Coordinates: 54°29′20″N 3°35′17″W / 54.489°N 3.588°W
| St Bees | |
 St Bees Village |
|
  St Bees
St Bees shown within Cumbria |
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| Population | 1,717 |
|---|---|
| OS grid reference | |
| District | Copeland |
| Shire county | Cumbria |
| Region | North West |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | ST. BEES |
| Postcode district | CA27 |
| Dialling code | 01946 |
| Police | Cumbria |
| Fire | Cumbria |
| Ambulance | North West |
| EU Parliament | North West England |
| UK Parliament | Copeland |
| List of places: UK • England • Cumbria | |
St Bees is a village and civil parish in the Copeland district of Cumbria, in the north of England, about five miles west south-west of Whitehaven. The parish had a population of 1,717 according to the 2001 census. Within the parish is St. Bees Head, the most westerly point of Northern England upon which stands St Bees Lighthouse.
The village is served by St Bees railway station on the Cumbrian Coast line, running from Carnforth to Carlisle.
St Bees has a Norman priory and an Elizabethan School and is the start of the famous Wainwright Coast to Coast Walk. St Bees Head is the only major sea cliff between Wales and Scotland, is the only Heritage Coastline in Cumbria and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is the spectacular location of one of England's most important cliff seabird colonies. There is a large sandy beach just south of the South Head and within easy walking distance of the main village centre.
The name St Bees is a corruption of the Norse name for the village, which is given in the earliest charter of the Priory as "Kyrkeby becok", which can be translated as the "Church town of Bega",[1] relating to the local Saint Bega[2], who was said to be an Irish princess who fled to avoid an enforced marriage, and crossed the Irish Sea to St Bees.
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The Priory and School
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The Normans did not reach Cumbria until 1092. When eventually they took over the local lordships, William le Meschin, Lord of Egremont, used the existing church site[3] to build a grand monastic building to house a Prior and six monks from about 1130 onwards. It was subordinate to the great Benedictine monastery of St Mary at York. The magnificent Norman doorway of the Priory dates from this time.
The Priory had a great influence on the area. The monks worked the land, fished, and extended the Priory buildings. The ecclesiastical Parish of St Bees was large and stretched to Ennerdale, Loweswater, Wasdale and Eskdale. The coffin routes from these outlying areas to the mother church in St Bees can still be followed in places.
The Priory was closed in the English Reformation on the orders of Henry VIII in 1539. The nave of the monastic church has continued in use as the parish church to the present day, but much of the extensive monastic buildings were plundered or fell into decay.
Remarkably, the small West Cumbrian village of St Bees produced two of the Archbishops of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I: Edmund Grindal; Archbishop of Canterbury and Edwin Sandys; Archbishop of York.[4].
In about 1519 Edmund Grindal was born in Cross Hill House, St Bees, which still exists, and is marked with a plaque[5]. He was probably educated by the Catholic monks at the monastery across the valley. A devout Protestant, he made his mark in the reign of Edward VI, but had to flee to Strasbourg when the Catholic Mary I ascended the throne. On Mary's death the country once again became Protestant, and Grindal became Bishop of London, Archbishop of York, then Archbishop of Canterbury. His undoing was opposing Queen Elizabeth I on liberal religious meetings and he was suspended. He died in 1583 still in disgrace, but, virtually on his death bed, he founded St Bees School which exists today as a co-educational independent school with around 300 pupils aged 11 to 18. The village now has two schools; the present primary school was established in the 1870s.
In 1981 an archaeological excavation at the priory revealed a lead coffin containing an astonishingly well preserved body - now known as the "St Bees Man". The male occupant is thought to have been a knight who may have died in the Teutonic Crusades in Prussia in the 1300s[6]. Although the body was about six hundred years old, his nails, skin and stomach contents were found to be in near-perfect condition. Research to establish the identity is continuing. There is an exhibition of the current known findings in the Priory church, which also has an extensive history display.
Growth of the village
The 1800s saw the start of great changes. In 1816 St Bees Theological College was founded, which was the first theological College outside Oxbridge for the training of Church of England Clergy. The monastic chancel was re-roofed, and additional lecture rooms were built. At one time the College had 100 students, and over 2,600 clergy were trained here before it closed in 1895.[7]
St. Bees School started its era of expansion with the building of the quadrangle in 1846 with compensation from the rich mine-owning Lowther family, who had illegally obtained the lucrative mineral rights for Whitehaven from the school in 1742 at a derisory sum[8]. This was the first step in St. Bees School's rise from a local institution to becoming one of the new “Public Schools” on the fashionable model of Dr Arnold’s Rugby. By 1916 numbers had reached 350, many new buildings had been erected, and the school had become known nationally. The school is the Alma Mater of actor Rowan Atkinson.
Perhaps some of the greatest changes were after 1849 when the Furness Railway reached the village. St Bees attracted the professional classes who commuted to businesses in Whitehaven or Workington. This led to the building of many of the larger houses and Lonsdale Terrace. The railway brought tourists, and as early as 1851 the Lord Mayor of London stayed at the Seacote Hotel. This long history of attracting tourists for “Bucket and spade” holidays has continued to this day.
The railway made possible the export of St Bees sandstone. Huge amounts of stone were exported, much of it for building the boom town of Barrow-in-Furness. This industry died out in the 1970s, but has since been revived, and there are now two working quarries in the parish.
Agriculture was originally the mainstay of the village economy. Gradually, during the 1800s, service employment for the School and lodgings for the College gave additional income, and with the advent of commuters, the Village’s social mix was becoming more middle class. Tourism and quarries also provided employment, and many village men found work in the iron ore mines at Cleator. Thus the 1800s saw the change from a rural backwater based on agriculture, to the more diversified role of a dormitory village for professional and industrial worker alike, and it grew into a minor academic centre.
The start of the 20th Century saw yet another decline in agriculture, and this has continued to today, when there are only a few farms left. Industrial decline also hit West Cumbria as a whole, particularly after the boom years of both wars. However, following the Second World War, two major industries were established which have had a profound effect on the community.[9] The Marchon Chemical Company at Kells, which is now closed, and UKAEA/BNFL at Sellafield both soaked up village labour released by the declining heavy iron and mining industries, and brought a large influx of the technical and scientific university-educated middle class into the village; rather like the first arrival of the professional classes a century earlier. There is now an extensive science park - Westlakes, on the northern fringe of the parish, and the last two decades have seen a significant revival in tourism.
Citations
- ^ Liber 1, para i, The Register of the Priory of St Bees, Rev J Wilson, 1915, Published by the Surtees Society.
- ^ "St Bega - Cult, Fact and Legend", John M Todd, Transactions of Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society 1980 - Volume LXXX.
- ^ "The pre-Conquest Church in St Bees, Cumbria: a possible minster?", John M Todd, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and archaeological Society, 2003
- ^ "Archbishop Grindal 1519-1583 The struggle for a reformed church" - Patrick Collinson 1979 ISBN 0-224-01703-9
- ^ Archbishop Grindal's birthplace; Cross Hill, St Bees, Cumbria. By John M Todd and Mary Todd. Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Vol XCIX, 1999.
- ^ Text of lecture given by John M Todd at the Post Graduate Seminar on Medieval history, Lancaster University, Sept, 1987, and later at Oxford, Copenhagen and St Andrews universities.
- ^ "St Bees College - Pioneering Higher Education in 19th Century Cumbria" Rev Dr Trevor Park, 2008, ISBN 0-9508325-1-0
- ^ "The Headmaster, The Provost, and the Earl; The affair of the St Bees School mineral lease, 1812-1817, John M Todd. Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Vol LXXXIII, 1983
- ^ "100 Years of St Bees", Douglas Sim. 1995, ISBN 0952699001
External links
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