Tuesday June 18th 2019 Part 2 - Christ Church, Silloth

Thirteen miles up the coast from Maryport was Silloth, somewhere I'd been to at Easter. Although it was a very pleasant place with a promenade, a wide green and attractive properties facing it there was nothing much there; there wasn't even a town centre as such, just a post office, a couple of cafes and half a dozen shops facing the green with a few other odd shops dotted here and there among the private houses in the side streets. Having seen the place once I had no need to go back but since Easter I'd found out about Christ Church which overlooked the green - it was open to visitors every day and looked so nice it was worth a visit.

Until the mid 19th century Silloth consisted of little more than a few scattered farms but from 1854 it was built up as a port and railway terminal and eventually developed as a holiday resort. Standing in a strategic position opposite the green, on a corner plot originally intended for the town hall, Christ Church was built in 1869/70 with the tower and spire being added seven years later. Ships sailing into Silloth harbour would carry Irish granite as ballast and it was this granite which provided the stone from which the church was built; the spire was topped with a weather vane of a ship and the clock was added in 1884. The building is in the decorated Gothic style and internally is faced with pale yellow and red brick to pick out the interior design; the organ, with its beautifully decorated pipes, was installed by Alfred Monk of London in 1885.

The bells of Christ Church are said to be among the finest in Cumbria; the eight bells were cast in 1883 and were hung in a wood and metal A frame, with the tenor bell alone weighing just over a ton. At one time the ringing chamber, which also houses the clock mechanism, housed a manual 'Ellacombe apparatus' which enabled just one person to play tunes on the bells, and for many years favourite hymn tunes could often be heard ringing out across the green. Sadly though, time has taken its toll; the last peal was rung in March 1971 and the bells have been silent ever since, though the clock still strikes the hour on the tenor bell.

During WW2 a navigation light was put on top of the church spire to aid pilots using the nearby Silloth airfield. Throughout the war a total of 52 planes crashed into the nearby Solway Firth and the bodies of all the young men which were retrieved from the sea were honoured in a special service held in the church; a war memorial in the church grounds commemorates all those who died in both the First and Second World Wars.

There's so much fascinating information about this lovely old church that I couldn't possibly put it all on here so I've tried as much as I can to stick to the most relevant bits. Retrieving the dogs from the van which was parked in shade close to the church I went for a circular walk round the green and promenade, and while I'd thought the green looked nice on my Easter visit it looked even nicer now with flowers, plants and shrubs blooming in many different places.

With time getting on and lunch long overdue I ended my walk and drove eight miles back south for the third and main part of my day. This time I wouldn't be mooching or aimlessly wandering, I would be on a mission, a quest to complete a task I'd set myself - I didn't know how easy or hard it would be to do it but I was looking forward to the challenge and to collecting lots more photos in the process.