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Location:
Europe,
United Kingdom, Whitehaven
Category:
Harbour view
Description:
View of the Whitehaven harbour from
the Beacon Museum
Location Information:
Whitehaven is a town and port on the
coast of Cumbria, England. It is the
administrative centre of the Borough
of Copeland.
Located on the west coast of the
county, outside the Lake District
National Park, Whitehaven includes a
number of former villages, estates
and suburbs, such as Woodhouse,
Kells, Mirehouse and Hensingham. The
major industry is the nearby
Sellafield nuclear complex, with
which a large proportion of the
population has links. The town's
fortunes as a port waned rapidly
when ports with much larger shipping
capacity, such as Bristol and
Liverpool, began to take over its
main trade. Its peak of prosperity
was in the 19th century when West
Cumbria experienced a brief boom
because haematite found locally was
one of the few iron ores that could
be used to produce steel by the
original Bessemer process.
Improvements to the Bessemer process
and the development of the open
hearth process removed this
advantage. As with most mining
communities the inter-war depression
was severe; this was exacerbated for
West Cumbria by Irish independence
which suddenly placed tariff
barriers on the principal export
market.
The Harbour has seen much renovation
due to millennium developments; a
picture of the harbour was used on
the front page of the Tate Modern's
promotional material for an
exhibition of Millennium Projects in
2003. The Harbour rejuvenation has
cost an estimated £11.3 million and
has enabled 100 more moorings within
the marina. Further investment of an
additional £5.5 million has seen the
development of a 40m high crows nest
and a wave light feature that
changes colour dependant upon the
tide, plus the Rum Story on Lowther
Street, voted Cumbria Tourism's
small visitor attraction of the year
2007. In June 2008 The Queen visited
Whitehaven as part of the 300th
Anniversary Celebrations. The Queen
and Prince Philip then officially
opened the refurbished Beacon, a
museum set on the harbour. 10,000
people attended the event.
Local
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