Last updated 19:31, Thursday, 27 November 2008

THANKS to Viv Paterson’s vigilant reporting (Times & Star, November 21) over 20 people turned up at 11.15am on Monday concerned at Allerdale council’s proposal to close Maryport Maritime Museum and store the contents in Workington.THE recent talk of the shops in Maryport, Whitehaven and Workington in bygone years prompted me to wonder was the pharmacy in Maryport the one run by Mr Briggs?THE Ellenborough Village Group recently staged a Family Tree Exhibition in the old school, now the Dales, and raised over £400 for charities.LAST Saturday I was enjoying my daily commute to work, travelling along the coast road from Allonby to Maryport. It was a beautiful, still, chilly morning and the views of Criffel and the hills of Galloway looked stunning in the crystal clear early morning light.DIANNE Standen is right (letters, November 21). Cockermouth Main Street needs bus shelters if the town values quality of life for its residents and visitors. It does not need a third bridge. IT WAS wrong for Councillor Elaine Woodburn of Copeland council to suggest that the new hospital should be built at Whitehaven (Times & Star, November 21).THE “People’s Friend” sent me a free copy of their magazine dated December 6-13, 2008, because a photograph of me, aged 15, is to be published in that issue.THIS photograph (above) was found in our store on October 20. We have had the photograph since then in the hope that someone would come forward and claim it, but as yet we have had no enquiries.I ENJOYED Viv Paterson’s Talk of the Times (Times & Star, November 21).I AM completing a book on football in Cumbria, and would like to thank everyone who has contacted me and supplied photographs and team line-ups.ANOTHER crazy planning decision by Allerdale council to add to the Great Clifton debacle.YOUR article on grab carts (Times & Star, November 7) brought to mind when I was a young boy at Maryport in the 50s and early 60s.I CANNOT understand the nit-picking and moaning regarding Cockermouth’s All Saints Rooms.

Unsurprisingly, all strongly oppose the destruction of a vital local resource, which was the town’s first real tourist attraction, to which so much more has been added over the last 20 years.

But, it was not a meeting that Allerdale councillors, who will make the decision, had been asked to attend to hear public views.

Moreover, all were equally concerned at meeting at such short notice on a weekday morning, which must have made it impossible for many others who might have wished to do so from attending.

So, it was unanimously agreed to call a public meeting to which the Allerdale executive and other local councillors will be invited.

This will be on Tuesday, December 9 at 7.30pm in St Mary’s Church (by Netherhall Corner), with Maryport Heritage Trust’s Gowan Coulthard in the chair.

All concerned with Maryport’s present and future, as well as its past, are warmly encouraged to come on December 9 and make their views known, to say “Save our Maritime Museum.”

DONALD LEIGHTON

Sycamore Road

Maryport

As for the old railway line in Cockermouth from the Station Road Station through towards Strawberry How being described as an “open sewer” (Times & Star, November 21), who else remembers Bush Yard, running from Main Street to South Street with a row of houses down the west side, the eastern boundary being a wall between the yard and Armstrong builders?

During the mid to late 1950s these were among the worst slums in Cockermouth; a standpipe for water, a couple of communal water closets, and an open gully running down the middle where housewives emptied their washing-up bowls, liquid waste, and so on.

Those houses had windows only on the front; their back walls formed the boundary with the buildings in the next yard or court.

Even well into the 1960s there were still people living in houses without water, sanitation, proper heating or lighting.

Some of the cottages on the east side of Sullart Street had to use the public conveniences on Main Street for their water supply, sanitation, and so on.

David Winkworth from the New Bookshop even had a cottage on High Sand Lane that he used as a storage area for his main shop in the old Timothy Whites and Taylors premises on the corner of Main Street and High Sand Lane.

When he bought the cottage it had no electricity and the lighting was by gas mantle.

Norweb wanted such an exorbitant sum to connect up the electric that he refused; after all, it ran just inches from the front door, under the pavement, so he continued for some years to light the rooms by gas. Since it was a storage area only, this was little inconvenience to him.

And as a pupil at Eaglesfield Paddle School during the late 1950s, when Mr Jackson from Fitz Road on the Moor was headmaster, we had no electricity in the two main rooms of the school.

Heating was by a pot-bellied stove, and if it became so dark that lighting was necessary the oil lamps suspended by chains and pulleys from the ceilings were lit.

For our weekly music lesson, courtesy of the BBC Radio Service for Schools, Mr Jackson used to bring the battery in from his Ford Prefect car and use that to power the radio.

I have known Cockermouth for just short of 60 years, and although I now live a fair distance away, I return whenever I am in England.

I have seen tremendous changes take place, some for the better and some perhaps for the worse, but no living and vital organism remains static; towns that stagnate lose their character, their spirit, their heart.

Cockermouth remains very much a lively place.

MARGARET ELIZABETH COLLINS-POWELL

Elliot Lake

Ontario

Canada

Thanks go to all who spent months researching their family names and designing impressive display boards, and to the helpers over the weekend and all who visited and made the event a success.

Special thanks to the Iredale family and their staff for all their hard work and for making everyone so welcome.

The Ellenborough Village Group was formed in 2006 to bring together people who share an interest in the past, present and future life of Ellenborough.

New members are welcome at the first meeting of 2009 at 6.30pm on Thursday, January 15, at the Dales.

JUDY ROCHESTER

Ellenborough

Maryport

All at once I saw a crowd, a host of concrete windmills.

May the powers that be who sanctioned the building of this gigantic monstrosity hang their heads in shame at the destruction of one of the most classic views in the British Isles.

They should be lashed to the railings on Maryport Promenade and flogged at dawn.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a great believer in the production of clean, renewable energy but surely it would have been cheaper to build these turbines on land in a more unobtrusive position.

What next, turbines on Skiddaw or Scafell?

GEORGE KEMP

Hayton

Aspatria

The former is a necessity; the latter an expensive frivolity.

The proportion of the elderly in the population grows, and they earn their bus passes.

For economic and ‘green’ reasons, we are exhorted to use public transport.

Given the weather’s vagaries, it’s uncomfortable and demeaning to huddle in doorways waiting for the bus. That’s inconvenient, too, for shopkeepers and shoppers.

Any good architect or engineer could design a shelter both functional and elegant for a town of 18th and 19th century facades.

This is only a Georgian town on a mediaeval street plan by virtue of those facades.

The town of long ago had no cosmopolitan restaurants and bars, no hairdressers, estate agents, solicitors or fish and chip takeaways.

These are now part of a daytime bustling street scene, occasionally savaged by rain and wind.

The town councillors, who perhaps use cars and not buses, should reconsider and support the erection of shelters, not an eccentric footbridge.

MICHAEL BARON

South Street

Cockermouth

This is politically too one-sided talk and should be ignored by the public, who should all have their say.

There is no doubt the most suitable site for the new hospital is Lillyhall, especially now the new Distington by-pass is almost ready.

Lillyhall is central on the A595 route for Whitehaven, Workington, Egremont, Cockermouth and Maryport and Distington ambulance station.

And most of all, it is on level ground, not on a hill which is where Hensingham hospital is, open to the elements, which is why it was expensive to maintain.

JAMES TAYLOR

Mid-town Close

Distington

The photo of me was taken in the rose arbour of the garden of our house in Beech Avenue, Dumbreck, Glasgow.

The house was a 20-roomed villa and had a tennis court and a nine-hole putting green in its grounds.

I went to visit it in 1988 and was shown around. It is now an ex-servicemen’s club. The tennis court and the putting green have made way for a car park.

It was my favourite house.

CATHERINE RICHARDSON

Needham Drive

Workington

It is a fairly old photograph and probably the only copy, presumably lost from someone’s purse or wallet.

We hope it can be returned to the rightful owner as it obviously has sentimental value to somebody.

CURRYS TEAM

Derwent Drive

Derwent Howe Industrial Estate

Workington

Like Viv, I’m all for Prince Charles. Yes, he has his faults, but haven’t we all?

I say to Prince Charles: “Good on ya Marra, keep meddling.”

ANNIE WINTER

Broughton Moor

I still require certain Workington, Barrow and Carlisle programmes from 1945 to 1954 for my research and will return any material loaned or pay excellent prices.

Anyone able to help can write to me at 9 Manor Close, Crayford, Kent DA1 4EX or telephone 01322 523153.

C D STAGG

Grayford

Kent

A young, enterprising man applies to build a Readymix concrete plant on a site on which the first Readymix plant in West Cumbria was built (Times & Star, November 14).

It would create six much-needed jobs, but they said it would be a detriment to the site’s visual amenity.

What a joke; it has Armstrong’s huge concrete plant on one side and the even larger Chapel Bank on the other flank.

Come on, let’s see common sense prevail.

R HOUGHTON

Shoreside

Siddick

Workington

There was an old woman who used to be on King Street every Friday and Saturday morning with a cart full of clothes, and your mother would make you stand there while she held a jumper, a shirt or pair of trousers against you to see if they fitted.

You never felt any shame as most people looked on the cart for a bargain, as money was short.

I remember every weekday at 4pm the “jam factory” on King Street used to empty, and out would come hundreds of women with white turbans, white overalls and clogs after clocking off from making tinned fruit and peas.

It was a sight to behold with the clack, clack, clack of the clogs on the pavement.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED

The top and bottom of it is that a fine old building has been saved from becoming derelict and saved for the future.

And all for free. They haven’t cost the council tax payer one penny.

So, please, let’s stop the bitching and instead commend those concerned for turning the fortunes of the Rooms round. Well done.

RAYMOND FOSTER

Croftside

Cockermouth