Lowca is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the English

county A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...

, just to the north of the village of Moresby. It had a population of 773 in 2001, increasing to 888 at the 2011 Census. It was formerly a

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

area but is now noted for its

wind farm A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an exten ...

. Lowca looks out over the

Solway Firth The Solway Firth is an inlet on the west coast of Great Britain, forming part of the border between England and Scotland. The firth (a Scottish term for an inlet of the sea) divides Cumbria (including the Solway Plain) from Dumfries and Gallow ...

to the west. The village used to stand next to a huge black slag heap called Pit Bank until the slag heap was redeveloped in the 1980s, along with a new road leading directly through Lowca from the A595. Lowca has its own community school, previously known as Lowca Primary School, and rugby team.

History

In 1800, brothers Adam, Thomas and Crosby Heslop, formerly associated with the ironworks at Seaton near

Workington Workington is a coastal town and civil parish in the Cumberland district of Cumbria, England. The town is at the mouth of the River Derwent on the west coast, south-west of Carlisle and north-east of Whitehaven. At the 2021 census the ...

, 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 twin-cylinder steam engine Adam had invented while working in

Shropshire Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West M ...

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 Tulk and Ley was a 19th-century iron mining company in west Cumberland which also ran an engineering works at Lowca near Whitehaven. Overview Established on the Lowca site in 1800 as "Heslops, Milward, Johnston & Co."- the engineering and ironf ...

which began a long tradition of

locomotive A locomotive is a rail transport, rail vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. Traditionally, locomotives pulled trains from the front. However, Push–pull train, push–pull operation has become common, and in the pursuit for ...

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 World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, 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.Carruthers, F.J., article on Lowca shelling, ''Evening News & Star'', 3–4 October 1968 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.

References

External links

Lowca Light Railway
Villages in Cumbria Cumberland (unitary authority) Wind farms in England Civil parishes in Cumbria {{UK-powerstation-stub