Chapter 16

Local government – the Local Board and Urban District

The first meeting of the Cockermouth Local Board of Health was held on Saturday, 30th September 1864. Elected members had to possess the financial qualifications of being rated for the poor at a minimum of £15 or of having property worth at least £500.[1] There had been 35 candidates at the election (Appendix 6). Joseph Brown was the first chairman of the 12 members and the manager of the City and District Bank was made treasurer in a bond of £2000. Henry Faithfull was appointed as the first clerk according to Bolton, but by the time the Board published its bye-laws (dated 1864) Joseph Hayton was listed as clerk. [2] Mr. Wyndham offered the use of an office and this was accepted as temporary headquarters. Included in the business at the first meeting were salaries, a request for the inspectors to submit reports on the highways and the gas supply and a request to the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway to repair the new road from the town to Gallowbarrow. [3]

The 1864 booklet “Cockermouth Local Board. Bye-laws, etc.” has some 70 pages, printed by Daniel Fidler, 70 Main Street. The first part is concerned with routine matters – committees and the duties of the clerk, surveyor, treasurer, inspector of nuisances and collector. Numerous building regulations are given, relating to the structure and size of walls, beams, fireplaces, chimneys, etc., and to ventilation and the amount of space round a building. Plans for new buildings had henceforth to be submitted for approval. The conduct and registration of slaughterhouses, always liable to become a public nuisance, are ruled upon, including an order that no animal must be confined in a slaughterhouse while the whole or part of a carcase lies there.

There are regulations for the cleansing of streets and for the width of new ones.

• “Every occupier of premises shall keep clean and free from snow, filth, dust, ashes and rubbish, the footway and pavement adjoining … “

Streets must not be obstructed and arrangements are made for dealing with traffic during processions and public rejoicings. To prevent “disagreeable or hurtful effects” deodorizers must be used when privies. cesspools and ashpits are emptied and night-soil, etc., must be covered up when it is being carried, anything spilt on the roadway to be cleared up by the carrier between midnight and 8a.m. Carts collecting sewage, etc., must stand in any place only while loading.

Stray cattle are to be taken to the common pound. The owner may claim his beast on payment of up to 40s. [£2] plus expenses incurred, but if this is not done within three days the pound-keeper can advertise the animal for sale, giving seven days’ notice at the owner’s house if he is known; proceeds from sales to go to the Local Board. Any attempt to save the 40s. by stealthily removing an animal from the pound may bring three months’ imprisonment.

The list of nuisances which can be dealt with by the inspector is varied and interesting. They include holding sales, exhibitions or shows in public streets; repairing a cart in the street unless it is essential to carry out repairs on the spot; lack of control when driving; parking of carriages, etc.; obstructing footways with goods; hanging clothes across the street; ferocious dogs; prostitution; profanity; drunkenness; firing guns; throwing; unsafe window boxes; no standing on upper window sills to clean or paint; having an open cellar area; having places for bull-baiting, cock-fighting, etc.; and victuallers harbouring a constable while he is on duty. A conscientious inspector of nuisances must have led a busy life!

Although termed a “Board of Health” it is obvious that ‘health’ was considered a wide enough term to include anything affecting the well-being of the townspeople. When the “West Cumberland Times” began publication, ten years after the formation of the Board, the regular reports of the medical officer, Dr. Fox, show conditions at the time – typhus caused by insanitary conditions and semi starvation; schools closed because of epidemics; filter beds allowing vegetable matter and frog spawn to get through to the taps. The Public Health Act of 1875 made infectious diseases notifiable; ruled on drainage, sewage disposal and water supplies; and ordered polluted food to be destroyed. Even these items, so taken for granted today, were opposed by some MPs as interfering with liberty.

Other issues before the Board in these early years were the need for baths and washhouses; street lighting being extinguished at 7pm on fair day, in accordance with the Board’s contract with the Gas Company; the nuisance of slaughterhouses scattered about the town; the keeping of pigs; the fact that in the 1876 Board elections (total cost £ 13-9s-7 d.) 191 electors, one out of every five, were unable to sign their names. [4]

Refuse and dust were perpetual nuisances. In 1876 a rubbish site was being sought, one Board member’s solution being “Throw it in the river!” [5] There were difficulties too because the refuse men collected only ashes. It was reported that the “tradesmen of the town – had more goods wasted by the dust than would pay their share of the rates”. [6]. The Board decided to hire a horse and watering cart to replace ‘the old apparatus’ which needed skilled men to operate it.

At this time official meetings – the Local Board, the Guardians, etc. – were held in the Court House. The room used, on the first floor front at the river side, still had the wall seats round it until incorporated into one of the flats formed in the building in 1975. Thomas Wilson, the owner of Cockermouth’s largest hat factory. had died in 1857 and in 1874 John Birkbeck Wilson offered the factory to the Local Board. [7] It stood on the Cocker between Bitter Beck and the bridge end of the Market Place (Plate 15). Suggestions for the use of the building were many – baths and washhouses with drying closets, and if these were provided John Wilson offered also the large steam boiler still in the building; a large Board room which could also be used for lectures; offices for the Board’s clerk and surveyor; a restaurant; public reading rooms; a covered corn market; a fire engine station; rooms for friendly societies, etc.; lock-up shops on the street frontage; a public urinal at the bridge end; etc. The development was envisaged as involving both public and private enterprise. However, no action was taken at the time – the rates were just going up from Is-6d. to Is-9d. in the pound. Then in March 1875 the first positive move was made when part of the property was sold to Mr. Rydiard for his boot and shoe business. [8] Soon afterwards the Board began to meet “in the cock 10ft”, approached by a yard off Cocker Bridge, and the council offices were to remain in the old hat factory for over 50 years.

A further increase in the general district rate, bringing it up to 2s. [10p] in the pound, was recommended in 1876. The estimates for six-month periods ending in September 1876 and 1889 doubled from £1369 to £2565. It is of interest to see how these were made up, as in the table below

(*Possibly included in highways)

Over 40% went in loan interest and repayments in 1876 !

There were at this time four bodies responsible for local government in and around the town the Cockermouth Local Board of Health, the Board of Guardians, the Cockermouth School Board and the Cockermouth Union Rural Sanitary Authority. Then in 1894 came the Local Government Act establishing urban and rural district councils and Cockermouth town became the Cockermouth Urban District, with the surrounding villages forming Cockermouth Rural District, these also having parish councils with fairly limited powers. For the first time some women were able to vote and to seek election. Cockermouth UDC had 12 members, who met every fourth Wednesday in the Cocker Bridge office and worked through a town clerk (John Fearon at this time), treasurer, medical officer of Health, surveyor and sanitary inspector, gas manager and rates collector.

Some tasks were undertaken by the county council- major roads, some education, etc.- but there was plenty left to occupy the UDC.

Some services provided will be considered separately, but we way note here a few of the very varied concerns appearing in the minutes of the Council and of its General Purposes Committee. Many recur time after time – licensing of knackers and bone-boilers, of cow-keepers, of slaughterhouses and of common lodging houses; inspection of premises and cases of overcrowding; nuisances arising from sewers, offensive trades, stable smells; pollution of Bitter Beck; provision of public lavatories (a chapter might be written on the lengthy search for sites for such conveniences). Surprisingly as long ago as 1920 the Council dealt with house extensions and even controlled the erection of greenhouses and garden sheds, which were sometimes forbidden. Eventually telegraph lines, aerials and the war memorial became council business.

The Council horses are one feature of town administration which has disappeared. In 1914 the surveyor was looking for a home with a farmer for an old horse Tommy, replaced by a new one costing £45, and there are other records which show concern for horses which had fallen lame or were too old to work. [9]

Both day and night presented problems. In 1898 tallow chandlers were reminded of a request some years earlier [10] that they should render their tallow only between 11pm. and 6am. and in 1925 the Council considered a request that All Saints bells and chimes should not ring between 10pm. and 6am. [14]

While some concerns were, even comparatively recently, very different from those of today, others persist. In 1930 the Council proposed to ban street parking throughout the town and the ‘Cockermouth Advertiser’ commented

• “We feel sure that no broadminded citizen will object to paying the trifling charge of Is. which the Council proposes to levy for parking space for one vehicle for a full day or part of a day on Fairfield.” [11]

The county districts were reviewed in 1932 and the County Council suggested that Cockermouth might become part of a rural district. A post-card poll of electors showed 87% in favour of remaining an urban district, so Cockermouth remained a very small urban island – only 2390 acres of land and 35 of water. About the same time (1935) Cockermouth wished to incorporate Papcastle, but only the Gote, Hames Hall and Derwent Mills area came into the town, Papcastle village remaining outside. [12]

It was also at this time that the Council sought to draw attention to the town by setting up a publicity department and the first town guide made its appearance in 1937.

In 1939 plans were prepared to accommodate in Cockermouth 2,800 evacuee children from the South Shields area and the town found itself involved with Air Raid Precautions, the Home Guard, Civil Defence, shelters, rationing, a British Restaurant, etc.

In some ways the Council was progressive for a small country town. As early as 1910 a week’s holiday with full pay was awarded to the Council’s workmen with more than a year’s service [13] and the next year they supported the demand for Women’s Suffrage and the Daylight Saving Bill. On the other hand they refused for some reason to adopt the 1907 Notification of Births Act.

Cockermouth was, and still is, a registration district with the Superintendent Registrar formerly at Grecian Villa and now in Station Road. Cockermouth, Keswick, Maryport and Workington are sub districts for registration.

On 1 April 1974 began a nation-wide reorganisation of local government. Cockermouth became part of Cumbria, a new county comprising six separate entities – Cumberland, Westmorland, the Furness district of Lancashire, the Sedbergh area of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the previously separate borough of Barrow-in-Furness and the city of Carlisle. Urban and rural districts disappeared and Cockermouth UD with Keswick and Maryport UDs, Workington Borough and Cockermouth and Wigton RDs formed a new district council, one of six in Cumbria, reviving the name ‘Allerdale’. ‘Allerdale’ was chosen because as a one-word name it was preferable to the possible alternative of ‘Solway and Derwent’.

Within Allerdale District, Cockermouth itself acquired parish council status, although preferring the title ‘town council’. The functions of the new Cockermouth Council are very limited, but it has a valuable role to play liaising between the townspeople and the district and county councils, which share between them most functions of local government. The Town Hall was purchased by the UDC for £325 in 1933.

After the 1974 re-organisation it passed to the new ADC and most of it was occupied by the Planning Department until it was relocated in the new “Allerdale House”, built on the Cloffocks in Workington. During Allerdale’s occupation the Town Council had scant accommodation for its meetings and a small office, but since the building was converted to the Tourist Information Office, it has a council chamber and other rooms. For 40 years the building played an important part in the life of the town, the basement being used for brownies, first aiders, children’s dancing classes, jumble sales etc

The Town Council has had 12 members ever since 1894, until 1978 always elected by all the electors in the town, and from 1974 the whole town chose its four representatives on Allerdale District Council. In 1979 this was changed, Cockermouth being split into two wards, Castle and All Saints, divided by the Cocker down to Cocker Bridge and then by a line up the centre of Castlegate and Castlegate Drive. Each ward now elects six members of the Town Council and two of Allerdale D.C. Allerdale District Council became Allerdale Borough Council on the 26th July, 1992.