Cambois ( ) is a village in south-east

Northumberland Northumberland ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North East England, on the Anglo-Scottish border, border with Scotland. It is bordered by the North Sea to the east, Tyne and Wear and County Durham to the south, Cumb ...

, England. It is situated on the north side of the

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime enviro ...

of the River Blyth between Blyth and

Ashington Ashington is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, with a population of 27,864 at the 2011 Census. It was once a centre of the coal mining industry. The town is north of Newcastle upon Tyne, west of the A189 and bordered to the ...

on the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

coast.

Etymology

According to earlier scholarship, the etymon of the name is probably Gaelic ''cambas'' "bay, creek". However, the name could equally be from the

Cumbric Cumbric is an extinct Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North", in Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the ot ...

cognate of ''cambas'', *''camas'' "bend in a river, bay", which would fit with Cambois's location at the confluence of the Sleek Burn and the River Blyth. In either case, the spelling seems to have been influenced by French ''bois'' "wood".

History

Cambois was a township in Bedlingtonshire which, until 1844, was part of

County Durham County Durham, officially simply Durham, is a ceremonial county in North East England.UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. The county borders Northumberland and Tyne an ...

. It was a

coal mining Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

village from 1862 to week ending 20 April 1968 when Cambois Colliery closed. Cambois is now closely related to the area known as North Blyth. The main commercial activity was the importation of

alumina Aluminium oxide (or aluminium(III) oxide) is a chemical compound of aluminium and oxygen with the chemical formula . It is the most commonly occurring of several aluminium oxides, and specifically identified as aluminium oxide. It is commonly ...

for the manufacture of aluminium at

Lynemouth Lynemouth is a village in Northumberland, England, northeast of Ashington, close to the village of Ellington, Northumberland, Ellington to the north west. It was built close to coal mines, including Lynemouth Colliery. Lynemouth and the surr ...

, but that smelter has now closed. Alumina is still imported and moved by rail to a smelter powered by the

Lochaber hydroelectric scheme The Lochaber hydroelectric scheme is a hydroelectric power generation project constructed in the Lochaber area of the western Scottish Highlands after the First World War. Like its predecessors at Kinlochleven and Foyers, it was designed to pr ...

, near Fort William on the west coast of Scotland. In 1883, the Coal Company gave a list of the property it owned, or leased:

Proposed gigafactory, then data centre

In December 2020, Cambois was confirmed as the location for a new

Britishvolt Britishvolt was a UK Startup company, startup manufacturer of lithium-ion battery, lithium-ion batteries. The company initially planned production of batteries for the automotive industry. It began construction of a gigafactory at Blyth, Northum ...

battery manufacturing plant. In July 2021, plans for the £2.6bn

gigafactory Gigafactory is a neologism introduced by electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla in 2013 to refer to the company's first major manufacturing facility outside of the original Tesla Fremont Factory in California. At the time the facility was going to be ...

employing 3,000 people were approved, with the new plant to be located on former coalyards adjacent to the now-demolished power station in Cambois. It will produce

lithium-ion batteries A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery that uses the reversible intercalation of Li+ ions into electronically conducting solids to store energy. Li-ion batteries are characterized by higher specific energy, energy ...

for the automotive industry. Britishvolt appointed ISG as its construction partner who began work on clearing the site in late 2021. In January 2022, the UK government, through its Automotive Transformation Fund, invested £100m in the Britishvolt project, alongside asset management company

abrdn Aberdeen Group plc, trading as aberdeen, is a United Kingdom-based investment company headquartered in Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in ...

and its property investment arm Tritax, developing what was planned to be Britain's fourth largest building. However, construction work was halted in August 2022 amid funding concerns, with manufacturing now set to start in mid-2025, more than a year later than initially planned. On 17 January 2023, Britishvolt went into administration, and its factory site was put up for sale. Some 15 months later, the site was acquired for construction of a data centre, ending hopes for thousands of manufacturing jobs in the region. However, plans submitted in December 2024 envisaged development of up to 10 data centre buildings totalling up to 540,000sq m, representing an investment of up to £10bn, with 1,200 long-term construction jobs plus employment in the data centres.

References

External links

Villages in Northumberland Populated coastal places in Northumberland Northumberland places with etymologically Brittonic names {{Northumberland-geo-stub