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St.Bees Parish Council

The Beginning - Parish Revolution

On 4th December 1894 all roads in St. Bees led to the Village School. A large and excited crowd was assembling to elect the village’s first parish council. The new Parish Councils being set up all over England and Wales would be the first democratically elected bodies in the parishes. There was a whiff of rural revolution in the air; local affairs were being put in the hands of the man and woman in the street, and excitement ran high.

At 7.30 p.m. prompt the meeting started, Mr. Henry Kitchin was appointed chairman, and nineteen nominations for the eleven council seats quickly rolled in. Curiously, the vote was by a show of hands to save the cost of a secret ballot, though dishonest or confused electors could use more than their eleven allotted votes. As a safeguard, electors could demand a secret ballot if they were not satisfied with the outcome. The result was declared, and it only remained for Mr. Kitchin to allow a final opportunity for a secret ballot request. After an awkward silence a Mr. Brockbank spoke up with a ballot request. Several other voters supported him, and the chairman was obliged to nullify that evening’s vote. A new election would be held on the 18th December - democracy had to be properly served!

The second election was probably justified. It attracted over twice as many voters, and three successful candidates from the first election failed to get elected. The new council was:

• Canon E. Knowles, Vicar of St. Bees and last Principal of the Theological College
  

• William Broomfield, chemist
  

• Henry Fox, landowner
  

• John Bowly, clerk
  

• William Walker, grocer & draper
  

• Steven Graves and John Sewell, both farmers
  

• George Scoular and Joseph Woolcock, both mining engineers,
  

• William Stafford, joiner
  

• James Graham, bootmaker
  

This was a interesting result. Nationally, the trend had been that almost half the parish council seats were taken by farmers. The other half went to craftsmen and labourers, and there was just a sprinkling of gentry, clergy, professional people and businessmen. But in St. Bees it was different. The proximity to Whitehaven and to heavy industry, and the influence of the Church and School, caused those elected to come from a wide range of occupations. This was to result in an active council, as we shall see.The St. Bees Council’s first meeting at 7 p.m. on New Year's Eve 1894, was at just about the last possible moment in the year. Probably because of the evening’s forthcoming celebrations, the agenda was kept short. John Bowly, a professional civil servant, was elected Chairman, and Mr.W.E.Walker elected Vice-Chairman. John Hartley, the Board School Headmaster, was appointed Clerk at an annual salary of £5.

The Main Street c1900. Broomfield's Chemist shop is on the left; it also housed the village telephone exchange.
The Post Office is on the right, and one of the first complaints to the Council was that horse riders were posting letters without dismounting;thereby fouling the pavement. The pavements are just cobbles, and tar macadam on the road was unknown.

A Socialist Utopia

The first item of business at the next meeting on the 4th February 1895, was a bombshell for the fledgling council. Its effects are still felt over 100 years later. A letter was read out from the Revd. Alfred Pagan, of Shadforth, County Durham, offering to the Council the leasehold of Town Head Farm. The farm, at the top of Seamill Lane, was valued at £1,098, with a rental of £42. This would give a considerable income to the Parish, but the conditions were far from straightforward. The Rev'd Pagan had some eccentric social ideas, and wished to establish what the press subsequently described as a "Socialist Utopia". He stipulated that the income from the farm should be invested to buy up other properties in St. Bees. The rental from these would enable further purchases until all of the village was owned by the Parish Council ! When this was complete, £1,098 would be donated to a neighbouring parish to do the same. It would then do likewise, whilst St. Bees raised another £1,098 to start another parish on the same scheme, and so on.Pagan's theory was that the movement would spread as a chain reaction across the Country, until all the rural property in England was owned by the Parish Councils, and fair rents would be charged to the poor.

Understandably, the Council was split on whether to accept. The idea was obviously an impractical utopian dream. Could St. Bees really be the springboard for such a bold social experiment? It was unlikely.

After negotiations with Pagan the conditions were changed so that £10 of the money accruing could be used annually for charitable purposes. The rest would be invested to further Pagan’s Utopian plan. On a very narrow majority the Council accepted the gift, and a committee was set up to look after the farm and administer the money.

Back From Utopia

Being on the council was no bed of roses, and whilst the social arguments of the Pagan Gift were aired, councillors found they had to get down to more mundane duties, such as collecting the rates on behalf of the Whitehaven Rural District Council.That Council had also been created under the 1894 Act, and it looked after the roads, water, sanitation, public health, and similar matters for the whole district. The Parish Council was obliged to act as their tax gatherers, and had to employ 'parish overseers' who would value the properties in the village and collect the rates.

In return, the Parish immediately pursued the District Council to improve the Village roads and pavements. They got them to take over and improve the Abbey Road, which was the only public road to the beach (Lord Lonsdale owned the "Coach Road"), and to repair the cobbled pavements of the Main Street. These were in poor repair, partly due to horse riders using them. The Main Street had been straightened some years earlier leaving the old road at a higher level with an unfenced drop. The Parish Council soon got the District Council to erect the present railings. The Council set about a variety of initiatives to improve the Village. They had powers to maintain public footpaths. Overgrown footpaths were cleared and obstructions removed. Two new footbridges were built, one over Rottington Beck at the sea outfall at Gutter Foot, and one on the path from Blythe Place to Seamill.

After 1899 the Council was also responsible for common land. In St. Bees there was little common land left, but they won a battle over a blocked access to the public watering place at the top of Outrigg. The maintenance of public seats was taken over from the St. Bees "Visitors Committee" and the Council tackled a host of other minor issues. They had drinking water piped to the Seacote Beach, obtained access to the Recreation Ground for village children, got the Furness Railway to deliver parcels free from the station and numbered the houses in the Main Street - up one side and down the other!

St. Bees had prided itself on being one of the first villages in the district to have gas street lighting. A Public Lighting Committee had looked after street lighting since the 1860s. The Council now inherited this task and a sub-committee was formed which had regular and vociferous public meetings. The Council employed a lamplighter, and gas was bought from the St. Bees Gas Company; all of which was paid for by a rate collected by the overseers. The Gas Company had its own works near the present sewage works, and gas was produced in retorts by roasting coal brought in on the railway.

One of the Council’s first improvement projects was the extension of public street lighting to the "Preston Quarter" area, north of Pow Beck, but it took many years of debate and public meetings before the ratepayers agreed on a scheme.

The Early Councillors

Despite a national decline of interest in parish councils during the early 1900s, in St. Bees elections continued to be well contested. Church and School had been represented by the Revd. E. Knowles, Vicar until 1897, and Revd. H.T. Newbold, the Grammar School Headmaster until 1903. But status was not an automatic vote winner. In 1904 their successors, Revd. H. Snape and Revd. H.A.P. Sawyer stood, but neither was elected. However, the Curate, the popular Revd. Henry Burgh, romped home. Such is the power of the secret ballot.

The pre-war years brought the deaths of two stalwarts of the council’s early days, who typified the calibre of person attracted to the early council.
The Council’s first Chairman, John Bowly, died in office on December 14th 1911 aged 69. An able and experienced Civil Servant, he came to West Cumbria in 1877 after serving as Clerk to the large St. Saviour's Poor Law Union in London in which there were no less than 350 Poor Law parishes to administer. His first appointment in West Cumberland was Clerk to the Egremont Local Board, and over the years he held many important local government posts. He seemed unable to retire, and at 67 he was still Clerk to three district councils and one water committee, and Assistant Registrar to the Whitehaven Board of Guardians.

Leading figures of the parish at the 1911 celebrations of the coronation of King George V.
L to R Back row, T E G Marley; industrialist, Rev A Ainley; Vicar, Captain Huck; science master at St. Bees School, John Hartley; Headmaster of the Village school.
Front row, Henry Kitchin, John Bowly; Parish Council Chairman, Henry Fox; Landowner, James Graham; Postmaster, J D Kenworthy; Artist. Picture taken on the terrace of St. Bees School by F J Livesey, the Priory organist.

For the epitome of the successful industrialist, we must turn to George Scoular of Fleatham House. He was one of those Victorian self-made characters who straddled business, local politics and community affairs with ease. The son of a Scottish blast-furnaceman, he came to the area in 1870 as Engineer to the Parkside Mining Co. near Frizington. He had interests in the Outerside, Ellenborough, Flimby and Broughton Moor Collieries, and at his death he was also Managing Director of the St. Helens Colliery, Siddick. A staunch supporter of the YMCA and a member of the Whitehaven Technical Education Committee, he was also Chairman of the St. Bees Parochial Committee, a County Councillor for Trinity Ward, Whitehaven, and a founder member of the St. Bees Parish Council. His death in March 1912 removed another able member from the council.

The deaths of Bowly and Scoular co-incided with the ending of a golden chapter in village and national life. National prosperity and standards of living had risen over the preceding 50 years, the railways had reached most corners of the country, and public health had improved dramatically. But the clouds of war were gathering, and it was up to the new Chairman, T.E.G. Marley of Monks Croft, to take the parish helm as Europe moved inexorably towards the horrors of the First World War.

.......abridged from "100 years of St. Bees"
Published by St. Bees Parish Council.
Copyright D.T. Sim.1996 and 2003.

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