I mentioned a few weeks ago that I remember travelling by train from the west of Cumbria to Keswick – the old Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith line before it was truncated by Beeching a few years before it was culled altogether.
Yes, the heady days when Cumbria had a transport system that benefitted local people and local industries.
What is a delight is to search for the remains of these bygone years and to celebrate these vital parts of our immediate past.
In terms of infrastructure, it is easy to find evidence of our transport past. One, Workington Bus Station, is noted for being the first purpose built covered bus station in Britain dating back to the mid-1920s. Whitehaven Bus Station, which came only a few years after, has now been repurposed into a restaurant and I can’t actually remember any of the pre current era bus station buildings in Penrith, Kendal or Barrow save for the depots they had, the latter being particularly huge.
Maryport had a small but perfectly serviceable bus station (now a retail site) and on my regular trips from Cockermouth to Carlisle, I first remember the 60 service used Market Hill in Wigton as a stop before the purpose built bus station, now a car park, was built. However, it did have a small depot, in what I can only describe as Cumberland Motor Services brick, at Burnfoot, now, sadly, torn down for retail development.
My home town, Cockermouth, never had a bus station although there was always talk of one but no one could decide where. Instead it had a booking office – now Fagans on Main Street, if memory serves – where you could drop off and collect parcels and even late edition newspapers were delivered by bus.
My memory of Keswick Bus station is tinged with sadness as I recall the death of a man who was struck by a bus being manoeuvred in 1977. This is another bus station long gone replaced by a supermarket and stands for the buses.
Just a word here, for those who still keep the old buses alive with thanks to the Workington Transport Heritage Trust whose vintage buses, especially those Leyland buses built at Lillyhall, are often seen on park and rides to so many Cumbrian events.
Rail history is also easy to spot. Disused and, sometimes, dismantled, bridges and stations now cottages or, in one case, Bassenthwaite Lake, a train themed café, imprint on the landscape, long forgotten lines.
I have a copy of the 1910 Bradshaw’s railway timetable, which is a joy. It records the five trains a day from Aspatria to Mealsgate via Baggrow with one train each day linking Mealsgate with Wigton. It opened in 1866 and closed in 1930 and it is hard to imagine, in its 64-year history, ever having to fight for a seat.
It was probably harder to get a seat on one of the five trains per day to Coniston linking to Foxfield and the line to Barrow/Carlisle, although many other long forgotten lines were primarily for industrial or mineral use such as the loop from Moor Row via Egremont, itself linked to the long closed Brigham/Bridgefoot to Whitehaven line.
However, the train memory I treasure most is the Lakes Express, a summer service from West Cumbria all the way to London Euston. A summer only daily service, the two or three coaches from Workington combined with other from Windermere, Morecambe and Blackpool and I delight in recalling the Euston Station announcer informing travellers that passengers for Embleton must inform the guard at Bassenthwaite Lake while those for Brigham had to tell the guard at Cockermouth.
We might not have the greatest transport system in the country and many places that once had services are now abandoned to the car, but we have so many reminders around us that we must preserve and not, as in the case of the disused bridge at Great Musgrave, filled with concrete, destroy the past.
Then, alongside nuclear power and Kendal Mint cake, we would have something we could flog to our southern neighbours, something that would bring a wealth bonus to the cash-strapped North of England and Cumbria in particular.
About Cumbria Cat
Born in Cumberland and, from 2023, will be back living in Cumberland, having spent most of the past 50 years in some place called Cumbria, this cat has used up all nine lives as well as a few others.
Always happy to curl up on a friendly lap, the preference is for a local lap and not a lap that wants to descend on the county to change it into something it isn’t. After all, you might think Cumbria/Cumberland/Westmorland is a land forged by nature – the glaciers, the rivers, breaking down the volcanic rocks or the sedimentary layers – but, in reality, the Cumbria we know today was forged by generations of local people, farmers, miners, quarriers, and foresters.
This cat is a local moggy, not a Burmese, Ocicat or Persian, and although I have been around the block a few times, whenever I jump, I end up on my feet back in my home county. I am passionate about the area, its people, past, present and future, and those who come to admire what we hold dear, be it lakes and mountains, wild sea shores, vibrant communities or the history as rich and diverse as anywhere in the world.
