Historic Whitehaven

The settlement grew from a remote fishing village set around a tidal river, into England’s second largest port, with its notorious trade based on slavery. When the Lowther family came on the scene, the town’s wealth and population multiplied, and coal and shipbuilding transformed the once-sheltered ‘haven’ forever. Whitehaven’s informal ‘old town’ will be described, before proceeding to the remarkable ‘grid-iron’ planned streets that introduced such a layout to Georgian Cumberland.