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Bigrigg

Egremont, CumbriaVillages in Cumbria
St John the Evangelist, Bigrigg
St John the Evangelist, Bigrigg

Bigrigg is a village in the English county of Cumbria and within the boundaries of the historic county of Cumberland. Bigrigg is 2 miles north of the town of Egremont on the A595 road. Bigrigg Moor is surrounded by farmland and watered by the River Ehen. Deep hollows in the area attest to iron ore mining as far back as medieval times. Bigrigg's calcite deposits were considered to be of the highest quality.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Bigrigg (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Bigrigg
Downfield Lane,

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Latitude Longitude
N 54.5028 ° E -3.543543 °
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Downfield Lane

Downfield Lane
CA22 2UY
England, United Kingdom
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St John the Evangelist, Bigrigg
St John the Evangelist, Bigrigg
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Moor Row
Moor Row

Moor Row is a village in Cumbria, North West England. It is in Egremont civil parish and lies on a minor road off the A595, south-east of Whitehaven. In 2018 it had an estimated population of 759.Moor Row is a residential community on Cumbria's coastal plain. Government records, notably in census reports, record its name as Low Keekle, Ingwell View, Moor Row Junction, Moorroe, and Scalegill. The history of Moor Row goes back to before 1762 when the area between Summerhill Mansion and Woodend with Cleator was populated with residents of the Low Moor Row and High Moor Row homesteads. The Wildridge family lived at the Low Moor Row home stead on what became known as Church St. The Wildridge daughter Elizabeth married the local gardener called Dalzell who took over his new wife's estates when the Wildridges died. The village of Moor Row was built originally to house railway workers on the newly built Whitehaven Cleator and Egremont Railway, at the junction from Whitehaven south to Egremont and East to Cleator and the Frizington iron mines. The railway opened in 1855, and the first workers cottages had been built on the east side of what became Dalzell Street by 1860. The 19th century discovery of iron ore in the vicinity brought many off comers to serve the nascent iron and steel industry in West Cumbria, from Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Italy, and England. The 'row of houses on a moor' expanded as the employers needed moreworkers to keep their businesses going. Cornish tin miners were amongst those that moved here to work the mines, whose presence is noted by the name Penzance Street. Another street, Dalzell, is named after the Dalzell family who owned parcels of land along the road from Moor Row to Woodend past Gutterby and around Frizington and Aspatria. By 1885 the Dalzells estates were being run by the trustees of the family.

River Keekle
River Keekle

The River Keekle is a river running through the English county of Cumbria. The source of the Keekle is to be found at Keekle Head Farm on High Park between Gilgarran and Asby. From there, the river moves gradually southwards via former open cast mine between Frizington and Whitehaven, past the hamlet of Keekle, to Cleator, where it becomes subsumed by the River Ehen. The river is noted for its occasional abundance of salmon. Oatlands Pit was sunk at Keekle Head in 1880 by The Moresby Coal Company which also built the pit terraces of Pica Village. The pit was sunk approx 500 yards south east of Pica. It was served by the Rowrah Branch of the Cleator to Workington railway. Production at Oatlands was suspended in 1930 with closure in 1932 and final abandonment in 1934. In the 1980s, Oatlands became part of the extensive open cast coal mining operation working from Keekle Head. The River Keekle valley was an open cast coal mining site and the site was later used to bury mine spoil and other waste. In 2010, there was lobbying against plans for dumping of low-level nuclear waste at the former open cast site at Keekle Head. In 2012, Cumbria County Council rejected proposals by Endecom (owned by recycling and waste management company Sita) to build a repository for low level and very low level radioactive waste on the site of the former coal mine at Keekle Head. The council said the plan would have an "unacceptable impact" on the surrounding landscape. Endecom appealed against the rejection, triggering a two-week-long public inquiry, held in Kendal. There was strong opposition to the proposal to put radioactive waste in the site of the former open cast mine from Radiation Free Lakeland and others. In 2013, a fresh inquiry was held.In the 1990s, a 2.5 km stretch of the river was lined with plastic to protect it from potential mine water contamination and because of fears that possible future erosion could expose deeply buried mine waste underneath. Over the years, this plastic liner began to degrade and break up, with pieces being washed downstream, creating blockages, localised flooding and plastic pollution in the River Keekle, as well as posing a threat to the downstream River Ehen – a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Area of Conservation. During 2019 and 2020, the West Cumbria Rivers Trust carried out a £1.5 million project to remove the plastic liner and restore the riverbed with funding from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development's Water Environment Grant and the Environment Agency's River Restoration Programme. Around 150 tonnes of plastic was removed, with the sheets shredded, cleaned and recycled. Some of the plastic has been made into a bench and picnic table at Walkmill Community Woodland car park to mark the project's success. The river is re-naturalising itself and evidence of natural gravel, cobbles and sediment deposition can now be seen. The stretch of river has the potential to become a great habitat for people and wildlife.