Coal GAZ Workington c.1700-c.1850

By the early 18th century Workington was firmly established as a coal port, shipping coal from the Curwens’ collieries in Workington, Harrington, Seaton and Clifton.  Coal mining in Workington township expanded in the later 18th century, the main pits being in the Moorbanks, Banklands and Chapel Bank areas.  However, by the 1820s flooding and catastrophic inflows of sea water into under-sea workings had become serious problems and the Workington collieries began to decline.  The disaster at Chapel Bank colliery in 1837, when 27 men and boys and 28 horses were drowned, put paid to that colliery.  A new pit, Jane Pit, was sunk inland in 1843, but by 1850 the coal seams in the township were becoming exhausted.

Shipbuilding is recorded at Workington by 1738 and the number of ships launched from the shipyards at the mouth of the Derwent expanded across the later 18th and early 19th centuries.  The town also gained ancillary maritime industries, such as rope walks and sail-making.  By the mid-19th century other industries included paper-making (at the Derwent Paper Mills), brewing (established 1792), iron founding, brick-making and quarrying (for freestone and limestone).

The town grew up the hill to the south-east of the early core beside the Derwent.  Its population stood at 5,716 in 1801 but rose only modestly to 6,280 in 1851. Outside the town, John Christian Curwen established his renowned experimental model farm at Schoose c.1800.