Last updated 15:53, Wednesday, 09 April 2008

FAREWELL TO THOMAS WHITE: On Thursday evening a public meeting was held in the Temperance Hall to commemorate services rendered to religion and morality in Whitehaven by Thomas White, president of the Young Men’s Christian Improvement Society.

Mr White spoke as follows: “If I may so speak, nature has placed Whitehaven in a position which, if not spoiled by man, it may become the first port in the north-western part of the kingdom.

“No great stretch of the imagination is required when we survey Whitehaven and the surrounding neighbourhood and notice the natural arrangement of its harbour, and the country for miles around stored in hill and dale, with inexhaustible mines of the richest minerals any land can produce.

“Nature has thus supplied us with that which, if properly used, might make Whitehaven and the neighbourhood one of the most flourishing manufacturing and commercial districts in the kingdom.”

– April 15, 1858

A WONDERFUL PERFORMANCE: As will be seen from our advertising columns, Mr J H Blackburne, the great blindfold chess-player, will play no fewer than thirty simultaneous games against the members of the Whitehaven Chess Club and other amateurs in this neighbourhood, in the Oddfellows Hall, tonight.

Tomorrow night he will play eight separate games simultaneously without seeing any board. To play one game at chess without sight of the board is in itself a feat of memory, but how eight games are played at the same time is almost beyond comprehension.

– April 12, 1883

MEMORIAL TO A FAMOUS CRAGSMAN: It was recently decided at a meeting of the J W Robinson Memorial Committee, held in Manchester, Mr W P Haskett-Smith presiding, to fix a bronze tablet upon a rock near the High Level route overlooking the Pillar Rock in Ennerdale to the memory of the famous cragsman. The memorial tablet will bear the following inscription: “For remembrance of the famous John Wilson Robinson, of Whinfell Hall, in Lorton, who died 1907 at Brigham, one hundred of his comrades and friends raised this.

He knew and loved as none other

These his native crags and fells when he drew

Simplicity, strength and charm.

We climb the hill; From end to end

Of all the landscape underneath,

We find no place that odes not breath

Some gracious memory of our friend.

– April 19, 1908

THE many friends of Mr William Richardson, the oldest inhabitant of St Bees, will regret to learn of his death in his 91st year.

A great conversationalist, Mr Richardson had a splendid memory, and worked mainly in the coal and iron mines at Harrington and the Cleator district during his life.

CUMBERLAND is the fifth highest county in the country as regards incidence of poor law recipients, according to the latest statistics. The county has 371 recipients of relief per 10,000 of the population.

THAT further education maintains its popularity in Egremont was demonstrated this week when the annual exhibition of students’ work was held in the Market Hall.

The exhibition attracted a record crowd, and the high standard of work was a revelation to the visitors. One of the most interesting sections was the display of ladies’ woodwork.

– April 13 1933.

THE Cumberland Education Committee has announced the first full-time course at the Whitehaven College of Education. So far, all courses at the college have been on a part-time basis.

The new course will provide basic instruction in nuclear physics and engineering for prospective atomic power station charge engineers.

Meanwhile, the two reactors at Windscale Works, which have been out of operation since the accident, are not suitable for conversion to power-production units.

They were designed for the production of plutonium for purely military purposes and do not run a high enough temperature for power-production, it has been stated.

THE National Trust has acquired the bed of Derwentwater under the western half of the lake.

When it was put up for sale with the rest of the Cumberland estate of Lord Leconfield, it was purchased for £500 by a Blackpool man, Mr Walton.

But when Mr Walton heard the National Trust was interested, he instantly offered it to them for £450.

– April 17 1958

A NEW £80,000 slaughterhouse for Whitehaven is being torn apart by vandals after the project was inexplicably halted over a year ago.

The facility on Whitehaven’s North Shore has had wiring and piping ripped out. It is thought that a technicality in EEC regulations is the reason that the abattoir has never been used.

PRE-WAR council houses in Whitehaven, Parton, Hensingham and Egremont will be modernised under Copeland’s essential repair programme.

Edwin Calvin, environmental health and housing chairman, said they would do essential repairs of 150 houses a year and would start at Woodhouse, Greenbank and Hensingham.

THE toilets at Wyndham car park at Egremont are posing something of a problem for would-be users – they don’t have any male/female signs on them.

Copeland Borough Council is now to make sure the toilets are properly signed.

– April 14 1983.