbishop Edmund Grindall. When the Normans invaded they put their castle in the area at nearby Egremont. Before the conquest, the crosses at Gosforth indicate the Norse Vikings had inhabited the area and it seems likely the name Whitehaven came from them. Only legends indicate the area’s history during the dark ages but the Romans left more tangible remains and had a fort at Moresby just on the outskirts of modern Whitehaven. Once the Lowther family developed coal mining other industries followed. Ship building was needed to help deliver coal to its principle market of Dublin and as iron-ore could also be mined locally, Whitehaven was well equipped for industrialisation. As the harbour was developed and stocked with ships, horizons broadened for the town’s merchants and trade with America and the Caribbean followed. This lead to involvement with the slave trade but resulted in Whitehaven becoming a major importer of rum, sugar and tobacco. It was the huge tonnage of coal shipped from the Port of Whitehaven (which at that time included the harbours along the Cumbrian coast) which created the boast that it was the next biggest port after Bristol during 18th century. Once competing with Liverpool and Newcastle the significance of Whitehaven at the time has since been hidden by its halted development in the 19th century when most other towns superseded it. Today, it is a surprise then to find the number of important characters associated with the town. Mildred Washington the grandmother of the first president of the United States of America was buried here. Also, George Washington's father was educated locally. John Paul Jones a founder of the American navy started his career in Whitehaven and later returned during the War of Independence to carry out his infamous raid on the town. Benjamin Franklin the American statesman visited local scientist William Brownrigg, a member of the Royal Society. William Wordsworth visited and wrote poems about it as his uncle lived here and even the celebrated artist JMW Turner came to paint one of his famous seascapes. The author of Gulliver's Travels and Dean of Dublin, Jonathon Swift also lived here as a child. Whitehaven generated many great characters of its own such as Carlisle Spedding the great engineer whose ingenuity helped to put Whitehaven at the forefront of technology. The Whitehaven Lowthers themselves became the richest commoners in the land and had much power in parliament. Several families became wealthy from the transatlantic trade including the Lutwidges, tobacco merchants, Jeffersons, rum merchants and the Brocklebanks who started to build ships here and later at Liverpool formed a famous shipping line that eventually merged with Cunard. Eventually, the bubble burst due to the loss of the tobacco trade caused by the war with America, the harbour being too small to accommodate the ever increasing size of ships and the remoteness of overland communication with the rest of England. Whitehaven struggled through the 20th century with a declining mining industry and the Marchon chemical plant as the main stays of employment. Thus the town suffered such poverty that much of the architecture was frozen in time until today, when historical research has thrown light on former glories and careful restoration helped create a tourist destination. |
for a more complete history see the section on Whitehaven Streets
© WAWL 2006