Millom Miscellanea - Main

Today Millom is, like many towns in  west Cumberland, struggling to find a new identity now that their founding industries have all but faded away. Whilst the town may have an uncertain future - it did have a splendid past.

The area about the Parish of Millom is in fact the only part of Cumberland that William's assessors thought worthy of a mention in the Domesday Survey. At that time this area, then a manor called Hougenai, was held by one Earl Tosti in 1065 who owed his allegiance to the Kingdom of Northumbria. The area when surveyed comprised land, it is believed, in Hougon (Millom?), Bootle, Whicham, Hogenai & Kirksanton. It should be noted that much of this attribution is still open to dispute.

Some authorities believe that its inclusion in the great survey was down to the salt pans to be found on the Duddon estuary. When the Norman Kings William II & Henry I started to take a serious interest in the area we know today as Cumbria, the west coast was given by Ranulf Meschien, who had had been given control of all Cumberland, to William Meschines, a family member. William was appointed to the Baronry of Coupland later to be called of Egremont. Probably because of the distance between Egremont and Millom the later was granted by William Meschines to the father of Godard de Boyvill, to whom they were related, after their return from the Crusades where they had fought together. The Boyvills family then took the surname de Millom and they held the lordship by male issue for 100 years until one family had only a daughter Joan de Millom. This Joan brought the lordship by marriage (c.1240) to Sir John Huddleston of the Yorkshire family; who was at that time was Lord of the Manor of Anneys near Millom.

THE MANOR
Millom was granted a Royal charter in 1251 by Henry II to hold both a market each Wednesday and a three day Fair at the festival of the Holy Trinity.

According to the Chronicle of Lanercost in 1322 Robert the Bruce invaded England through Carlisle and plundered Holm Cultram Abbey, then layed waste to Copeland before crossing the sands to Furness. As a result of such events in 1335-38 John de Huddleston was empowered to enclose his castle with a moat and to fortify his home to a castle.
The effect of these raids were so severe the King had to reduce the level of taxation to one quarter of its previous level to mitigate the effect for all areas affected by the raids.  Today the castle is much decayed and it is part of a farm complex.

The descendants of Sir John held Millom for the next 500 years through 21 generations, until William Huddleston also left two daughters as his heiresses, and Elizabeth, the eldest, took the estate into a marriage with Sir Hedworth Williamson. He sold the estate to Sir James Lowther for about £20,000 in 1774. Hence the Manor passed to the Earls of Lonsdale. Today the Manor Court and other records are to be found in the Lonsdale papers at the County Record Offices.

MILLOM - the name
As usual there have been several explanations to the meaning of the name but probably the most authoritive is that it is derived from the OE word MYLN meaning a Mill, alternatively you have the ON word Melum meaning sandhills. The earliest written example of Millom is from c.1180. Prior to this it is likely it was called HOUGENAI the dative plural of Haugr giving Hougon the Manor held by Earl Tosti in 1065 and recorded in the Domesday Survey. This Manor comprised [an area] of 5 Vills or 19 Teamlands. 4 in Hougon (Millom?), 4 in Bootle, 4 in Whicham, 6 in Hougenai, & 1 in Kirksanton. It has been speculated that Hougenai may have been Millom Castle.

Description of the Parish of Millom
Because of the association with the Lords of Millom the parish of Millom is large and is situated at the southern most point of the County of Cumberland. It is 18 miles from north to south and averages 3 miles from east to west. The Parish is dominated by the Black Combe / White Combe range of mountains 4 miles to the north and the Duddon Estuary to the south.
The parish contained the four townships of Birker & Austhwaite (in the Eskdale valley), Chapel Sucken, Millom - below & Millom - above; along with the chapelries of Thwaites and Ulpha

MANOR
Millom was given by William Meschines, the Baron of Egremont, to the father of Godard de Boyvill sometime between 1096 & 1100, this was after their return from the Crusades where they had fought together. The Boyvills family then took the surname de Millom and they held the lordship by male issue for 100 years until one family had only a daughter Joan de Millom. This Joan brought the lordship by marriage (ca.1240) to Sir John Huddleston, Knight of a Yorkshire family; who was at that time Lord of (the Manor of?) Anneys near Millom. Could Anneys have been Annaside in the parish of Whitbeck?

Millom was granted a Royal charter in 1251 by Henry II to hold both a market each Wednesday and a three day Fair at the festival of the Holy Trinity. This had "long been discontinued" in 1777.

 Millom Castle is also found within the township. .  .

Millom castle was the home of the lords of the seignority of Millom which was the most extensive within the Barony of Egremont. It contained the parishes of Millom, Bootle, Corney, Waberthwaite, Whicham & Whitbeck along with the Manors therein. As a seignority even the High Sheriff of Cumberland could not interfere within its boundary. Thus the Lords of Millom exercised "Jura Regalia" over all their subjects. To recognise this - in a field close to the railway line and half a mile south, now called  Gallows Field, stood a stone set-up about 1860 with the following inscription:

    "On this spot stood a gallows, the ancient
    Lords of Millom having exercised
    Jura Regalia within their Seigniory"

The descendants of Sir John held Millom for the next 500 years through 21 generations, until William Huddleston also left two daughters as his heiresses, and Elizabeth, the eldest, took the estate into a marriage with Sir Hedworth Williamson. He sold the estate to Sir James Lowther for about £20,000 in 1774. Hence the Manor passed to the Earls of Lonsdale.

Life continued in the area with little change for centuries. Occupations consisted of agriculture along with its support services, salt making, mining of the ironstone outcrops as well as the iron pyrites, a sulphur bearing ore, that were found in the area. Copper & lead ores were also mined in the surrounding area and there was boat building for the coastal trade in all these products.

There was a level of maritime activity through the port at Borwick Rails situated on the Duddon estuary. In a survey conducted during the tudor period, in connection with the events of the Spanish Armarda, it was found that this was one of only four ports to be found in Cumberland. Borwick rails is a natural creek harbour where the port of Millom developed. It could take boats to 100 tons in 1850 and 200 tons in 1900 for the export of slate, corn, iron ore etc. and coal was imported. In 1566 this area was referred to as Powsfoote.

CHAPEL SUCKEN
In earlier times, the narrow strip of land bordering the Irish Sea containing the hamlets of Haverigg & Kirksanton was known as the township of Chapel Sucken, a name that is no longer used. It contained 214 inhabitants in 1841. In 1851 there were 52 families, along with their servants, living in the township of whom 25 were in Kirksanton & 27 were in Haverigg; the population of the township was 416 persons. .

It is also said that the hamlet of Kirksanton once possessed its own church when it was considered an independent rectory.
Certain authorities have speculated that the name of Chapel Sucken derives from the fact, that at some time past, the church was lost to the sea because of the low lying & sandy nature of the ground on this stretch of coast. It may be significant that in 1641 Chapel Sucken made its own Protestation Return in response to the demands of Parliament.

In 1861 the townships of Millom Above, Millom Below and Chapel Sucken, which formed the southern extremity of the vast ecclesiastical parish of Millom, together contained only 1,183 inhabitants. About half of these lived in the villages of Holborn Hill, Haverigg, Kirksanton and The Hill, whilst the remainder occupied outlying farmsteads which lay along the flanks of the high ground known as Millom Park, and on the strip of land nearby which bordered the Duddon estuary. Three of the villages each housed 100 or more persons in 1861 but even Holborn Hill, the largest, then contained only 163 inhabitants and consisted of no more than a double row of farmsteads and cottages by the side of the road that linked the Duddon crossings (and the Oversands route across Morecambe Bay) with the west coast route through Bootle village.

High grade iron ore was to be found at both Hodbarrow farm and Millom Park and the most easily obtained supply came from Water Blean. With a good local supply of lime stone the ore had been smelted close by at Furnace Beck for hundreds of years.

Starting about 1860 their world started to change rapidly. This was brought about by the serious attempts to commercially develop the iron ore mining at Hodbarrow by the Hodbarrow Mining Co. in 1855.

This work led to the development of  the most productive haematite mine in the British Isles, and was largely due to the enterprise and skill of two Cornishmen, John Barratt and his nephew William. Earlier in the century, John had been employed at the Coniston copper mines, of which he eventually became chief proprietor. William Barratt, who was to assume responsibility for much of the underground development in the new mine, was also associated with the Coniston enterprise. By 1864 the ore was being exported to iron works in Lancashire, the Black Country, Shropshire, Scotland, West Cumberland as well as Wales.

These cargoes left Millom from the company's pier at Crab Marsh Point, which was linked by tramway with the mine. Despite the vagaries of the Duddon channel, which were a source 'of almost endless inconvenience to company and ships' masters alike', almost 600 vessels used the harbour of Borwick Rails in I864. Two years later the volume of traffic was sufficiently great to warrant the use of three steam tugs to assist vessels in entering and clearing the Duddon.
In December 1866, by which time at least five shafts were in use, the company was employing 265 men underground and were producing 2,300 tons each week.

As the principals of the mining operation were originally from Cornwall it is not surprising that many of the miners that they brought into the town were originally from their home county. Particularly as the tin mining in their home county was in severe decline and many made the journey from Cornwall / Devon area to both Millom & Cleator Moor.

It was about this time that local men of enterprise decided that exporting ore was not the way forward and decided to build an ironworks alongside the iron mines and formed the Cumberland Iron Mining and Smelting Company Ltd. in Millom. Although the financial backing for this firm came largely from a group of Liverpool merchants and bankers, its foundation and early success owed much to the practical advice of two Whitehaven men, Thomas Massicks and Isaac Armstrong. Massicks, who was in turn Secretary, General Manager and Managing Director of the new company, was an iron merchant. Armstrong had joined the company as Works Manager from the Cleator Moor ironworks.
The ironworks was under construction throughout much of 1866 and 1867, and was finally brought into use in September of the latter year. In its original form it consisted of two blast furnaces and ancillary equipment, but later additions increased the number of furnaces to six. The company also had the use of a shipping pier close to the one erected earlier by the Hodbarrow proprietors. By 1891 the Millom & Askam Haematite Iron Company had six blast furnaces in continuous operation, whilst the Hodbarrow Mining Co.Ltd. were digging 400,000 tons of ore annually.

The population of the town of Millom had grown to 10,134 by the year 1901as against 781 in 1841.

The start of the end
These operations continued until the end of World War II when both of the business started to decline - and after 100 years, in 1968, both the mining and iron smelting operations came to end.

Housing
All this activity placed tremendous pressure upon the local housing stock with at least two families living in each house in the Holborn hill area. In the 1860-70's the mine owners endeavoured to set out to build a model town with well built houses for its workers. This development was given the obvious title - Newtown. The pressure for homes was so great that it was impossible to keep out the speculators and many poor quality homes were built on the land formerly belonging to the ancient Rottington estate. They were described as  "miserable trash" with "rubble walls . . . not much better than dry stone walls."

During 1866 the Towns Guardians were informed of outbreaks of typhus, typhoid, dysentery and diarrhoea there, as well as gross overcrowding.  Scarlet fever was circulating in Millom in 1870 and smallpox in 1872.

Much of the land was at or under sea level so that drainage was a severe problem. The problem was solved by digging "puddle holes" into which everything was allowed to drain. I will leave it to your imagination as to the sewage situation discovered by one governmental Commission of Enquiry of 1874 - especially when considering that the drinking water came from wells sunk into the same land.

CIVIL PARISH
Millom became a separate civil parish in 1866. As a result of the Local Government Act of 1894 - Millom was divided between the two parts of Millom Urban and Millom Rural each with its own District Council and was therefore run by two separate administrative units.

Millom Urban had a population of 8,871 in 1901 and was administered by the Millom Urban District council. the Urban District Council was abandoned in 1934 and therefore the whole of Millom was administered by the RDC

Millom Rural, made from the parts of the old civil parish outside Millom township, along with the west Cumberland parishes to the north, as far as Seascale. It was administered by Millom Rural District Council, it was renamed Millom-without in 1934, until 1974 when the area was absorbed into Copeland District Council.

MILLOM CHURCHES
The ancient church of Millom is Holy Trinity which has served the town & district since the arrival of the Normans, and the registers start in 1590.

In June 1873 steps were taken to form a separate ecclesiastical district to accommodate the rapidly expanding workforce living in the town, and as a result a church dedicated to St.George was opened in May 1877 and the new parish of St.George was created in 1879.

The first Catholic church was built in 1868 but had to be replaced in 1888, as it was too small, at a cost of £1,600 and was dedicated to Our Lady & St.James. The old church was then converted to a school for 300 pupils.

There was a strong non-conformist tradition in Millom because of the large numbers of miners coming into the town from Wales and the counties of Cornwall and Devon. There they had grown up within a tradition and lifestyle of self help and non-conformist worship .

The Primitive Methodist Chapel at Holborn Hill was erected in 1866 to seat 250 at a cost of £1,100.

The Wesleyan Chapel in Queen Street was erected in 1872 at a cost of £2,031 and enlarged in 1876 and again in 1883 to seat 750 people. The Sunday school was built to take 650 scholars.

The Baptists Church in Crown St. was opened in 1884 and seated a congregation of 320.

The Welsh Calvinistic Methodists held services in the Temperance Hall in Mainsgate Road which would seat 500.

The Bible Christians had their own church. The Salvation Army opened a fortress in Millom in 1889 at a cost of £640 to take 600 members.

Further reading:
Millom District -  A History, Frank Warriner  1932, Michael Moon , 1974

Millom People and places, Frank Warriner 1937 & reprinted 1977 by Michael Moon

Millom : a Victorian new town. by Alan Harris, Transactions CWAAS, NS, 1966, page 449

Copper to Iron: Marytavy to Millom, Joan Shrewsbury, CFHS Newsletter, November 1992

Millom Remembered by Bill Myers, Tempus Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0 7524 3386 5

Nev.Ramsden, Seascale, February 2006