Holm Cultram Abbey

In 1150 Holm Cultram Abbey was founded by Prince Henry of Scotland who gave the land to monks from Melrose Abbey to settle.

These Cistercian monks organized the clearing of forests and draining of large tracts of the Solway marshes, making the land of the Holm district habitable and profitable. By 1200 the Abbey was well under construction. When finished the Abbey and associated buildings covered ten acres of land.

Throughout the thirteenth century benefactors on both sides of the Solway lavished gifts on the Abbey, the main motivation being a hope that they could buy their way into heaven.

This plan shows the outline of the original abbey church with the present building indicated by the thick black lines. It is claimed that the original church was larger than Carlisle cathedral.


The monks were very successful sheep farmers and became the largest supplies of wool in the Northwest of England with an estimated flock of over 6,000 sheep. The Abbey became immensely wealthy and was raided and plundered by the Scots on many occasions. Robert the Bruce caused the worst devastation in 1319, despite the fact that his father was buried there.

These photographs of the abbey church date from around 1900. Note the plaster ceiling on the interior view.

In 1538 the Act dissolving the Greater Monasteries was passed. Holm Cultram Abbey along with 1,600 acres of land and all its possessions was surrendered to Henry VIII.

The Abbey Church was not destroyed, as many were, because it served as a parish church and as a refuge against the Scots. Over time the Abbey church fell into disrepair due to lack of local authority and money.

In 1703, when Bishop Nicholson visited Holm Cultram he was shocked at the state the Abbey was in. He appointed Trustees to organise its restoration. The nave was reduced in size and the side aisles were removed. Between 1833 and 1973 further remodelling has taken place.

Over eight hundred years, the Abbey had a troubled existence but survived all attempts to destroy it. It became a parish church somewhat reduced in size and circumstances but still a place of great beauty, peace and serenity.

All this changed on Friday, June 9, 2006, a very hot day, when the abbey church was badly damaged by fire. Crews from Maryport, Silloth, Wigton and Aspatria were called to the scene.

They entered the church wearing breathing apparatus but were unable to prevent the fire spreading to the roof which collapsed completely around 7pm. Although the damage to the interior was extensive, all but one of the stained glass windows were saved.

Following the fire, six teenagers were arrested, five were released but one, 17-year-old Shane Walker of Solway Street, Silloth, was charged with arson and the theft of £5 from the church. He appeared at Carlisle Crown Court on November 7 and was sentenced to four years detention. Judge John Phillips told him “Not only have you destroyed a national treasure – you have also severely damaged an entire community.”

Restoration work on the church began in 2007 and was completed in 2014 at a cost of several million pounds.

Allonby and its buildings

For such a tiny village, Allonby contains a remarkable number of interesting and historic buildings. In this postcard view, from around 1900, the group of buildings on the left were originally the Fish Yards, operated by the Beeby family. Here herring were gutted, salted and packed into barrels which were made at a cooperage there. In the centre of the picture is the Reading Room and, on the right, with the balcony, are Allonby Baths.

A busy day at the fish yards

In the fish yard, herring were gutted, salted and packed into barrels which were made at a cooperage there.

Some of the herring were turned into kippers. The Costin family ran this operation in their smokehouse, seen above. A wood-burning open hearth was located on the first floor. The herring could be hung in this room or, on the floor above in the roof space.

The chimney passed through both floors and flagstones could be removed from it to allow the smoke to belch out into either of the rooms as required. When the kippers were ready, the louvre shutters on the front of the building, bearing the family's name, were opened, allowing the smoke to escape.

The outline of the old smokehouse can still be
seen; it is now a cottage.

The Baths opened in July 1836. They have a fine, portico which faces into 'The Square' away from the sea.

There was a basement floor with warm, cold, sulphur and vapour baths and, above this, an assemby room 50 feet long and 25 feet wide. The baths were fitted out in marble and were supplied with water drawn from the sea in pipes by a small steam engine. The engine’s furnace also heated the water for the hot baths.

The Meeting House (Sketch by David Butler)

The Quakers formed a large and influential section of the local community. Their Meeting House stood at the north end of the village. It was originally converted from a cottage in 1703, extended in 1732 and continued in use until 1991. It is now a private dwelling.

A little further along the coast road stands North Lodge, seen below in its original state, around 1907.

North Lodge was built in the 1830s by Thomas Richardson who had married an Allonby girl, Martha Beeby, in 1799. The central pavilion was to provide a holiday home for the Richardsons. At either side of this, were six cottages for local widows and spinsters who were to live there rent free and receive £5 per year from an endowment fund which Thomas provided. The building is still in use as low-cost housing and is operated by the Allonby Alms House trust.

Thomas Richardson, the builder of North Lodge was a Quaker banker and held shares in both the Stockton & Darlington Railway and Stephenson’s Locomotive Works. 

He was one of the original proprietors of Middlesbrough Docks and founded the nearby Ayton Friends’ School.


At the back of North Lodge, there was a stone-faced, six-sided privy. Each resident of the cottages had their own door which admitted them to their individual earth closet.

Allonby Reading Rooms opened in 1862. The construction was largely financed by Joseph Pease, M.P., a wealthy Quaker industrialist from County Durham who was a cousin and business associate of Thomas Richardson.

Pease commissioned a 32-year old Quaker architect from Manchester, Alfred Waterhouse to design the building.

Waterhouse went on to become one of the Victorian era's most celebrated architects. He designed the Natural History Museum in London, Strangeways Prison and Manchester Town Hall.

The Reading Rooms closed in the 1970s and fell into serious disrepair. They have recently been converted into a private house.

Allonby Church dates from 1845 and replaced an earlier building on the same site. The adjoining Sunday School was originally used as the village school. This rather plain, undistinguished building fits particularly well with its landscape.

In this postcard view of Allonby Square in the 1920s, the pediment of the Baths is just visible on the right. The old cobbled street was the original main road through the village.

Another postcard view, from the late 1800s, shows the Ship Inn, Allonby's main hostelry, on the right over the old cast-iron bridge which was destroyed when a traction engine ran into the brook in 1907. 

Allonby Charcters - 1

JJ Heskett

Joseph J. Heskett was Allonby's village shoemaker in the early 1900s. He was also a prize-winning bass vocalist, a reciter and writer in Cumberland dialect as well as a poet and a photographer.

A photograph by JJ. The subject is thought
to be his father.

He was born in Allonby in 1865. His father was also a shoemaker, his mother was Francis Costin. In 1891, he married Eleanor Litt at the Wesleyan Chapel in Cockermouth and, around 1903, emigrated to Vancouver with his family. After settling in Canada, he continued to write poems about Allonby in the 'West Cumberland Times' for many years.

His masterpiece is 'Allonby - Sixty Years Ago' which he first recited at a Widow's Benefit Concert in 1901. This epic, of some thirty-nine verses mentions many Allonby families and names the boats they owned:-

"You've heard of the 'Favourite Sally',
"And Dan Saul's 'Good Intent',
"Of Beeby's 'Black Duck' and Boustead's 'Aid',
"That to sea for herrings went."

"And also of Lowse's 'Dinah',
"Edgar's 'Mary' and Costin's 'Delight',
"Musgraves 'Laal Ann' and 'Friendship',
"Which sailed from our shores each night"

CLICK ON THE PAGES TO READ THE POEM IN FULL

After settling in Vancouver, JJ Heskett continued his trades as both a shoemaker and a poet. He traded as 'The Shoe Doctor' and is seen above, outside the shop, with his son Thomas William.

He used his poetic talents to advertise the business and published a calendar each year. The 1926 edition can be seen below.

Amos Hayton Bookless

Amos was born in 1877. His mother was Mary Hayton, a farmer's daughter from Edderside but his father seems to have been an
'off-comer'.

He lost both parents when he was three-years-old and was raised by relatives in Allonby.

Amos and other members of the Allonby Golf Club outside
the 'Club House'

He was the leading light in the village's social set and a keen sportsman. He was a member of Allonby's tennis club, played cricket, and was captain of the Golf Club. He also liked fishing and followed the hunt.

He took part in musical concerts in the village hall, often singing humorous songs. His many friends organised a dinner in his honour at the Ship Hotel before he left to serve in France during the First World War.

The 1901 Census records Amos's occupation as a draper but he also chauffeured part-time for Squire Richmond from Clifton Hall, who spent the summer months at Belmont, Bankmill.

He certainly wasn't camera-shy. He seems to pop-up in many of the Allonby photographs, often wearing a striped blazer, straw hat and (slightly short) white trousers.

Allonby Characters - 2

Moore Kitchen
Moore was brought up in the Reading Room house at Allonby. He was not always dressed as smartly as he is in this photograph. He was a coal miner and walked from Allonby to work at Birkby Pit every day. Even if he took the footpath over the fields this would have meant an eight-mile (13km) round trip - six days a week.

He was an amateur taxidermist with a particular fascination for seabirds. On his walk to work, he would often find dead specimens along the way. He took them home for mounting and, eventually, his collection was put on display in the Reading Room.

Captain Joseph Osborn

Captain Osborn in his retirement, at home in Osborn House,
Browtop, Workington.

Joseph Osborn was born at Allonby in 1823, the son of a yeoman farmer and one of seven children. He first went to sea in 1840 aboard the ‘Concorde’ sailing, out of Maryport, to the West Indies and South Africa. In 1846 he married Jane Roper; they had at least ten children. By 1850, he had moved to Liverpool and was making long voyages to Canada, Cuba and South America.

Between 1853 and 1875, Joseph kept a record of all his voyages, first as a Mate and then as Master. These were purchased by the National Maritime Museum in 1980 and are now available for research there. As well as containing the standard information one would expect, (bearings, weather details, journal entries, etc), the logs also contain nearly one hundred drawings and sketches in ink, pencil and watercolour of various ships, coastline profiles, and sea-birds.

Capt Osborn was at sea for over thirty-five years. He traded out of Liverpool to Cape Town , Calcutta , Amoy , Singapore , Hong Kong , Foochow , Demerara, Bombay , Madras , Sydney , and many other ports around the world. For eight months he was on Government Service, carrying supplies from Bombay to Abyssinia for the war that Britain had declared, in 1855, on the "King-of-Kings" Theodore.

Joseph Osborn outside his home in Liverpool

His longest period of service was the twelve years he spent on the barque 'Recorder'. His last command was the ‘Jane Sprott’ on which he made several voyages to Australia . He retired from the sea in 1875 due to failing eyesight and spent the next eight years overseeing the building and fitting of Liverpool ships for the firm of Fisher and Sprott. He retired altogether in 1883, at 60 and died in 1908, aged 85.

The 'Jane Sprott'

The Lost Pubs of Allonby

By the late 1800s, Allonby had ten pubs - serving a population of about 400!

The locations of seven of the pubs are shown on this aerial view. The other three were up the lane behind The Ship. Their positions are indicated on the enlarged section below.

The Sloop was located at the south end of the village and seems to have closed in the 1870s. It was the building on the right of this postcard view from the 1950s and is now a private house.

The Grapes (left) and the Solway Hotel stood close to each other on the green.

The Queen's Head was located at the other side of the bridge. It closed as a pub around 1850 and became a Temperance Hotel.

The Ship was always Allonby's premier hostelry. Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins stayed there in 1857. This view dates from the early 1900s and shows a magnificent collection of horse-drawn vehicles which were probably waiting to take the members of the local Band of Hope on their annual trip.

The Swan and the Sun stood in the narrow lane behind The Ship.

The Greyhound was also located in this area, in Temple Square, named after the family which owned it.

The Globe, originally known as The London Apprentice, was nearby on the road leading to Westnewton and Aspatria. In both cases, the buildings have been much altered and it is difficult to pin-point the pubs' exact location.

The Spirit Vaults was located somewhere in the block of buildings seen in the postcard view above. Again, many changes to the structure have occurred since the pub closed.

The Vaults was a traditional 'grog shop' run by the Costins who had family links with the West Indies.

It is thought they imported their rum directly from there. It was sold in the stoneware bottles seen in the picture on the above. These are now highly prized by bottle collectors.

The last landlord, Alfred Costin, lost his licence in 1903 when its renewal was opposed by both the police and the local Temperance Movement led by Sir Wilfred Lawson, MP, of Aspatria.

The pub was described as a 'darksome place' with a large rum barrel which had been constructed in the premises. There were only rudimentary furnishings and most customers had to stand.

A 'Merry Neet' at The Vaults.