Lowca

Lowca

The main street of Lowca village
Lowca
Lowca shown within Cumbria
Population 888 (2011)
OS grid reference NX976220
Civil parish
  • Lowca
District
Shire county
Region
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town WHITEHAVEN
Postcode district CA28
Dialling code 01946
Police Cumbria
Fire Cumbria
Ambulance North West
EU Parliament North West England
UK Parliament

Lowca is a village and civil parish in the English county of Cumbria. The population of the parish as taken at the 2011 census was 888.[1]

It was formerly a mining area but is now noted for its wind farm.

Lowca itself is made up of many fields as it has a lot of farms. It also has a big garden centre.

Lowca has its own school too

History

In 1800, brothers Adam, Thomas and Crosby Heslop, formerly associated with the ironworks at Seaton near Workington established an iron foundry and engineering business on the seashore by the mouth of the Lowca Beck. The impetus for the business was probably the success of the double-acting steam engine mechanism Adam had invented while working in Shropshire in 1790, and there was no shortage of finance, hence the company title "Heslops, Milward, Johnston & Co." The three brothers were all dead by the mid-1830s so the investors sold up, and the works was taken over by local iron mining partnership Tulk and Ley which began a long tradition of locomotive manufacture. In 1857 it was sold again, to Fletcher, Jennings & Co.

Lowca also had large reserves of coal, which were mined for centuries, providing even more employment than the engineering works. In 1911 a chemical works was established to exploit the latest coal by-product technologies which had been developed in Germany. This plant was shelled by a German submarine, U-24, during World War I, on 16 August 1915; an event which the Germans made much of at the time, and Lowca has made much of ever since. Local legend has it that a quick thinking local worker opened a relief valve which sent up an impressive plume of burning gas, so the submariners thought they had destroyed their target and left. Apparently the only fatality of the incident was one local dog.[2]

The village used to be served by Lowca railway station on the Lowca Light Railway which connected with the Cleator & Workington junction railway at Harrington Junction.

Notable people

Lowca is the birthplace of the artist Kevin Carr.

References

  1. ↑ "Parish population 2011". Retrieved 15 June 2015.
  2. ↑ Carruthers, F.J., article on Lowca shelling, Evening News & Star, 3-4 October 1968
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