A Brief Encounter with Carnforth and a Train Trip to Grange-over-Sands

A Railway Station that Thinks it Won an Oscar and a Trip Across the Kent Estuary

Carnforth

Lancashire

Lancaster

‘There’s not much else to detain you in Carnforth,’ Brian said, ‘just a couple of charity shops, a branch of Greggs, a Chinese take-away and an estate agent or two.’ Brian was right, Carnforth has all these things and, useful as they may be, they are not the stuff of a blog post. Slightly more interesting are the old fashioned ironmonger’s and Carnforth Bookshop selling new, used and antiquarian books, but by and large Carnforth looks and feels like a town side-lined by the currents of history.

There is a Co-op which has taken up residence in what was, until the mid-sixties, the Roxy Cinema….

Carnforth Co-op

….and a war memorial with half a dozen floral tributes to Drummer Lee Rigby, murdered the previous week in London. I was surprised; he was not a local man, and their presence clearly says something about the current state of the national psyche, though I am not exactly sure what.

Carnforth War Memorial

Carnforth Railway Station

And then of course there is the railway station, the ‘else’ of the opening sentence. It was the railway - and the abundant local limestone - that made Carnforth, turning a village of a couple of hundred at the start of the 19th century into a steel making town with over 4000 inhabitants by its end. Then steel making stopped and so did Carnforth’s growth, though it remained an important railway depot for the first half of the 20th century.

Carnforth Railway Station

Carnforth Station and Brief Encounter

The railway also brought Carnforth its 15 minutes of fame, or more precisely, its 86 minutes of fame as that is the running time of Brief Encounter. If the locals are to be believed Carnforth Station was billed just above Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, though, unaccountably it was Celia Johnson who got the Oscar nomination not the station.

The station clock, which features prominently in the film is still there….

The clock, Carnforth Railway Station

… and part of one platform has been set out like the fictional Milford Junction of 1945.

Carnforth Station as it might have been in 1945

Inside, the refreshment room, which also played an important part, has been lovingly recreated…..

Refreshment room, Carnforth Station

…… and returned to use. Despite the 3d (that’s thruppence, children, there were 12d to a shilling and 20s to £1) on the till, the £8.95 on the blackboard shows they have not recreated 1945 prices. This till is just for show, but they all looked like that when I was a lad.



All tills used to look like this

Although the station was used extensively as a location, the refreshment room scenes were shot in a studio, so this is a recreation of a room that never was.

The rest of the interior is the ‘heritage centre’. Beside the shop, Brief Encounter runs on a loop, while other displays chart the history of Carnforth. There is as much railway memorabilia as anyone could wish for, a serious model railway shop for small boys of all ages and, of course, a nod to the superstar of the railway world, Thomas the Tank Engine (here upstaged by Percy the Green Engine).

Percy the Green Engine, Carnforth Railway Station

West Coast Main Line trains stopped calling at Carnforth in 1970 and the platform was removed so they could scream through at full speed. The station deteriorated into dereliction until its redevelopment as a heritage centre in 2000.

Carnforth Railway Station, the functional part

Taking the Train from Carnforth to Grange-over-Sands

Two working platforms remain for trains running between Manchester Airport and Barrow-in-Furness. When you are at a station you should take a train, so we made the fifteen minute journey to Grange-over-Sands on the opposite (Cumbrian) side of Morecambe Bay. The attraction, at least for me, was that the line crosses the bridge over the Kent estuary or the top end of Morecambe Bay, depending on how you want to look at it.



Across the Kent estuary...or the top end of Morecambe Bay

Grange-over-Sands

Cumbria

South Lakeland

Grange is about the same size as Carnforth, but there the similarities cease. The railway turned it, almost overnight, from a fishing village to a seaside resort but a small and select sort of resort. We walked along the promenade which is unusual as proms go as it overlooks not a beach, but a strip of salt marsh, grazed by a small herd of sheep.

Lynne and Hilary on the promenade, Grange-over-Sands

A hundred years ago the main stream of the River Kent ran beside the promenade but over the years it worked its way south, leaving behind sands and mudflats which have developed into the salt marsh we see today. Sustained easterly winds in early 2007 started the river moving back again and the marsh is now eroding; Morecambe Bay is forever changing.



The salt marsh - and the salt marsh lamb, Grange-over-Sands

Just because the river has been neglecting the promenade, it does not mean the residents have, and the gardens are carefully tended by a group of volunteers; we passed them as they took their coffee break. Mainly retired people – Grange is full of them us – with a sense of civic responsibility, they are doing an excellent job.

Having strolled out along the prom, we walked back through the streets, past large, solid stone houses built to last until eternity, if not a little longer. There are charity shops here, too, but you have to admire the wrought ironwork.



Charity shops and wrought iron, Grange-over-Sands

There are also a couple of top class delis. Where Carnforth looks sad and dated, Grange’s response to the 21st century is to be archly retro - and it seems to work. They have an artisan baker who makes real bread and a serious butcher who also produces pies - and do I approve of a proper pie. Brian assures me they are as good as they look, and Brian’s opinion in such matters can be taken as fact.

Archly Retro, Grange-over-Sands

At the end of the Main Street....

Main Street, Grange-over-Sands

...we crossed a small park populated by a variety of exotic ducks and geese (though fewer than of late, Hilary thought) and made our way back to the station, itself a listed building and recently restored and repainted.



Snow Geese and chick, Grange-over-Sands

The climate and the nature of Morecambe Bay mean that Grange was never going to be a candy-floss, kiss-me-quick-hat sort of seaside resort, but the surrounding countryside is beautiful and the Lakes are nearby so this is prime holiday cottage country. People retire to Grange, too. I would not consider it myself, despite its direct link to Manchester airport, as the climate is just too cool and too wet, however for those with webbed feet….



Grange-over-Sands station

Commemorating Comedians in Caerphilly, Morecambe and Ulverston

Three Towns Commemorate their Favourite Sons

Tommy Cooper, Caerphilly, South Wales

Caerphilly CB

When we visited in April 2009, Caerphilly looked a dismal town; shops were boarded up, paint was peeling, windows needed cleaning – those that were not broken – and many of the people look pale and unwell. It gives me no pleasure to write this; I may be a long exiled Welshman, but both sides of my family come from South Wales, as do Lynne’s (her mother actually attended Caerphilly Grammar School), and it remains a part of my somewhat complex concept of ‘home’. There are still many pleasant and prosperous places in the region, but I fear that Caerphilly is typical of too many towns struggling to adjust to the post-industrial world.

The centre is dominated by one of Britain’s largest Norman castles. This should be a tourist attraction, and maybe it is, but on a dank April day the castle looked as dark and forbidding as Gilbert de Clare (see also Llantrisant and Castell Coch) could have hoped for when he began work in 1268.

Parc Dafydd Williams, Caerphilly

On the plus side, there is a pleasant garden which the town kindly chose to name after me (all right, it’s some other bloke with the same name, but it could have been). Nearby is a statue of Caerphilly’s favourite son.

Tommy Cooper was born in Caerphilly in 1921, though the family moved to Devon when he was three. His connection with the town is slim, but Caerphilly needs all the straws it can clutch. The statue, the work of James Done, was unveiled by Sir Anthony Hopkins in 2008.

Tommy Cooper and Caerphilly Castle

For those too young to remember, Tommy Cooper was a magician. Tall and ungainly with a fez stuck on his permanently dishevelled head, he looked nothing like the standard magician – and his tricks went wrong. From this simple premise he extracted humour which was sometimes simple, sometimes complex but always hilarious. An innately funny man, he could make an audience laugh by standing silent and motionless on stage, he was also a competent magician. Occasionally his tricks went right, just to keep everybody off balance.

He died on stage during a live televised show in 1984. At first, both the audience and stage crew thought the collapse was part of his act. Sadly it was not. A one-off and a true original, he died far too young.

Eric Morecambe, Morecambe, Lancashire

Lancashire

Morecambe

I have written about Morecambe Bay before (Morecambe Bay and Sunderland Point) but not about the town. A station and harbour were built beside the bay in 1846 and the town that grew up around them and absorbed the fishing village of Poulton-le-Sands eventually adopted the name of the bay. For a time Morecambe thrived, the railway bringing tens of thousands of holiday-makers each year, mainly from Yorkshire and southern Scotland.

In 2013, however, marketing Morecambe as a seaside resort seems a job for a hopeless optimist. With a beach of imported sand, and sea that only visits for a couple of hours a day, the cool, damp climate is the least of its disadvantages. Yet people still come here. The hinterland of north Lancashire and southern Cumbria is countryside of rare beauty, but surely it is only those who know no better - or can afford no better - that take a seaside holiday in Morecambe. Maybe Morecambe has its charms, if so I have missed them – I would be happy if anyone enlightened me.

The sea front at Morecambe

While the town took its name from the bay, Eric Morecambe took his name from the town where he was born in 1926. John Eric Bartholomew, as he was then, met Ernest Wiseman in 1940 and the double act of Bartholomew and Wiseman was born. Separated for a while by national service, they reunited, changed their names to Morecambe and Wise and the rest is history.

The Morecambe and Wise show was a Saturday prime time fixture for well over a decade and the Christmas special was compulsory viewing. With a script that was not actually replete with jokes, Eric’s clowning and ad-libbing regularly reduced my mother to a quivering heap. The quality of guests was legendary, serious actors, like Judi Dench and Glenda Jackson, serious musicians, like André Previn, and serious politicians, like Harold Wilson, queued up to be the butt of their jokes.

Eric died in 1984, the month after Tommy Cooper. Like Cooper he died of a heart attack, but unlike Cooper he managed to finish his show before collapsing backstage.

A statue of Eric Morecambe by sculptor Graham Ibbeson has pride of place on the town’s sea front. Before the Olympics the Queen did not do guests spots on other people’s shows, but she did came to Morecambe to unveil Eric’s statue in 1999.

Eric Morecambe on the Morecambe Sea Front

Eric and Ernie brought the double act to such a pitch of perfection they effectively killed it. Humour does not always cross the generations, but my mother was one of his greatest fans and my daughter can sometimes be heard quoting him, though she was only three when he died.

Stan Laurel, Ulverston, Cumbria

Cumbria

Traditionally a detached part of Lancashire, but since 1972 officially Cumbria, the Furness peninsula is a strange sort of place. Travelling south, the Lake District hills flatten out into land scarred by ancient glacial activity, riven by broad sandy estuaries and fringed by desolate salt marshes. The unlovely industrial town of Barrow lies at the tip of the peninsula while at the base is the small, neat market town of Ulverston.

County Square is hardly the focal point of the cluster of handsome old buildings that make up central Ulverston, but it does seem to be considered the town centre.

County Square, Ulverston

Stan Laurel was born Stanley Arthur Jefferson in Ulverston in 1886. He came from a theatrical family, went into the business straight from school and joined Fred Karno’s troupe in 1910. In 1912 he toured America with the troupe (which also included Charlie Chaplin) and decided to stay. He was already a well-established actor and film director when he started working with Oliver Hardy in the late 1920s.

The statue of Stan and Ollie that stands outside Coronation Hall is, like that of Eric Morecambe, by Graham Ibbeson. It was unveiled by Ken Dodd in 2009.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy outside Coronation Hall, Ulverston

Ulverston also has a Laurel and Hardy museum, but it was closed for ‘major refurbishment’ when we visited – what did we expect on a cold wet January morning? Laurel and Hardy were no doubt funny in their day, but I doubt modern audiences find much to laugh at. That said, they were innovators in their field, they were the first major double act in film history, and they were successful in both silent and talking pictures, so they must have had something.

My mother met them when they were touring Britain in the late 1940s. They came to the Ideal Home exhibition and visited the stand where she was demonstrating cookery techniques. Her verdict: ‘a pair of silly old fools.’

Morecambe Bay and Sunderland Point

A Huge and Sometimes Dangerous Bay, an Intermittant Island and an Unfortunate Young Man

[Addition 31/05/2014 at end]

Morecambe Bay and the 2004 Cockle Picking Disaster

Lancashire

I find the sight of Morecambe Bay both awe inspiring and unsettling. 300+ square kilometres of sand and mudflats is not only a vast expanse of nothing, it is an expanse of nothing with a strangely threatening air. And the threat is real. The quicksands are dangerous, but it is the tides that have been the great killer over the years. Amongst the highest in the world, they sweep in faster than a man can run. Sand bars that are almost undetectable by the naked eye are first cut off and then submerged. 23 Chinese cockle pickers, many of them illegal immigrants, died here in February 2004 when they were caught out by the tide.

Morecambe Bay as the tide comes in

The 2004 Gangmaster Licensing Act was a direct consequence of this disaster, but passing well-meaning legislation is easier than enforcing it. The cockle beds closed in 2005, more as a measure to conserve the cockles than the cockle pickers. They will reopen one day soon, and I hope they will be worked by local cocklers who have the skill and knowledge to do the job safely.

Sunderland Point

The Causeway

The River Lune flows into the bay a few miles south of the town of Morecambe. Sunderland Point, on the northern side of the river mouth, is a low-lying projection into the wasteland of mud and silt. At high tide in spring and autumn, the tip of the point becomes an island, but the rest of the time the village of Sunderland is connected to the mainland by a single-track causeway.

The Sunderland Point Causeway

Samphire grows abundantly along the roadside, while around it the normally flat mud has been sculpted into mounds and water-filled hollows. A heron stood in a pool looking for fish abandoned by the tide. As we reached the village, a curlew flew low overhead, dropping down onto the riverside where it joined a group of redshanks, using its long curved beak to harvest a layer of mud below that reached by the shorter, straighter beaks of its smaller companions. Further along, oystercatchers were doing what oystercatchers do, which is generally eating worms and small molluscs rather than catching oysters. Overhead a variety of raucous gulls announced their presence.

Samphire

The Village of Sunderland

The channel of the River Lune was maybe fifty metres away. On its muddy banks, fishing boats lay abandoned, awaiting high tide. Sunderland Point feels remote and desolate, though on closer inspection it is neither. Lancaster is not far away, the Ashton Memorial, the city’s hilltop landmark, is clearly visible. The small group of houses and barn conversions that comprise the village are well maintained and the eighteenth century buildings are fitted with twenty first century flood defences. Although there was nobody about, there were clear signs of an active community.

Fishing boats beside the River Lune

Once, though, Sunderland bustled. Vessels anchored in the river, awaiting the high tides that would take them upstream to the port of Lancaster. Sailors came ashore to do what sailors do – which is not necessarily catching oysters – and Sunderland catered for their needs.

Sunderland

In the 1780s, when Glasson Dock was built on the other side of the Lune and ships no longer had to wait for tides, Sunderland started its slide into obscurity.

'Sambo's' Grave

Eighteenth century Lancaster played its part in the triangular trade that brought cotton and sugar from the West Indies, took manufactured goods to West Africa and bartered them for slaves. There are even records of some forty black slaves in the Lancaster area.

Sambo, for that was the name he was given and the name he is buried under, arrived in Sunderland Point in 1736, either as a slave or as a cabin boy. He immediately fell ill and soon after died in the brewhouse of the Ship Inn, now known as Upsteps Cottage. As he was not a Christian, he was buried in unconsecrated ground on the tip of Sunderland Point.

Sixty year later James Watson, a retired schoolmaster, raised money from summer visitors to fund a memorial. In 1796 he placed a plaque on the grave bearing a poem he had written himself.

The plaque, Sambo's Grave, Sunderland Point

The words – with modernised spelling and orthography – read:

Full sixty years the angry winter's wave
Has thundering dashed this bleak and barren shore
Since Sambo's head laid in this lonely grave
Lies still and ne'er will hear their turmoil more

Full many a sandbird chirps upon the sod
And many a moonlight elfin round him trips
Full many a summer's sunbeam warms the clod
And many a teeming cloud upon him drips.

But still he sleeps - till the awakening sounds
Of the archangel's trump new life impart
Then the Great Judge his approbation founds
Not on man's colour but his worth of heart

The grave today is well signed and frequently visited. It is surrounded by flowers and painted stones, put there mainly by local school children - teachers are worthy and wonderful people.

James Watson’s brother William was a prominent Lancaster slave trader. Sixty years after his death the unfortunate Sambo was used in a quarrel between two brothers about a great issue of the day. It was, however an issue on which the long dead young man may well have felt strongly. At least his memory was co-opted by the right side.

Slavery and 'Modern' Slavery

A court judgement in 1772 had declared slavery illegal in England, slave trading was banned in 1807 and slavery itself abolished throughout the empire in 1833.

Slavery may be illegal, but that does not mean it no longer exists. The status of the Chinese cockle pickers who perished not so far from here in 2004 was little better than that of slaves. The law may no longer be on the side of the slavers, but enforcement, even in this country, is far from easy.

http://www.anti-slaverysociety.org/

Addendum 31/05/2014

The Praying Shell, the Cockle Pickers Memorial

While strolling beside Morecambe Bay near the village of Bolton-le-Sands in 2014 we came across the Praying Shell. Made from Portland limestone it is the work of Morecambe sculptor Anthony Padgett and was unveiled on the 30th of November last year as a memorial to the Chinese cockle pickers who died in 2004.

Praying Shell by Anthony Padgett, Bolton-le-Sands

We had visited this spot before and bought some of the excellent salt marsh lamb from Red Bank Farm (some of the farm buildings can be seen in the background). We had not realised that this is where the incident took place.

Mud flats, Bolton-le-Sands

In the picture the tide is out and the mud flats are relatively safe, provided you avoid the quicksands; but the tide can sweep in fast enough to drown the unwary - as it did in February 2004.