Cambois ( ) is a village in south-east

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

, England. It is situated on the north side of the

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environment ...

of the River Blyth between Blyth and

Ashington Ashington is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, with a population of 27,864 at the 2011 Census. It was once a centre of the coal mining industry. The town is north of Newcastle upon Tyne, west of the A189 and bordered to the ...

on the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

coast.

Etymology

According to earlier scholarship, the etymology of the name is probably Gaelic ''cambas'' 'bay, creek'. However, the name could equally be from the

Cumbric Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North" in what is now the counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and northern Lancashire in Northern England and the souther ...

cognate of ''cambas'', *''camas'' 'bend in a river, bay', which would fit with Cambois's location at the confluence of Sleek Burn and the River Blyth. In either case, the spelling seems to have been influenced by French ''bois'' 'wood'.

History

Cambois was a township in Bedlingtonshire which, until 1844, was part of

County Durham County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly �About North East E ...

. It was a

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

village from 1862 to week ending 20 April 1968 when Cambois Colliery closed. Cambois is now closely related to the area known as North Blyth. The main commercial activity was the importation of alumina for the manufacture of aluminium at

Lynemouth Lynemouth is a village in Northumberland, England, northeast of Ashington, close to the village of Ellington to the north west. It was built close to coal mines, including Lynemouth Colliery. Lynemouth and the surrounding industrial area fea ...

, but that smelter has now closed. Alumina is still imported and moved by rail to a smelter powered by the

Lochaber hydroelectric scheme The Lochaber hydroelectric scheme is a hydroelectric power generation project constructed in the Lochaber area of the western Scottish Highlands after the First World War. Like its predecessor at Kinlochleven, it was intended to provide electricity ...

, near Fort William on the west coast of Scotland. In 1883, the Coal Company gave a list of the property it owned, or leased:

Britishvolt

In December 2020, Cambois was confirmed as the location for a new Britishvolt battery manufacturing plant. In July 2021, plans for the £2.6bn gigafactory employing 3,000 people were approved, with the new plant to be located on former coalyards adjacent to the now-demolished power station in Cambois. It will produce

lithium-ion batteries A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also se ...

for the automotive industry. Britishvolt appointed ISG as its construction partner who began work on clearing the site in late 2021. In January 2022, the UK government, through its Automotive Transformation Fund, invested £100m in the Britishvolt project, alongside asset management company

abrdn Abrdn plc (stylised as ‘abrdn’, disemvoweling of "Aberdeen"), formerly Standard Life Aberdeen plc, is a United Kingdom-based global investment company headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a ...

and its property investment arm Tritax, developing what was planned to be Britain's fourth largest building. However, construction work was halted in August 2022 amid funding concerns, with manufacturing now set to start in mid-2025, more than a year later than initially planned.

References

External links

Villages in Northumberland Populated coastal places in Northumberland {{Northumberland-geo-stub