| Summary : Remains of a gunpowder works on the River Kent, established in 1857 and closed in 1935. A few buildings have been levelled, but few buildings have been totally destroyed. In the northeast half of the site, most buildings survive as slight ruins in woodland. The southern part of the area contains the remains of two incorporating mills, a derelict workshop complex, and an office/gatehouse complex. Other building have been demolished but most sites survive with stratigraphic potential. Part of the site is currently used as a caravan park. |
More information : SD 51 88. The site of the Gunpowder Works is on the west bank of the River Kent, opposite and immediately upstream of Old Sedgwick Gunpowder Works. It was established in 1858 and from 1864 traded as the Sedgwick Gunpowder Company. The company became part of Explosives Trades Nobel in 1918 and the works closed in 1935.
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Scheduled
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SD 5098 8814. The New Sedgwick Works was established in 1857 by Walter Charles Strickland of Sizergh Castle. However his company failed in 1864, but the business was reconstructed in the same year by a syndicate from Manchester who traded as
the New Sedgwick Gunpowder Company Ltd. Henry Swinglehurst became company manager and in 1886 he bought out the other partners and from then on the business became very much a family concern until in 1917 Explosives Trades Ltd acquired the works. Explosives Trades became part of the Nobel Industries in 1920 which itself was incorporated into ICI in 1926. ICI closed the works in 1935.
The principal surviving features extend over an area of about 1km in length along the west bank of the River Kent; much of the gunpowder site is wooded and is now a caravan park. The remains comprise a massively constructed leat (a mill race which brought water from a weir on the River Kent to power the various processes), the remains of most of the turbine pits, two adjacent ranges of incorporating mills (and their waterwheel pits) separated by a tall blast wall, a saw mill and cooperage, gate house, clocking-in house, an electric motor house, and a variety of blast banks. Further buildings are preserved either as wall footings or concrete floors in a ruinous condition, and include the green charge house, powder and cartridge press pump houses, an accumulator housing, corning house, saltpetre refinery complex, glaze house, reel house, stove house, two packing houses, an expense magazine and two cartridge compressing houses. A tramway system was established to transport materials around the manufacturing part of the site and traces of this still survive (a short separate tramway also served the cooperage). The works was linked by road to a railhead at Hincaster Junction, situated 3.5km to the south where a former gunpowder warehouse still stands beside the present West Coast Mainline (see SD 58 SW 50). Access to the works from the east bank of the river was via an elegant suspension footbridge which replaced an earlier timber bridge (see SD 58 NW 38). During World War II the site of the former gunpowder works was requisitioned by the army and was used for the storage of munitions; numerous remains of this military occupation of the site still survive (see SD 58 NW 37).
Between December 2000 and March 2002 English Heritage undertook an archaeological and architectural survey and investigation of the remains of the New Sedgwick Gunpowder Works as part of a wider thematic project investigating gunpowder manufactories across the whole of Cumbria. The New Sedgwick survey resulted in a hatchured site plan of the archaeological remains at 1:1000 scale, and an architectural survey of the incorporating mills and cooperage complex which were planned at 1:100 scale. The gatehouse at the work's entrance was also investigated in detail but not planned. A full photographic record of the site for archive purposes was also made. The findings of the survey, supported by background research, are contained in a fully illustrated report in the EH Archaeological Investigation Report Series (4). (3)
Since the publication of EH's New Sedgwick report additional information has come to light about some of the early photographs used and referred to in the report. Details have been included in an addendum for New Sedgwick which has been included at the back of the report for the Blackbeck Gunpowder Works (6). (5)
Documented. (7) |