Lowca is a village and
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...
in the English
county
A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
of
Cumbria
Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumb ...
, just to the north of the village of
Moresby. It had a population of 773 in 2001, increasing to 888 at the 2011 Census.
It was formerly a
mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...
area but is now noted for its
wind farm
A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used Wind power, to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundre ...
.
Lowca looks out over the
Solway Firth
The Solway Firth ( gd, Tràchd Romhra) is a firth that forms part of the border between England and Scotland, between Cumbria (including the Solway Plain) and Dumfries and Galloway. It stretches from St Bees Head, just south of Whitehaven in ...
to the west. The village used to stand next to a huge black slag heap called Pit Bank until the slag heap was redeveloped in the 1980s, along with a new road leading directly through Lowca from the A595.
Lowca has its own community school, previously known as Lowca Primary School, and rugby team.
History
In 1800, brothers Adam, Thomas and Crosby Heslop, formerly associated with the ironworks at
Seaton near
Workington
Workington is a coastal town and civil parish at the mouth of the River Derwent on the west coast in the Allerdale borough of Cumbria, England. The town was historically in Cumberland. At the 2011 census it had a population of 25,207.
Loca ...
, established an iron foundry and engineering business on the seashore by the mouth of the Lowca Beck. The impetus for the business was probably the success of the twin-cylinder steam engine Adam had invented while working in
Shropshire
Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to th ...
in 1790, and there was no shortage of finance, hence the company title "Heslops, Milward, Johnston & Co." The three brothers were all dead by the mid-1830s so the investors sold up, and the works was taken over by local iron mining partnership
Tulk and Ley
Tulk and Ley was a 19th-century iron mining company in west Cumberland which also ran an engineering works at Lowca near Whitehaven.
Overview
Established on the Lowca site in 1800 as "Heslops, Milward, Johnston & Co."- the engineering and ironfo ...
which began a long tradition of
locomotive
A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the Power (physics), motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, Motor coach (rail), motor ...
manufacture. In 1857 it was sold again, to
Fletcher, Jennings & Co.
Lowca also had large reserves of coal, which were mined for centuries, providing even more employment than the engineering works. In 1911 a chemical works was established to exploit the latest coal by-product technologies which had been developed in Germany. This plant was shelled by a German submarine,
U-24, during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, on 16 August 1915; an event which the Germans made much of at the time, and Lowca has made much of ever since. Local legend has it that a quick thinking local worker opened a relief valve which sent up an impressive plume of burning gas, so the submariners thought they had destroyed their target and left. Apparently the only fatality of the incident was one local dog.
[Carruthers, F.J., article on Lowca shelling, ''Evening News & Star'', 3–4 October 1968]
The village used to be served by
Lowca railway station
Lowca had two railway stations that served the village of Lowca in the former county of Cumberland, England, which is now part of Cumbria. on the Lowca Light Railway which connected with the
Cleator & Workington junction railway
The Cleator & Workington Junction Railway (C&WJR) was located in West Cumberland in Northern England, serving the towns of Cleator Moor and Workington and intermediate villages. It was mainly used for coal, limestone and iron ore traffic for t ...
at
Harrington Junction
Harrington Junction was a railway junction in Harrington, Cumbria, England. It joined three branches to the Cleator and Workington Junction Railway's (CWJR) main line from to via . No station ever existed at the junction, was the nearest, to ...
.
References
External links
Lowca Light Railway
Villages in Cumbria
Borough of Copeland
Wind farms in England
Civil parishes in Cumbria
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