The History of the Whitewater Hotel

Whitewater Hotel

To those who are visiting Backbarrow for short time, the valley of the River Leven may look like a delightful rural idyll. Its lush deciduous woodlands and hedgerows; it’s charming foothpaths offering fine views; it’s white water and still pools with abundant wildlife contrasts with its industrial past. This recent history is still represented by curious buildings, blue stains on some walls, a proper railway with proper hissing and puffing engines and sundry bits of machinery sitting in odd places.

The facts are that the local areas of Backbarrow, Haverthwaite, Low and High Brow Edge were once thriving industrial communities.

Potted History

The earliest settlers in the area were our prehistoric ancestors – as the last of the great glaciers disappeared some 8, 000 – 10, 000 years ago and vegetation began to take hold, early man came into the shores of Morecambe Bay about 6,000 years ago – Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) people who were hunter gatherers. Neolithic (New Stone Age) and Bronze Age cultures arrived and left signs of their existence. (Stone circles and burial cairns scattered across the Furness Peninsula and the rest of Cumbria)

The Romans came, saw and conquered – Windemere was used for boat transport as was, probably, the River Leven, supplying their fort at Waterhead, Ambleside.

Migration and settlements continued through history. About a thousand years ago, people of Scandinavian origin arrived and we begin to rely on place name evidence to guide us.

Thwaite signifies “a clearing”

Thus Haverthwaite is the clearing where oats (havr) is grown – Finsthwaite is the clearing belonging to Finn. Other elements of Scandinavian origin are :

Fell – a hill or mountain
Tarn – a small lake, now denotes those among the fell
Force - a waterfall
Dale – a valley

Ulverston – Ulf’s farmstead
Greenodd – green headland
Barrow – a hill
Cartmel – a rocky land beside the “meir” (sandbank)

Subsequent to the Norman Conquest and the castle building era, Cumbria was divided between the great Barons and equally powerful Abbotts – Furness Abbey (whose spectacular ruins surprise most visitors to Barrow in Furness) rivalled the Yorkshire house at Fountain Abbey for fabulous wealth. Centuries of being caught in endless border strife with Scotland, impoverished the area. However, by the 17th century, the mineral wealth locked in the earth by millions of year of geological change, was about to play its part in Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Rich deposits of lead and copper were worked along with the vast reserves of the richest iron ore. The woodlands provided the raw material for timber products, bobbins for the demands of King Cotton, and of course charcoal was won by the early colliers, as ever thirsty smelting works sought to satisfy industrial need. Other vital Lakeland commodities were: -

Limestone for the smelting flux
Coal – as coke – eventually replaced charcoal as fuel
Water power – for turning mills and locally produced turbines / waterwheels

The ruinous Backbarrow Iron works, just down river from the Whitewater Hotel, was long established as of national importance and was using charcoal as a fuel as late as 1926. Production ceased here finally in the early 1960’s and, since that time, efforts have been made to secure this industrial monument which has international repute. Charcoal was a vital ingredient in the manufacture of gunpowder – several mill were established in Southern Lakeland – notably at Low Wood (not far from Haverthwaite station) and Black Beck.

The Blue Works

Lakeland has been “blessed” with abundant water power and a corn mill operated on the site near the ancient bridging point over the River Leven. An old document states that cotton mills “built from the ruins of corn and paper mills on the banks of the River Leven ….”

Thus, in the years around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th, what is now the Whitewater Hotel was the core of a thriving cotton mill. In 1807 it was offered for sale “..large factory establishment at Backbarrow used for the spinning of cotton, flax and low.”

The premises are described in the 6th July notice of sale as:-

3 mill buildings each with water wheel and
four storeys high workshops for joiners,
clodksmiths (who repaired textile machinery) and blacksmiths
an apprentice house capable of accommodating 200
a managers house 80 comfortable
substantial dwellings for people employed
140 acres of arable and pastine land and
a small farm at Brow Edge

By about 1860 the now infamous cotton mill was redundant and a bribed german worker brought an industrial secret to Backbarrow and the manufacture of ultramarine began. This intensely cobalt coloured material was best known in its “blue bag” form – ready to be boiled up with the laundry to produce “whiter than white” whites for more than a century until replaced by modern detergents. Its way of working was one of those tricks of the light – dye something to a very faint blue and one’s unmentionables and linen appear to be extremely white. Blue bags were used as first aid treatment for bee stings – every household had them to hand!

Health warning – never refer to “blue” as “Dolly” blue- it’s a bit like telling an Irishman on March 17th that St Patrick was Welsh – Dolly was a rival product to Reckitts Blue of Backbarrow.

Other uses for Backbarrow blue : whitening paper; printers ink; even Tate & Lyle sugar was whitened with arsenic free “blue”.

The process

Raw materials

Sulphur (from Texas for a long period), soda ash (from ICI), china clay (from cornwall), pitch and silica.

Quantities were measured out and mixed for 3 hours in a pulveriser. Crucibles of this mixture were roasted or baked for 60/70 hours in a coal fired kiln (where the leisure centre is now). Firing continued 2 hours after any flames died down in the crucibles. These were then sealed for 10 days approximately.

The kilns were then opened, the product was cooled, weighed into aliquots and crushed in the ball mill (seen on the apron near the leisure centre) with ½ inch (1 cm) Diameter pebbles. Two to three washes in large tanks and testing with Barium Chloride, removed impurities – especially Glauber’s Salts (hydrated Sodium Sulphate – a good laxative!) which could be as much as 25%. (Perhaps this is why the works were kept going for so long!)

Boiling in tanks for 10 minutes an settling yielded the blue product. However, this was a dark blue and repetition of up to 5 times of the last part of the process – boiling and settling and treating with silica, soda and alumina would produce the exact specification of blue being sought.

One of England’s “Dark, Satanic Mills”

The distressing story of the ill treated Backbarrow cotton mill child workers is well documented. By 1814 well over 100 “apprentices” were employed in the Backbarrow Cotton Mill. These were orphans drown from workhouses in Liverpool, London and Brighton.
In 1816, a parliamentary Select Committee took evidence from witnesses. John Moss, former apprentice master testified that several children were crippled as a result of their labours. There were no seats provided anywhere and the drudge of a fifteen hour day was broken by a total of one hour for meal breaks.

If the River Leven water level ran low, then a night shift was introduced. Slack business resulted in “apprentices” turned out of the mill and their sleeping accommodation to beg. One notable occasion saw young children taken onto “the Sands” (i.e. on the cross Morecambe Bay route) for what purported to be a picnic. However, the masters abandoned the children to take their chances with the swift, unpredictable tides to, hopefully, find their way towards Lancaster to beg.

Balance these local facts with the knowledge that most chimneys in London at that time were cleaned by little boys.

In 1805 two of the Brighton “Guardians of the Poor” visited Back barrow, and were not adversely critical of the system although “respecting education, it is more limited than we had reason to expect, as the clergymen …. Attends only two hours each Sunday evening; consequently their improvement cannot be much as there are 140 children; nor has any one them been instructed to write”. Local Sunday Schools seems to us a measure well calculated for the instruction and improvement of poor children who, by poverty and inattention of their parents, are deprived of every method of education…”