Cleator Moor & Loweswater: I do generally depart London and at the start of September 2018 I used to be on vacation with a bunch of buddies in Ennerdale on the west of the Lake District.
On Sunday 2nd September a few of our get together needed to go to a morning service on the Methodist Church in Cleator Moor. It wasn’t my cup of tea however there was a spare seat within the automotive and I went alongside for the journey, and whereas they worshipped took a stroll across the city and made some photos.
It maybe wasn’t the type of climate most individuals would select for making images, uninteresting and with occasional gentle rain, however as I wrote, this “gave the impression to be consistent with the temper of the place“.
Cleator Moor was as soon as a affluent mining city, now quite desolate and depressed. It’s a small city, with a inhabitants now of round 7,000 however was constructed on a quite grander scale than that may recommend. In its heyday the inhabitants would have been quite greater.
This was an vital space within the early days of the economic revolution because the native mines provided each coal and the iron ore haematite and there was native limestone – all that was wanted to make iron and metal. Cleator Moor had lengthy produced iron however acquired its first coke-fired blast furnace in 1841 although output once more went up significantly with improved furnaces within the 1860s. It was considered one of many pig iron producers within the space, significantly round Workington which grew to become a serious port.
As demand for coal and iron ore elevated within the second half of the nineteenth century many migrants got here to the city to work within the mines and iron works, with the inhabitants growing within the 30 years between 1841 and 1871 from 763 to 10, 420. Over a 3rd got here from Eire and the city grew to become often called ‘Little Eire’.
Many of the Irish had been Catholic, however there have been additionally Protestants from Eire and Scotland and Cleator Moor noticed a substantial amount of sectarian violence from the 1860s to the Eighteen Nineties. Among the many city’s 15 Grade II listed buildings is the Roman Catholic St Mary’s Church, designed by famous church architect Edwarde Welby Pugin and consecrated in 1872, changing a mission church in-built 1853.
In it’s heyday the city was served by two railway traces, every with its personal station, although each traces had been primarily used for mineral visitors. Passenger providers ended around1930 although items providers continued for some years. Within the early years of the twentieth century the native iron ore ran out and the coal grew to become too costly to mine and the city started to enter decline.
It obtained a lift in 1938 with the approaching of Kangol, based by Jakob Henryk Spreiregen (1894 – 1982). Born in Warsaw he moved along with his household to France in 1910 and coming to the UK in 1915 and serving within the Medical Corps within the struggle and was naturalised in 1920. The Kangol model title got here in 1930, from Okaynitting ANGora WooL.
Spreiregen had begun manufacturing hats in London in 1916 in addition to importing basque berets from France. In 1938 seeing one other struggle coming he realised there could be a fantastic demand for miltary berets and leased a mill in Cleator, importing equipment from a French beret manufacturing unit. Kangol opened a brand new manufacturing unit in Cleator in 1950, then using 110 folks. Kangol diversified into crash helmets, seat belts and girls trend hats and loved nice success, however was purchase by a US firm in 1972.
Kangol continued to develop however an increasing number of manufacturing shifted overseas. They grew to become the most important hat producer on the planet and the Cleator web site using 690 folks the most important hat manufacturing unit in Britain. However in 1997 the manufacturing unit was closed, remaining only a small distribution web site till lastly closing with the lack of 32 jobs there in 2009. Cleator had misplaced its second main trade.
As I wrote in 2018, “The city conveys a powerful feeling of melancholy, although lifted considerably by numerous buildings of some high quality, and components of the principle avenue have a delightful uniformity, with easy terraced housing, its doorways opening instantly on the pavement. The central sq., with library, municipal places of work and a few positive parades, in addition to some attention-grabbing sculptures by Conrad Atkinson who was born within the city. Certainly one of L S Lowry’s shut buddies was a financial institution supervisor right here, and he typically got here to remain, making numerous work, and I might see why the place him.”
It was nonetheless raining intermittently after lunch once we drove to Loweswater for a quite moist round stroll from Fangs Forehead – quite typical of the Lake District. Although we did have some positive days throughout our week there.
Extra on My London Diary:
Loweswater
Cleator Moor
Flickr – Fb – My London Diary – Hull Photographs – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photographs
All images on this web page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to purchase prints or licence to breed.
Tags: berets, blast furnace, Cleaton Moor, coal, Cumbria, melancholy, Ennerdale, haematite, Vacation, Irish, iron & metal, iron ore, Kangol, Lake District, limestone, Little Eire, Loweswater, Lowry, peter Marshall, Phoenix, pig iron, sculpture, sectarianism
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