England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Whitehaven St Nicholas

The Parish

The chapelry of Whitehaven St Nicholas, its mother parish being St Bees, is one of 3 such chapelries serving the town & port of Whitehaven which sits in the extreme west of Cumberland on its Irish Sea coastline and some 40 miles southwest of the county town of Carlisle. Whitehaven sits largely between the course of the A595 road (which runs from the A66 near Cockermouth all along the western coast of Cumbria to the port of Barrow in Furness) and the sea. The stories regarding the origins of the town's name are largely apocryphal but revolve around the port and the pale cliffs which lie to both north and south. Whilst the Vikings certainly visited the haven and may well have had a summer camp hereabouts until Tudor times there was little here beyond a few fisherman's huts. The core of the town is clearly from above a planned town with a neatly laid-out grid of streets angled on a northeast to southwest orientation. Development came courtesy of the money of the Lowther family who finance a quay in 1634 and began the town's construction in 1666. Whitehaven initially flourished as a port exporting mainly to Ireland but also as a fishing port for herring. The twin industries of coal & iron grew Whitehaven substantially, coal being extracted from deep mines which extended a great distance under the sea, the export trade peaked in 1928 at 400,000 tons per annum. Iron was exported too but also served a ship-building industry too. Whitehaven's decline was largely due to its position isolated on Cumberland's western coast with a largely rural hinterland, by 1980 coal exports had ceased and the town has something of a post-industrial feel as a consequence. During its prosperity Whitehaven grew from the initial laid-out core and is nowadays part of a broad urban fringe to the coast stretching for almost 4 miles from Parton through the town and along the valley of Pow Beck to Mirehouse in the south. As a coastal community many small streams take water into the nearby Irish Sea. Whitehaven is sited at between sea level and 120 metres in the higher parts of Hensingham, inland the coastal fringe buts up to the flanks of Cumberland's Fells rising to 352 metres on Dent, the first objective on A A Wainwright's Coast to Coast Trail. St Nicholas' chapelry occupies a tiny area of the town, the population of Whitehaven swelled during the period of this transcript to almost 12,000 with huge numbers arriving to work in its industries from Scotland, Ireland and even the Isle of Man, the volume of marriages recorded here for St Nicholas is consistent with a population of around 3,000 in this chapelry. Domesday Book has no coverage in the west beyond the course of the River Esk consequently Whitehaven has no mention in that tome.

The Church

St Nicholas' church sits immediately northeast of Lowther Street within its own dedicated town block. As can readily be seen from the images the church is no longer entire, a disastrous fire in 1971 has left only parts of the church remaining. Built in 1693 and extended in 1883 in a mixture of Decorated & Perpendicular styles the church was a vast box for worship complete with a western tower embraced by the nave's extensions. After the fire only the porch, the western tower and both southwestern and northwestern transepts remain. The former church remains within its large churchyard which now functions as an urban park and is well-used as such by the folk as a welcome refuge in the busy town centre. Like most urban settings it is better to find suitable parking and visit on foot, the large park of a churchyard allows unfettered views for the photographer of the remains.