Coming Home
A visit to a bookshop is never a waste of time: Michael Moon Old Books in Whitehaven is a case in point. The founding owner says, “I, Michael Moon, came to West Cumberland from Chorley in Lancashire in early 1965 to work at the new West Cumberland Hospital, the first new UK post War NHS hospital. I worked there for five years training as a State Registered Nurse … and took early retirement at 26.”
He says, “I took a fork in the road and started an old bookshop, this being my fourth location. I moved onto the main street – Lowther Street where all the banks once were – and have been here since 1997 and have outlived them all. Since then all the banks and the general post office have closed down, some later becoming unofficial illegal cannabis farms.”
On Michael Moon Old Books: “I have been selling books in 45 countries for 56 years long before the internet, and have written 10 books about the town. I have sold over 50,000 copies and republished another 30 titles, some as many as six times. We have sold over 750,000 books and have never been out of work. We have in stock 30,000 books housed on a mile of shelves in 13 rooms and have 9,000 books on ABE on the internet. I only work in the afternoons now. My son Peter runs the shop at other times and does the local house calls.” Rare finds include The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam (1931) stamped Buscot Park, Faringdon (Oxfordshire). Bright young thing Robert Heber-Percy was the early 20th century owner of Buscot Park. It is now owned by the National Trust.
Whitehaven A Directory for 1954 was adapted and republished by Michael in 2012. Why choose an out of date directory to republish? “Because it is full of useful material. Local information you would find hard to obtain anywhere else. Few directories contain as comprehensive a street directory as does this one, where the name of every householder is printed street by street, house number by house number, from one end to the other. If you ever thought of yourself as a statistic, think again.”
On his background: “I came from a Victorian Lancashire cotton town to an old coastal town I didn’t know, which has forgotten more history than most towns could ever lay claim to know. I live on Roper Street on the site of The Theatre Royal, a Georgian theatre. Opposite it is where the Brocklebanks started what became the Cunard Line. Further up the street at Acorn House seaman Peter Heywood lived, a mutineer on The Bounty. Across the road Carlisle Spedding lived, who sank the first undersea coal pit in the world, the Saltom Pit.” Carlisle was principal colliery steward to the Lowther landed family, responsible for their mining interests from about 1730 to 1755.
On heritage: “George Washington’s grandmother Mildred Warner Gale is buried across the road from my shop in St Nicholas churchyard. The exact location has been lost and sadly no headstone to mark the plot. Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels and so on, spent his first five years here living in Whitehaven at the Bowling Green overlooking the busy harbour from which 300 locally built ships exported coal to Ireland – which has none – on every tide.”
On more heritage: “John Paul Jones who became Father of the American Navy was apprenticed here and invaded the town in 1778 after the War of Independence. When I came to work here we had over 100 working pubs – now just nine survive – several coalmines, a chemical works, a flourishing fishing industry and two railway stations. Like many old towns it was always self sufficient. Here you could buy a gun, a barrel of rum, a pair of clogs, a mile of railway lines, a long case clock or a barometer and speak to the men who made them. The long case clock in 10 Downing Street is a Whitehaven clock. The list goes on and on.”
What makes Whitehaven special? “The people, the age of the buildings, the first post medieval planned town, the third busiest harbour – regarding tonnage, mostly coal to Ireland – in the country after London and Bristol. My favourite building is 19 to 20 Irish Street which was designed by Sydney Smirke who also designed the Reading Room in the British Museum in the High Renaissance Italianate style. Will this do for now?”
Nikolaus Pevsner (1967) and Matthew Hyde (2010) sum up Whitehaven in The Buildings of England Guide to Cumbria: “A 17th and 18th century planned town of great charm, breezily colour washed and filled with the sound of seagulls. Favoured with coal deposits and a natural harbour, it was developed as a port by the Lowthers: first Sir Christopher who built a quay in 1634 by the village which clustered around Pow Beck where the Market Place is today, then Sir John a Fellow of the Royal Society at the time of Wren, Hooke and Evelyn and the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. His instructions from London to his steward begin in 1666.” Boom times continued for over two centuries.
A Guide to Whitehaven by Edward Burrow (1907) and reprinted by Michael Moon (2020) states, “Whitehaven is a municipal and parliamentary borough and market town in St Bees’ Parish, Cumberland, and stands on the west coast, 12 miles south of Maryport and 28.5 miles from Keswick. Of its history prior to the year 1620, there are few authentic records. At that date it began to acquire importance under the influence of the Lowther family, its export of coal raising it to the position of a considerable seaport.”
As Michael points out, the main export was coal, especially to Dublin: iron and salt were also shipped out of Whitehaven. Other imports included tobacco, rum, grain, sugar and timber. Ships were built. But the seeds of the town’s decline were already sewn in the limited nature of this trading and the geographical isolation. Coal exports peaked at 400,000 tonnes in 1928 and ceased six decades later. Opening in 1947, Sellafield nuclear site provided a new source of employment but touristy Lake District cuts off Whitehaven.
A Study in Conservation by Winston Barnett and Cyril Winskell (1977) traces the history of late 20th century conservation practice using Whitehaven as a case study. The boom and decline of the town are recorded. Copeland Borough Council designated Whitehaven Town Centre and High Street as Conservation Areas in 1969. Eventually around 250 buildings would be Listed. The Council and British Nuclear Fuels (owner of Sellafield) joined forces to launch a restoration and renewal project.
Winston and Cyril write, “Fortunately the Council’s portfolio of 50 or so Listed and historic Georgian properties, although spread over the town, were grouped in lengths of street frontages and not individually scattered throughout the terraces of houses, so it was considered that a major impact could be achieved in improving the town’s historic fabric if work was put in hand immediately on restoring the Council property.” Government funding was also provided.
Whitehaven’s significance as an early planned new town in England was recognised. Street patterns were retained and reinforced with sensitively designed infill development. Two decades later BDP led by architect Peter Shuttlesworth oversaw the regeneration of the harbour. Today, the harbour area is well maintained. The town centre, not so much. Houses and churches and other buildings of astonishing beauty lie empty. The comprehensive conservation of the town centre half a century ago has long faded.
It seems that a historic core, coastal location and apron of countryside are not enough to place Whitehaven next to Kendal on the tourist map. Surely the town could be marketed for architectural tours? The efforts of the 1970s are at risk of unravelling. Every other building cries out to be smartened up as a boutique hotel. Do none of the well paid Sellafield workers want to splash their cash on period property?
The houses of Whitehaven have a distinct character. Recurring features in the 18th century architecture include very tall staircase windows stretching up several storeys, gable fronted facades and undulating window placement. The most extraordinary architectural feature in the town occurs twice according to Peter Moon: a seashell overdoor in place of a fanlight. It bears a striking resemblance to the backdrop of the studio of Hans Holbein the Younger’s Henry VIII portrait in Petworth House, West Sussex. Many of the 19th century houses are designed in an ornate Italianate style. Pevsner calls them “swagger houses”.
Juxtapositions there are aplenty. An eye joltingly brilliant example is found on Irish Street. Sydney Smirke’s six bay (with three bay wing) palazzo abuts a single bay (wingless) vernacular house. The three storeys of the latter are the same height as the two lower storeys of the former. To give a London comparison, it’s like a large block of Kensington Palace Gardens and a little bit of Roupell Street Waterloo thrown together. At 74a Market Street a minute newsagents called The Baccy Shack fills the width of a doorcase.
Pevsner states, “At the far end of Catherine Street where it crosses Duke Street, is one of Whitehaven’s most distinctive houses, Somerset House, a splendid vista stopper. Built in 1750 for Samuel Martin, it is cubic, stone faced, with tripartite windows without surrounds. This unusual severity is offset by a charming porch with clustered Gothick details, tripartite again, with a perron. A long row of chimneys faces down Duke Street.” Somerset House is an extraordinary sight from the side elevation row of eight chimneys to the pattern book porch held up by fourposter bed spindly colonettes to the landing window swooping up through three storeys. In 2016 it was converted from offices to seven flats.
Pevsner continues, “Opposite Somerset House is The Cupola, a grand house of 1708 to 1710 converted in 1851 into the Town Hall by William Barnes of London. He made two storeys in place of the original three, five bays in place of seven, and added the portico of four sturdy Doric columns and rear stair extension. Venetian windows on the ground floor to left and right, probably of 1851.” This elegant building is now offices.
On 1 April 1974 Copeland Borough Council amalgamated with Allerdale Borough Council and Carlisle City Council to form a new unitary authority called Cumberland Council. The Borough of Copeland had been formed by the merger of Whitehaven Borough, Ennerdale and Millom Rural Districts. The name Copeland is derived from the Norse word “kaupland” which means “bought land” rather than inherited land. According to Public Health England statistics, Copeland was the fattest local authority area in England in 2014 with three quarters of the population being stout. In 2018, the Office for National Statistics recorded that Copeland had the third highest median income of British local authorities, after the City of London and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. This median does hide the considerable disparity between Sellafield employees and the rest of Copeland’s population.
Alan Routledge digs deeper in Copeland The Postcard Collection (2015), “Copeland was originally a barony set up by William II after the final conquest of Cumberland in 1092. Over the following years the barony was split into more convenient districts to govern.” On the 1974 amalgation he comments, “The conurbation of Whitehaven was industrial and Ennerdale and the rural parts of Millom were agricultural in nature. The Borough was headquartered at Whitehaven and it’s not surprising that there were political tensions in the Borough which led to differences over what needed to be done and where. People became tightly parochial in their outlook and sadly the Borough was rarely considered as being equal in its parts.”
“The Borough is close to 40 miles north to south and varies up to a maximum of 18 miles in width, between the Irish Sea coast and the tops of England’s highest mountains,” according to Alan. “The coast is 40 miles in length with miles of sandy beaches in the south and the high sandstone cliffs of St Bees to the north. One third of Copeland lies within the Lake District National Park and, in addition to the high mountains, also has Wastwater, England’s deepest lake. On 31 March 2023 after 49 years of operation, Copeland Borough Council was disbanded and replaced with Cumberland Council, one of two larger unitary authortieis covering Cumbria.” A 1610 map of Cumberland hanging in Michael Moon Old Books shows Copeland and Copeland Forest. Michael says, “Copeland is the coastal strip north of Furness and south of Workington. It is rarely referred to nowadays.”
Laterally Copeland is disappearing legally, linguistically and literally.
