Chapter 35

Coach, train and bus services

As turnpike roads improved, the increase in speeds of the traffic using them was spectacular. The time of the Carlisle-London coach journey was reduced from nine days to three in the 40 years from 1734. The present Al remained the popular route to the south and Cockermouth travellers went via Penrith and Brough.

At the end of the century three coaches a day left the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate Street, London, for Cockermouth -7 a.m., 1 p.m. and 7 p.m., presumably going on to Whitehaven. [1] Some hotels, notably the Globe and the Sun, became coaching inns.

• “At the Globe Hotel – the hotel for setting down passengers and changing horses – the ostlers are waiting with four slender horses in harness ….Presently the coach is seen coming over the bridge and down the street at the rate often miles an hour, the guard meanwhile playing on his bugle the air of “The Girl I left behind me.” [2]

Denwood records that as the coaches came into the town via S1. Helen’s street, they at one time picked up an old man near the tannery who sat by the driver blowing a horn as warning of danger and arrival. [3] On a winter’s evening one may stand in the dimness of S1. Helen’s Street and imagine the clatter of hooves and the strident note of the horn, the Sun becoming a hive of activity as porters and stable boys rushed out.

There were a number of coach services to or through Cockermouth in the latter half of the 18th century. A six-seater coach did the journey from Whitehaven in three hours, the return fare being 3s. 6d., quite high considering money values 200 years ago. There was “commodious and expeditious travelling” between Whitehaven and Penrith by diligence (a French-type public coach), halting at the Sun. In 1811 Cockermouth was served by the ‘Good Intent’ light post-coach (coaches were named, as were railway engines in later times) running between Kendal and Whitehaven three times a week and the ‘Volunteer’ between Penrith and Whitehaven also on three days, both services using the Globe. In 1822 a Keswick tanner began a Keswick-Cockermouth service via Whinlatter. [4]

A number of gigs (light two-wheeled carriages) left Cockermouth for neighbouring towns, including Carlisle and Whitehaven. [5] The town’s commercial links with the port were very strong and the provision of so many services between the two is evidence of this.

In 1849 there was a daily coach from Windermere station to Keswick, Cockermouth, etc. By this time transport could be hired, Riggs of Windermere charging £ 1 a day for a single horse vehicle, plus 6d. an hour or 5s. a day for the driver. In Cockermouth horses and carriages could be obtained at the Globe and the Sun. [6]

Stage coach travel was expensive. Coaches were heavily taxed, usually by a scale based on the number of passengers, but for one ten-year period on the number of horses. In the 1830s a coach carrying 9 to 12 people paid duty of 21;2d. per mile and companies were paying additional costs of as much as 11 s 6d. a month for every mile of their services. [7] There were additional taxes on hired vehicles. Rival proprietors undercut one another until unprofitable fares forced them to seek agreement. Competition in reducing journey times led to serious accidents, until safety in itself became a means of attracting custom, so that we find a Lancaster owner advertising “Superior traveling … by the following Mails and Newly-Invented Safety Coaches” – the 11 routes listed including the ‘Royal Telegraph’ to Whitehaven by Cockermouth. [8]

This advertisement referred to ‘mails’. A complex system of carrying letters developed, the post office contracting with stage coach proprietors. Innkeepers were responsible for changes of horses and often also for the provision of branch coach services from the main routes in their area. Mail coaches were in demand by passengers because of their greater speed. The first regular mail coach service from Whitehaven via Cockermouth and Dunmail Raise to Kendal started in ] 822, [9] but there had been similar services elsewhere in the country for nearly 100 years, increasing in speed as wheel restrictions were removed and lighter frames and narrower wheels cut the time of journeys.

Although mail coaches were exempt from turnpike tolls they were taxed more heavily than stage coaches and the cost of sending letters was very high. In 1840 (the year in which Rowland Hill began his penny post) a single sheet letter sent from Carlisle to Glasgow, Manchester, York or Edinburgh cost 9d., to London Is-ld.(5’l’2p) [10] and the charge from Cockermouth would be similar. Consequently many illegally used the carrier service, much slower but cheaper. Figures for Cockermouth are not available, but it was estimated that in the middle of last century only one out of every six letters leaving Manchester was sent by legitimate means, while from Glasgow the proportion was as low as one in ten.

Another development as the condition of the highways improved was the increase in the number of private carriages, which at the beginning of the 19th century were still sufficiently rare in Cumbria for Dorothy Words worth to write “Today a chaise passed”.

Coach proprietors greatly resented the uneven taxation, especially when the competition of railways was added to that of coastal steamers and canal packets. In 1837 the duty per passenger per mile was by water nil, by rail 0.12Sd., by stage coach 0.2Sd. and by mail coach 0.7Sd. Cockermouth people would take advantage of the coastal sailings (steam was introduced in 1826/7) between Liverpool and Glasgow, calling at Whitehaven, Harrington, Workington, Maryport, Port Carlisle. Annan, Dumfries, etc. Ships were often quicker than coaches, especially to places across the Solway, and in good weather more comfortable. In 1843 the Liverpool-Glasgow service carried 60,000 passengers. [11]

A price war developed between coaches and steamers. Whitehaven to Liverpool by sea was 15s first class (7Sp) and lOs-6d. (S2lhp) second class in 1821, which forced coach fares down to 17s (8Sp) inside and 13s (6Sp) outside from 24s.(£1.20) and 17s (8Sp). Cockermouth people had the additional cost of the journey to the coast for sea travel. It is interesting to note that even after the introduction of rail travel, Black’s Lake District Guide recommended the sea route from Liverpool as being quicker, and by the mid-1850s it cost only 6s with a cabin or 3s (15p) on deck as far as Whitehaven. There were also weekly sailings from this port to Douglas, Ramsey, Dublin and Belfast. [12]

Inland water travel was also a possibility. A Cockermouth man wishing to visit Lancashire might take the coach to Kendal and then transfer to the packet service on the Kendal-Lancaster Preston Canal, for this daily service cost only 4s by cabin and 6s by fore cabin from Kendal to Preston, exactly half the outside and inside coach fares. The journey of 14 hours was eventually reduced to 7, comparable with the coach time, and refreshments were available on board. The packet continued until 1849. [13]

The extension of the railway northwards from Lancaster to Carlisle in 1846 would have as little effect on Cockermouth as the first Cumbrian line, the Carlisle-Newcastle of 1838. But in 1846 these lines were linked to the area by the completion of the Carlisle-Maryport route, soon extended southwards by the Whitehaven Junction Railway. The complex network which developed in West Cumberland is a study in itself and we will consider only the Cockermouth area.

In December 1844 a prospectus for a line from Cockermouth to W orkington was adopted, to link the town not only with the Cumbrian ports but by existing lines with the rest of the country.

• “Another object, and the one from which the principal Revenue is expected, is to open out more extensively the Valuable Lime and Coal Fields through which the Railway will pass. These Minerals are already worked to a considerable extent. .. and it is confidently expected … the present consumption, especially for Shipment, will be materially increased.”

A yearly revenue of £10,000 from freight and mineral traffic, with 100% increase in coal and lime exports, and £1000 from passenger traffic was forecast. [14]

An easy line to build, the task was completed in 20 months and the opening took place on 28th April 1847. Various connections were made from mines and quarries, including a tramway from Brigham limestone quarries, and in 1863 a link was opened from Derwent Junction in Workington to the harbour. At the Cockermouth end the line terminated west of the town at what became known as the Low Station or St. Leonard’s. The rails have gone and the site became used by industry, but some of the station buildings and the loading bays for coal carts remained until about 1990. The coal and iron industries of West Cumberland needed a link with other parts of the country, especially County Durham, shorter than the detours via Carlisle or Barrow. Thus we find a suggestion for linking the Cockermouth line with the rail system further east, a scheme whose supporters included the Stockton and Darlington Railway and the north-east steel interests.

On 3rd August 1846, before the Cockermouth-Workington line was completed, royal assent was given for such a link to be built within five years. The act stated that the “Cockermouth and Workington Extension Railway”

• “shall commence by a junction with the Cockermouth and Workington Railway, in the township of Cockermouth, and shall pass thence, from, in, through or into … Papcastle, Brigham, Bridekirk, Dovenby, Hames Hill, Setmurthy, Isell, Isell Old Park, Bassenthwaite, Underskiddaw, Crosthwaite and Keswick, or some of them.

It was thought that the eastern side of Bassenthwaite Lake would provide more traffic than the west. [15]

The act went into great detail, with the rates for carrying a wide variety of merchandise. The three classes of passenger would pay 3d., 2d. or Id. per mile and their luggage limits were to be 150, 100 and 60 pounds. The share capital was fixed at £200,000. Although there were some well known names amongst the directors, the line was never started. A petition sent to Parliament by General Wyndham argued that a route via Embleton would be shorter and cheaper, that the proposed route would destroy much beauty and injure many landowners, and that

• “by following the line along the Derwent would pass under the Walls of your Petitioner’s sd. Residence at Cockerm. Castle being distt. from the Walls of his sd. Castle no more than 500 yards and thby. by the Noise and Smoke render the same totally unfit for his Occupation”. [16]

On 1 st August 1861 the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway was granted powers to build its line. [17] The existing Cockermouth station was to become a joint holding, but it was finally decided to build a new passenger station nearer the town centre (Plate 27), the old one becoming a goods station. The 1 in 70 gradient joining the two was carried over the Workington road by 12 arches and an iron girder bridge (rebuilt in the late 1930s and demolished at the end of 1982). Three high stone and brick arches spanned the Cocker, rebuilt in the present rectangular and concrete form when repairs in the mid-1940s revealed that the original brickwork was in a very dangerous state. The railway necessitated changes in Fairfield and the road pattern. The cost of the 31 miles was about £270,000 and after 214 years’ work (picks, shovels and barrows) the line opened for freight on 4th November 1864 and for passengers on 2nd January 1865. Ten years later the track was re-laid with steel rails, new block system signalling was introduced and subways were constructed in Cockermouth and, Keswick stations. [18]

The CKP was always primarily a mineral line, carrying pig-iron to County Durham and bringing furnace coke, which could not be satisfactorily produced from local coal. Thus the depression in the West Cumberland iron trade of 1873/4, when nearly half the furnaces were out of blast, reduced receipts from £23,000 to £19,000. The line was dependent on a short length of the Lancaster-Carlisle near Penrith for its connection with the Eden Valley line of the North Eastern. The London and North Western obtained control of the L-C. and when the CKP was short of capital the LNWR and the NE gained control by each investing £25,000, the LNWR taking over passenger traffic and the NE controlling freight. The LNWR took a perpetual lease of the Cockermouth-Workington and the Workington Junction companies in 1866, paying a fixed dividend of 10%. [19]

The CKP carried a variety of freight – lime from Brigham and Flusco for steel, stone from Embleton and Threlkeld, slate from Honister, cattle from Cockermouth and Troutbeck, both of which had extensive cattle pens at the station. There were a number of sidings, for example at Embleton quarry and eventually to the oil depots near Cockermouth station. Three coke trains a day ran in each direction, until a method of mixing Cumberland and Durham coal for coke reduced this traffic by half. When better coke ovens were built at Lowca and Whitehaven the trade slumped further until the last coke train ran in 1925.

The Marron Valley line, opened mainly for ore in 1866, had to some extent affected Cockermouth, but the opening in the following year of the Derwent Branch of the Maryport-Carlisle Railway had a greater impact on the town. This branch ran from Brigham to Bulgill, one of its features being a private station for the Dykes family of Dovenby Hall, and provided rail access from Cockermouth to Maryport, with reversals at both Brigham and Bulgill. An embankment indicates the former river crossing at Brigham. An advertisement of 1912 stated “The Maryport and Carlisle Railway forms the Best and Most Direct Route from Scotland and North-Eastern to Cockermouth” and extolled the benefits of using this line to reach the Lake District in general. The Maryport-Carlisle was granted running rights over the C.-W. track from Brigham to Cockermouth, where the Bulgill trains used the loop line beyond the island platform, and from Brigham to the station at Marron Junction.

After 20 years running, when a pattern would have been established, there were five passenger trains westwards from Cockermouth, with two on Sunday, and the CKP opened with three each way. rising to eight by 1939. A memorable London link was the summer-time Lakes Express from West Cumberland to Euston, which combined with a Windermere section at Oxenholme. In 1955 its times were 8.59 from Cockermouth, arriving Euston at 17.05, and 11.50 from Euston reaching the town at 20.02. The CKP carried an average of 70,000 passengers a year in its first six years, rising to a peak of 482,000 in 1913. [20] It still ran eight trains in the early 1960s, about half continuing from Penrith to Carlisle. Cockermouth received about six Derwent Branch trains a day, some of which ran through from Carlisle. Passenger traffic was boosted by special trains for hiring days, when two or three extra booking offices were opened at the station and provision made for the trunks of workers seeking a change of farm; [21] by school and workhouse outings; and by excursion fares. On a summer Saturday after the first war one could go to Keswick on the 1.55 pm. for 2s. [10p] return. Sunday evening excursions from Whitehaven, Workington and Cockermouth to Bassenthwaite Lake and Keswick were certainly popular, for on 5th August 1934 seven trains were required to carry the passengers! [22]

Another popular outing was to take the train out and walk back, and the Cockermouth road is said to have sometimes been black with people on a Sunday evening who had paid 3d. [1.5p] on the train to Embleton or 5d. [2p] to Bassenthwaite Lake. [23] This line eastwards was never as prosperous as the western link. The C-W. dividend was 6.5% in the mid-1860s, then the fixed 10% under the LNWR, while CKP paid 3.25% in 1870-3. This was very low compared with 12.25% by the Maryport-Carlisle. The CKP had high running costs, with two steep gradients (one in Embleton) and dividend was down to 2.5% in 1921 and 1.5% the following year. [24] Then in the 1923 grouping all the lines in this area were placed in the LMS and it was this company which provided from Crewe the special light engines of the 1940s known as ‘Cauliflowers’, from the distant appearance of Britannia painted on them.

They were needed because of the danger of subsidence caused by old mine workings between Cockermouth and Workington. [25]

In a bid to retain diminishing passenger traffic, occasioned by the greater convenience of bus stops and the increase in private transport, steam was replaced by multiple-unit diesels on the Penrith Workington line on 3rd January 1955. Nevertheless the section from Workington to Keswick closed to passenger traffic in April 1966, after just over 100 years, the remainder of the line east of Keswick struggling on until 1972. Goods traffic had ceased in June 1965. Steam traction had been retained for freight and for the Lakes Express, diesel engines presumably being too heavy for the line.

The last train was signalled out of Cockermouth by Signalman J. C. Carruthers, 47 years with the CKP (more than half in the Cockermouth box, and never absent or late for duty). In his later years there he had dealt with a daily traffic of some six passenger trains in each direction, with an additional six or seven westwards to Bulgill, plus the regular mineral and freight trains. Between these he had to fit in the pick-up goods train making a leisurely journey from station to station and on market days cattle trains from the CKP, from the Furness Railway area and from the Maryport and Carlisle.

In the 1850s the coach proprietors tried to prevent a Cockermouth-Keswick rail link by reducing the coach fare to Is Od. [5p] below the expected rail fare. Failing in this they came to supplement the railway by serving the valleys from Troutbeck, Keswick and Cockermouth. In Cockermouth transport was provided from the station to the Appletree and Globe Hotels and until the railway closed the Cockermouth-Buttermere bus service made a detour to the station. Railways reduced prices- Brampton coal was Is-6d. [7~p] a ton in Carlisle after the Newcastle line opened, a drop from 8s Od [40p] [26] Then with the improvement of road transport the process was reversed and it became more convenient and cheaper to move people, cattle and goods by road. Bus services replaced rail. The Whitehaven Motor Services Co. ran its first service in 1912 and in 1921, having become the Cumberland Motor Services Ltd., introduced a daily service from Cockermouth to Dearham and Maryport, much quicker than the roundabout rail service with its two reversals. [27] Against this competition the Derwent Branch struggled on until 1935. The same company provided a service to Keswick from July of that year, but it finished, presumably for the winter, at the end of September.

In August 1921 the Workington Motor Service Co. (which used Smith Bros. in Market Place as its Cockermouth station) advertised Sunday charabanc excursions from Workington and Cockermouth to Bowness, at 10s. 6d. return from Cockermouth – quite a sum in those days. [28]

In November a third company, C. Matthews of Cockermouth, began an hourly service to Workington in the Little Green Bus. [29] It was not until the Marron Valley line closed to passengers in 1931 (mineral traffic continued until 1954) that a Cockermouth-Lamplugh bus was introduced.

In 1980 the one bus company in the area (CMS) faced difficulties similar to those of the railways 50 years ago and many services were only maintained with the help of subsidies. There were eight services from the town. Two of these provided an hourly service on the Workington-Keswick route and another an hourly service to Maryport. The remainder were less frequent. even to the extent of only three days a week on one service and Monday market buses only on another.

In 1930 the question of a bus station for the town arose and was still being debated in 1979. In that year the Council asked the CMS to erect a station, but they refused, claiming that traffic was insufficient. [30] In the 1930s the town learned that Wordsworth House had been purchased by the CMS to be replaced by a bus station. In 1936 the UDC had considered a scheme for a bus station in Lorton Street. [31] The final plan was for a station in the Main Street- Sullart Street corner, but the cost was not justified and the idea was abandoned in 1977. The restriction to bus parking of areas on both sides of the widest part of Main Street has proved adequate. Regrettably the town lost its waiting room and parcels office at 51 Main Street near the Mayo statue in the early 1970s.

Over a number of years there was a deterioration in bus services but the last few years have seen improvements, Two are of particular interest. As a result of the efforts of the then chairman of the Civic Trust, T.C. Hughes, the X5 through service from Workington to Penrith, with some buses going on to Langwathby to connect with the Carlisle-Settle railway, has run for the last two years. In the town itself Cumberland Motor Services have introduced a service every hour to four different areas on the outskirts. Several villages are now connected to the town by private companies, some only once a week, but a few have no public transport.