Whitehaven

Whitehaven is a grid-planned town filled with grand Georgian buildings that was once one of the country’s busiest ports. While it is very evident that the 18th century was certainly boom time, what is not so clear is what that prosperity was founded on. Some say it was on shipping local coal to Ireland, while the whispering voices said it had more to do with the slave trade.

Apprentice John Paul Jones returned from America, with the intention of breaking the harbour’s defences and destroying as much of the town’s fleet, as possible. Unfortunately his fellow mutineers were a drunken, feckless bunch, who decamped to the local inn after a half-hearted attempt at burning boats in the harbour. Nonetheless the episode takes its place in history as the last attack Britain sustained from the sea and is well recorded at the Beacon Heritage Centre.

Haig Colliery Mining Museum is an informative and educational museum, which discovers the history of the local industrial and social mining history.