This is a potted tale of a doomed canal and the short-lived branch line that replaced it.
It is the back story of a model railway project, itself a journey of discovery into EM gauge and the recreation of a unique branch line terminus.
It’s also a beloved place from childhood and Sunday evening drives to sit outside the Hope & Anchor bowling green with a bag of cheese and onion crisps and a bottle of cream soda while mum and dad enjoyed a quiet pint.
A cross and a wall
The Industrial Revolution was a long time coming to Fisher’s Cross, a small hamlet on the Solway Firth that had once seen Emperor Hadrian’s troops garrisoned at the fort known as Maia at Bowness the western most end of Hadrian’s wall and the northern limit of the Roman Empire.
The Romans may have left in 407AD but the ghosts of legions and Iron Age Celts and Vikings from across the water, sit side by side with traces of the Edwardian bargemen and Victorian railwaymen all now hidden beneath the marsh and Solway turf.
Time and tide…
Fast forward to the 1700s and the industrial age required coal from mines at Ellen Foot (the modern day Maryport) to be brought up the Solway Firth and River Eden to Carlisle by boat.
In 1720, duties began to be levied on all goods carried around the British coast by sea, with the result that the local coal trade switched to land transport.
An Act of Parliament in 1721 allowed those duties to be waived, and while the Act enabled the building of wharves and warehouses, even allowing the dredging of the river and the charging of tolls, it didn’t permit the improvement of the river to make it more navigable.
With the passage of time and the variable river which was and still is prone to flooding, it was eventually realised that a canal was the solution to getting coal from the western mines to an expanding Carlisle and beyond.
The primary aim of creating a canal was to provide the city of Carlisle with a better and cheaper supply of coal, so a committee was appointed to push the plans forward.
The engineer William Chapman, known for his many canals and harbour designs was asked to propose a canal route from Carlisle to Maryport, and one which he had previously promoted in 1795 as part of a coast to coast idea.
He estimated that it would cost £100,000 to build, but suggested that a terminus near Bowness-on-Solway would be a cheaper option. £40,000 would pay for a canal suitable for 45-ton boats, but a larger canal, suitable for 90-ton boats that could cross the Irish Sea, or reach the Forth and Clyde Canal, would cost £60,000. These options were put to subscribers by the committee.
In August 1807 Chapman suggested that a ship canal for the Irish, Scottish and Liverpool trade, and a 50-ton canal to Maryport for the coal trade could both be built, with that proposal getting wide support in the newspapers.
With a range of options now on the table, the Committee sought a second opinion from the engineer Thomas Telford.
Telford described a ‘Cumberland Canal’, to allow sea-going vessels to reach Carlisle, but which would be part of a grander plan to link Carlisle to other parts of the country, and be incorporated into the coast-to-coast waterway.
Telford suggested that locks should be at least as big as those on the Forth and Clyde Canal, with the canal leaving the Solway Firth about 1 mile (1.6 km) upstream of the village of Bowness-on-Solway to reach Carlisle.
Telford’s idea would cost £109,000 and to provide a water supply, a navigable feeder would continue onwards to Wigton, which would be suitable for 7-foot wide narrow boats, and cost an additional £38,000.
Despite these options from two gifted engineers, no further progress was made and eight and a half years elapsed before another meeting was held. Chapman was approached and asked to produce a survey for a canal suitable for ships of at least 70 tons.
His proposal started at the hamlet called Fisher’s Cross, which was subsequently renamed Port Carlisle.
To suit the coast to coast requirements Chapman suggested that a canal link to Newcastle-upon-Tyne could be built on a smaller scale, and another link could be built along the valley of the River Eden to serve slate quarries near Ullswater in the Lake District.
Getting on with it
Chapmans’ earlier plan was accepted, money was raised locally, and an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1819, which authorised the Carlisle Canal to raise £80,000 in capital, and an extra £40,000 if required.
Contracts and completion
Contracts to build the entire canal were awarded by early 1820 with the canal completed and open in March 1823.
At Port Carlisle, a basin 250 by 80 feet (76 by 24 m) was built, which was connected to the Solway Firth by a sea lock with a long timber jetty.
The terrain from Port Carlisle to the canal basin at Port Road in Carlisle was mostly flat undulating arable farmland with seven locks to raise the level of the canal by 46 feet (14 m).
At Carlisle the second large basin, 450 by 100 feet (137 by 30 m), was complete with wharves and a warehouse. This area is now an industrial park and medical centre, and the modern day site of McVitie’s biscuit factory which has occupied a site here since 1831.
Originally built by Charles Dodgeson Carr, Carr’s is now a subsidiary of United Biscuits and was one of the first in the world to use the vertical integration method (where a company controls the supply chain with its own materials (wheat and flour) product, and marketplace. In Carr’s case it was making bread by night and biscuits by day.
The biscuit factory still produces the world famous Carr’s Table Water biscuits (by Royal Warrant until 2012) among other well known McVitie’s biscuits made with flour from their mill at Silloth.
Originally their products were transported nationally and eventually globally by canal, railway and by sea.
We will delve into how this supply chain came to rely on a Silloth branch line which served the Victorian seaside resort, the cargo docks and Carr’s flour mill in a later post. We’ll also touch on how the Silloth branch fell victim to the Beeching axe.
Anyway, this new bigger port and transport system proved to be the nail in the coffin for the Carlisle canal and in turn, the branch line to Port Carlisle.
Time for a cuppa and a hobnob?
While the expanded modern factory complex is owned by Pladis Global and operates the subsidiary McVitie’s, (makers of Hobnobs – essential biscuits for model railway building, and the famous Jaffa Cake too), it suffered extensive water damage to the original Carr’s brick ovens in the catastrophic Carlisle floods of 2005.
After a major clean up and refurbishment, and subsequent floods disrupting production again, the vital business of biscuit making resumed to its pre-flood output.
The factory is a major employer and is still referred to locally as ‘Carr’s’, with workers known fondly (or unkindly) as ‘cracker packers’.
The doomed canal
In 1825 the Carlisle & Liverpool Steam Navigation Company paid for the construction of an exclusive berth at Port Carlisle which still partially exists to this day.
This drone view below shows what’s left of the port with the red circle marking the sandstone sea lock access to the filled in canal basin, and the red line marking the wooden wharf for sea going ship berths. The softly decaying sandstone jetty on the right is the Carlisle and Liverpool Steam Navigation company’s berth.
In response to the competition, the Canal Company purchased their own packet boat to transport passengers from Port Carlisle to Carlisle.
Both passenger services began in 1826 with goods being transported by ship from Liverpool to Port Carlisle and carried along the canal by lighters.
With an expanding trade and a beautiful location on the Solway Firth, the Solway Hotel opened in Port Carlisle as a place to break a long sea journey or take the air.
The hotel is now the Hope & Anchor and is one of the oldest buildings in Port Carlisle along with the former Post Office which was built at the time of the Battle of Waterloo.
A bit of a dry spell… and a bone to pick
Soon after the canal was opened, it became obvious, due to increasing trade, that in dry weather it might not be possible to keep the large basin at Carlisle full.
Every time Monkhill lock was opened, water was lost from the upper levels, so in 1824 it was decided to cut a water leat (or small aqueduct) from Donald’s Mill on the River Caldew, through to a waterwheel built near the River Eden.
This would lift water from the Eden into the canal. Completed in July 1825, the wheel could lift a million gallons every 24 hours.
It became known as ‘The Bone Mill’ because, when not lifting water, it was used to grind animal bones for fertiliser. Still not sufficient, the Canal Company eventually purchased a Cornish condensing steam engine to solve the water supply problem.
All seemed like happy days as trade boomed and the canal enjoyed a thriving business both bringing coal and goods to Carlisle and as a way to ship products like biscuits, cotton, textiles, engineering and printing to the rest of Britain and the world.
But dark clouds were on the horizon, in the shape of falling revenues and increasing costs as the age of the railways arrived…
Next time…
In the next instalment, we’ll look at the startling and rapid demise of the canal and the emergence of the railway branch line to replace it – the main subject of this model related project.
We’ll also start to think about how I go about modelling this delightful and long lost bit of Britain’s industrial past in EM gauge with very little photographic evidence to work from.
Until next time, thanks for stopping by.
references:
Ramshaw, D.(2024). The Carlisle ship canal 1821-1853. https://villagelink.co.uk/carlisle-canal-water-supply/
Farnworth, R. (2022). Port Carlisle railway. https://rogerfarnworth.com/2022/05/18/the-port-carlisle-railway-part-1/
Brown, W. (n.d). Carlisle Canal Basin.[Painting]. Tullie House Gallery. Carlisle UK.
Lingard.A. (2018). Aerial image. https://solwayshorewalker.co.uk.
Scale in Focus 