The Arrival of the Railway

The first step in the change of Seascale from a sleepy country hamlet into the modern village that we have today occurred when the powers that be decided to build a railway running from Whitehaven to the Furness peninsula at Broughton where it would connect with the Furness Railway. This was needed to connect West Cumberland into the national rail network so the Whitehaven & Furness Junction Railway was formed, in 1847, to fill that need. The first train arrived in Seascale on the first of June 1849.

Seascale had been chosen to have a station to service the village of Gosforth and the Wasdale valley, Drigg station to Service Drigg, Holmrook and the Eskdale valley.

In preparation for the Railway there had always been land speculation in the hopes of making a profit selling land to the Railway companies. Seascale was to be no different to the rest of the Country. The obvious route for the new line to take was along the coast thus avoiding all the hills thereby reducing the cost of building the line. The land alongside the sea coast in the vicinity of Seascale had always been the Common land belonging to the Manor of Seascale. The Commons in times gone bye was the land that was set aside for the use of all the families living in the Manor. It provided land for people both to grow crops to feed their family as well as provide summer grazing for both sheep and cattle. In Seascale Manor there was Common land along the sea shore, on the land on the east side of the lonning running from Moffats corner to Hallsenna / Panope and the land now making up Acrelands farm, there were other plots. For a period of time (1750-1800) before the arrival of the railway there had been a move to sell off the common land to the then residents of the Manor. This would have increased the size of the farms and a committee of three wise men were appointed from adjacent Manors to divide up the Commons in the most efficient way possible for the local residents. So at the time of the Railway coming the Seascales commons was privately owned and hence available for a slice of land speculation. Looking at the list of people who sold to the Railway Company you can see that a number of people with local connections had been buying land along the route of the railway.
The local landowners such as the Senhouses and Stewards & their relatives are to be found there along with the Sherwens of Seascale How and their several families, the Porters of Black how & Bailey Ground, Walker of Lane head, Leech of Townend and the Leech family of Whitriggs. The full list includes 35 people involved in the sale of land to the Whitehaven & Furness Junction Railway from within the Manor of Seascale.

The Railway Company had to ensure that they did not block any existing rights of way between the land & the shore. This is the reason that we find today the various underpasses along the line of the railway track, the most well known being Marble Arch which is the underpass between the Dell and the foreshore. This footpath was originally one of three cattle creeps that existed pre-railways that gave the local farmers access to the foreshore. The others can be seen if you walk the cinder track towards the Factory.

As well as seeing opportunities to profit from the Railway others saw opportunities in catering for the visitors. The most important of these was John Tyson (1794-1860) a grocer from Gosforth who seized the opportunity to provide a service for the rail passengers and built the late lamented Scawfell Hotel alongside the railway line; a decision that was regretted later by the Furness Railway Company. Alongside this Tyson was a William H. Tyson also of Gosforth, different Tyson family, who was a local stone mason / builder who worked on the Scawfell and built the row of houses known as Scale Villas. These houses were originally intended, for what we call today, summer holiday lets. They were hired out to a visiting family for the summer season. A family would come to the seaside for the summer, along with their servants, whilst father stopped behind in the city - but visiting his family for long weekends. The same mason / builder also built houses on The Crescent & South Parade.