Cockermouth

Cockermouth is a market town with a 13th century charter on the banks of the River Derwent about half way between Keswick and Workington on the A66. The name Cockermouth comes from the River Cocker which flows into the Derwent here.

Cockermouth Castle, 1906
Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection.

Cockermouth Castle was built in the centuries immediately following the Norman conquest and first recorded in 1221 when the king ordered it to be besieged and destroyed during a rebellion. It appears to have been quickly rebuilt, and went through various phases of damage and reconstruction over the next couple of centuries but was eventually allowed to fall into disrepair after the seventeenth century Civil War.

Cockermouth & William Wordsworth

When tourists make their way to the town today it is almost invariably to visit the birthplace of Cockermouth's most famous son. William Wordsworth, the 19th century poet laureate, was born here in 1770. The Wordsworth House in Cockermouth along with Rydal Mount, and Dove Cottage at Grasmere, completes the trio of major Wordsworth visitor locations in the Lake District, each relating to a different stage of the poets's life. His father was agent to Sir James Lowther, and as such had the most splendid house in the town, now open to the public, on Main Street with the River Derwent immediately behind it.

Cockermouth, Wordsworth's Birthplace, 1906
Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection.

Wordsworth lived here, with three brothers and a sister, until his mother died in 1778 and the family was split up. He went, aged nine, with his brothers into lodgings at Hawkshead where they attended the Grammar School. His father died five years later.

The poet periodically revisited Cockermouth, especially in later life when his son John was rector of nearby Brigham. He had fond memories of his early years at what is now known as Wordsworth House, In 1805, though, he was disappointed to find the terrace-walk behind the house where he played as a boy now overgrown with brambles. Childhood was not to be recovered. Today the property is lovingly cared for by the National Trust. Staff dressed in period costume introduce visitors to life as it would have been lived at the time of Wordsworth's childhood, including the kitchen and his father's office. Regular harpsichord recitals are also given.

John Dalton: Cockermouth & Science

In my twenties I used to attend evening lectures of the Oil & Colour Chemists' Association (OCCA) at the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in its excellent meetings facility, a post-war replacement of premises on George Street destroyed by bombing during World War II but which sadly itself disappeared many years ago. (The "Lit and Phil" if not its building continues in existence, now based at the Manchester Business School). Inside the building great prominence was given to an historical figure, John Dalton, and not far away one of Manchester's major city centre thoroughfares is John Dalton Street. So who was this John Dalton, and what is his connection with Cockermouth?

John Dalton was born into a Quaker family at Eaglesfield near Cockermouth in 1766. While still a child he showed great skill at mathematics, and as a young man teaching at a private school in Kendal began to give public lectures on scientific subjects. He moved in 1793 to take up a teaching post at New College, Manchester, an academic establishment set up to serve those who were not members of the Church of England as at that time the country's few universities were closed to "Dissenters". The following year he joined the Lit and Phil and later, for almost thirty years up to the time of his death, was its President.

Dalton's early researches into the behaviour of gases led to what became known as "Dalton's law of partial pressures". In the first decade of the nineteenth century he published papers proposing that all matter is made up of minute, indivisible discrete particles and that all such "atoms" of the same elenment are identical. He became renowned worldwide as the developer of the atomic theory of matter.

In the two centuries that have passed since then it has, of course, been discovered that elementary atoms are themselves composed of even smaller entities, but he laid the foundation on which all modern theory of matter is built. He paved the way for successive revolutions in the physical and chemical sciences. He had wide-ranging scientific interests. He was a keen meteorologist (in fact his first published book was on that subject) and also one of the earliest systematic researchers into colour blindness, from which he himself suffered and which became widely known as Daltonism.

John Dalton never married. He lived for many years in George Street at the home of a friend, the Rev. W. Johns. (Was this the evenual home of the Lit and Phil?) He was focused on his work, but did find time to make annual visits north to the Lake Country. Another great son of the Lake District, John Dalton died in 1844. [More on John Dalton].

Cockermouth & Mutiny on the Bounty

Another famous son of Cockermouth was Fletcher Christian, born just two years before John Dalton, at a farmhouse near the Cockermouth to Egremont road. He was educated at Cockermouth Grammar School and then joined the navy. Christian is said to have settled in the Pitcairn Islands after the mutiny, and his descendants are still there, but there are many unsubstantiated rumours as to what later became of him. Some say he was murdered by Tahitian tribesmen; others that he made his way back and lived incognito in England.

It is noteworthy that Cockermouth's three most famous men were born here in one short period of less than six years in the late-eighteenth century.