15 minute read
Walney Island and Nature Reserve
By Mark Bateman
Walney Island, also known as ‘The Isle of Walney’, is an Island lying just off the Cumbrian coast at Barrow in Furness in the Irish sea. It is part of the ‘Furness Islands’ a group which is made up of seven islands lying off the South West, and East, of the Furness peninsula. Of these islands only four are inhabited with Walney Island being by far the largest at eleven miles long and up to two kilometres wide in places. Walney is the eighth largest Island in England with a recorded population of over 10,500 residents in 2011.
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The Island was formed during the last glacial period approximately 15,000 years ago when glacial till (sediment) was deposited at the mouth of the River Duddon which was itself formed by glacial melt.
Evidence of a long period of habitation on Walney has been discovered in the excavation of the sand dunes where Bronze age pottery fragments have been discovered. It is believed that the area known as ‘Low Furness’ (which included Barrow) was inhabited by Norse settlers who came to the area from Ireland and the Isle of Man.
Through the middle ages activity on Walney was mainly agricultural and would have been over seen by the monks of Furness Abbey who built the flood defences at Bigger Dyke on the east of the Island. Settlements on the West coast included Earnse Bay and Biggar Bank. Biggar is more isolated lying two miles south of Vickers Town and was an agricultural area consisting mainly of farms. Biggar is also perhaps the oldest known settlement on Walney as a grange at Biggar was mentioned in Furness Abbey records dating back to 1292.
Walney remained essentially made up of farms until the arrival of the industrial revolution and in particular the booming ship building industry at neighbouring Barrow. The Island provided a shelter from the rough Irish sea allowing shipping docks, and yards, to be built on Barrow Island in the Walney channel from the 1870s onwards.
The shipyards were so successful that they expanded quickly and the engineering company Vickers, who owned the shipyards, proposed, and built a new town for all the workers who flooded into the area from all across England. The new town was named ‘Vickers Town’ and the first tenants moved in during the early 1900s.
In 1908 Walney Bridge, known as ‘Jubilee Bridge’, opened linking the island with the mainland. The bridge is still there today and is a fine example of a ‘bascule’ bridge which is a moveable bridge with a counterweight used to swing the road up and allow clearance for shipping transport.
Walney continued to grow throughout the 20th Century with several developments on the Island including the Links Estate built in 1936 and the completion of other suburban developments at ‘North Scale’ in 1976.
During this time Vickers continued to construct submarines and shipping in Barrow which may have been why during the First World War in January 1915 (1914-18) they came under attack from German U-boat U-21 which opened fire on Fort Walney. The island was well- prepared to defend Barrow’s ships and it returned fire forcing the submarine to withdraw.
Walney is now an area of terrific importance to nature and wildlife. It is a windswept low lying island, and both its ends are Nature reserves made up of salt marsh, shingle, sand dunes and ponds. These areas are highly protected and are S.S.I.’S (sites of special scientific interest) The North of the island provides a habitat for the endangered natterjack toad and the Walney geranium, which as its name suggests, is found only on the Island.
South Walney nature reserve is notable as a haven for gulls, wading birds, and migratory waterfowl. The Walney bird observatory monitors all bird life on the island and since its conception in 1964 it has recorded over three hundred species of bird, either resident, or visiting the island.
The site also features the only breeding Grey seal colony on the Cumbrian coast. It used to be believed that seals only used the protected beaches as a ‘haul’ site meaning they hauled themselves out to rest there, but recent records have shown increasing numbers. Records show two pups were born there in 2015 and five in 2016. On sunny days up to a hundred seals can be seen in the water or sunning themselves on the beaches.
Nestled in the reserve you will also find Walney lighthouse a still- functioning grade two listed building that is the most southerly man made structure in the whole of Cumbria. The lighthouse was built in 1804 and actually pre-dates Barrow’s shipping boom. It was built to aid navigation at Glasson Dock and Lancaster. Walney lighthouse was also the last manned lighthouse in England until it became fully automated in 2003.
As previously mentioned Walney is exceptionally windy so it’s no surprise that in 2015 work started on the ‘Walney Extension’ the largest off- shore wind farm in the world. Located twelve miles off the coast in the wild Irish sea it is home to an impressive eighty seven turbines each turbine is one hundred and ninety metres tall and covers an area equivalent to twenty thousand football pitches. It was completed in 2018 and now supplies enough green energy to power six hundred thousand homes.
Whether you’re a bird lover, fancy spotting some seals or would just enjoy a bracing walk on some of the most beautiful coastline Cumbria has to offer then Walney is definitely worth a look.
Hilda Marjorie James was born on 27th April 1904, the second of five children of John and Gertrude James. The family grew up in the Garston district of Liverpool, where her father worked as a postman and window cleaner. In September 1915 Hilda started at Victoria School in Garston and was sent to attend swimming lessons twice a week at Garston Swimming Baths. The future world champion had no interest in swimming. Indeed, she was initially reluctant even to go into the water. In his biography, Lost Olympics, Hilda’s grandson Ian Hugh McAllister describes how she successfully hid in a changing room cubicle for the entire course of the first two lessons. However, she was eventually discovered and after an inauspicious start her swimming career was under way. Hilda was compelled to take up swimming, as her parents did not wish her to attend the school’s Religious Education lessons. John and Gertrude James were not members of the Church of England, but instead attended meetings of the Bible Study Movement, which had been founded by an American preacher called Charles Taze Russsell during the latter part of the 19th century. This religious movement is most notable now for being the forerunner of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Hilda and her siblings were raised in a manner which reflected their parents’ strong religious beliefs, and this inevitably led to conflict as the children began to mature. By 1918, less than three years after learning to swim, Hilda was showing such promise that her parents were approached by Garston Swimming Club’s much-respected coach, Bill Howcroft, who wished her to join the club’s junior team. This meant that the young swimmer would be travelling and competing around the country. According to Ian Hugh McAllister, Hilda’s parents were reluctant to allow this, not only because of concerns about their young daughter’s moral wellbeing, but also for other more practical reasons. One of Hilda’s younger brothers, Jack, had been seriously injured in a horrific accident on Bonfire Night the previous year and most of Gertrude’s time was spent caring for the boy, leaving Hilda with much of the responsibility for running the home. However, a compromise was eventually reached and Hilda was permitted to join the team. Within two years Hilda was being described in the local press as “a little lady destined to ere long assume front rank position...the most versatile swimmer in the country”. The year of 1920 proved to be a watershed moment in her swimming career. She won three races at the Olympic Trials in July and was selected for the forthcoming Olympic Games in Antwerp. Inevitably her parents were initially reluctant to allow her to compete, but were persuaded to let her go when they were satisfied that the Olympic Committee had made suitable arrangements to chaperone the young women in the team. Hilda returned from the Antwerp Olympics with a silver medal in the 4 x 100 metres freestyle relay. Two of her teammates, Grace McKenzie and Charlotte Radcliffe, also hailed from the Garston Swimming Club. Charlotte is notable for being the great-aunt of one of British athletics’ best-known stars of recent years, long distance runner Paula Radcliffe. For all their obvious ability the British quartet finished the race some 30 seconds behind the gold medal winning American team. The US swimmers’ success at the
Below: Hilda James in 1920
Olympics was attributed to better technique and their use of the “American crawl”, the precursor to the modern-day front crawl. In contrast, the British team still employed the more oldfashioned Trudgen stroke. Named after a late 19th century English swimmer called John Trudgen, this was a hybrid stroke which combined the basic front crawl arm movement with a scissor kick similar to that used in the sidestroke. Hilda was still only sixteen years of age at the time of the Antwerp Olympics, but when she was given the opportunity to socialise with the US swimming team at a reception, she took the chance to enquire whether they would be willing to teach her the American crawl. Much to her delight, and possibly slight surprise, they agreed and she returned home schooled in the technique of this revolutionary new stroke. She was soon putting her newly found skills to good effect in domestic competitions, winning a hatful of titles and setting new record times in the process. Hilda’s profile had already been raised following her success in the Olympic Games. Now, as the swimmer who had introduced the American crawl to Britain, she became increasingly in demand for personal appearances with swimming clubs all over the country eager to see her demonstrate the new stroke. This increase in Hilda’s profile soon brought other benefits. She’d kept in contact with some of the US female swimmers she had met in Antwerp and in 1922 was invited by the New York Women’s Swimming Association to visit the United States with a view to participating in the summer racing season. Hilda was still a minor (young people were not classed legally as adults until 21 years of age at this time) and once more she faced the problem of persuading her reluctant mother and father to allow her to take this opportunity of a lifetime. Help came in the form of her coach, Bill Howcroft. Hilda’s parents were reassured by Howcroft’s offer to accompany Hilda to North America with his wife, Agnes, acting as her chaperone. It seems that Howcroft was also responsible for resolving another potential difficulty, that of meeting the cost of Hilda’s travel expenses to and from New York. A deal was arranged with the prestigious Cunard Shipping Company, whose head office was then
Above: Front view of the Cunard building with a statue of Edward VII in the foreground, Liverpool
based in Liverpool. In return for a free return passage to New York on board one of their cruise liners, Hilda would become a member of the Cunard Swimming Club and allow her name to be associated with the company. This proved to be a shrewd move on the part of the company, as Cunard would go on to receive a lot of valuable free publicity from its connection with one of British sport’s top female stars. Hilda’s trip to the States, which lasted for the best part of two months, proved hugely successful for the swimmer and launched her on to the world stage. One highlight was meeting the latest young American swimming star called Johnny Weissmuller. If the name sounds familiar, that is probably because after a record-breaking career in the pool, he became a Hollywood film star and is still well-known today for his most famous role of Tarzan. The following summer Hilda further added to her reputation by entering for the first time two longer distance events. Having won the National Long Distance Championship over a 5 miles 60 yards course on the River Thames, the Liverpool swimmer headed over to Paris for a similar event on the River Seine. Hilda won the race, completing the 8km course in a time of just over two and a half hours. Both male and female competitors took part, with the women swimmers being allowed to start the race half an hour before the men. Even so, Hilda became the first ever woman to reach the winning post first, before any of the male competitors. Conditions for the event on the River Seine were far from ideal. Of the 55 male and 15 women competitors who started the race, only 53 swimmers completed the course. A newspaper reporter describes the chaotic scene, “Steamboats, motor boats and rowing boats were allowed to race up and down the river, making the water very rough and uncomfortable for the competitors, and even endangering them.” In winning the race Hilda showed all the grit and determination which would surely serve her in good stead when making a bid for Olympic glory at the Games to be held in Paris the following year. However, she sadly never made it back to Paris. In December 1923 news broke in the national press that Hilda had decided not to take part in the forthcoming Olympics. The swimmer is reported as saying that she could not compete because she felt she had been subjected to unfair criticism and treatment by some officials in the swimming world and she was unhappy that her complaints had not been properly investigated. Her grandson, Ian Hugh McAllister, tells a rather different story in Lost Olympics. It seems that following her initial reluctance to support Hilda’s swimming career, Gertrude had
Right: Johnny Weissmuller at swim meet in New York July 1922
Below: Cunard’s SS Franconia c 1930
Left: The allconquering US women swimmers at the 1920 Olympics
begun to appreciate the advantages of acting as chaperone to her successful daughter. During the previous summer she had accompanied Hilda on a short cruise aboard the new Cunard liner, the Franconia, during which Hilda gave demonstrations in the ship’s impressive new swimming pool. She had evidently travelled with her to other events too. A report on a visit to Northern Ireland later in the year concludes by stating that “Miss James and her mother were the centre of an admiring circle of friends”. Gertrude must surely have been looking forward to being the centre of attention at the Paris Olympics. However, the Olympic Committee made it quite clear that as had been the case in Antwerp four years previously, perfectly satisfactory arrangements had already been made for suitable chaperones to accompany the young female competitors and Hilda’s mother would not be required to attend the event. Gertrude is said to have flown into a rage and Hilda was refused permission to go. At the age of 20, her parents still acted as her legal guardians. McAllister paints a dark picture of bitter family rows, which even on one occasion resulted in Hilda being physically attacked, but sadly for the talented swimmer there was nothing she could do to change the situation. Hilda had been predicted to have a good chance of winning at least one, if not more, gold medals in Paris, but her Olympic dream had gone forever. Happily, better times lay ahead for the swimmer. The following year, after turning 21, Hilda announced that she had decided to turn professional and she took up a new paid role with Cunard as swimming instructor on board its latest cruise ship, the Carinthia. This enabled her to sail round the world (unsurprisingly her mother was not asked along to accompany her this time) and she met her future husband, Hugh McAllister, on board ship. Hilda is reported as having taken time off during the summer of 1927 to train for an attempt to swim the English Channel, but she later seemingly abandoned the idea, explaining that bad weather had hindered her training. After so many years of restrictions imposed on her by over zealous parents, one particular incident involving Hilda in the late 1920s shows her enjoying her newly found freedom. With the earnings from her Cunard job, Hilda is said to have purchased a motorbike and enjoyed riding it at vast speed down the lanes near her then home on the Wirral. The aristocrat Nancy Astor, who owned a country house nearby, objected to the noisy motorcyclist racing past her home and was horrified when she discovered that it was one of the country’s most prominent female sports stars. She even wrote Hilda a letter of complaint, but after all the difficulties which the swimmer had been compelled to overcome to pursue her sporting career, it is doubtful this would have much fazed her. Hilda McAllister (née James) died on 21st August 1982 at the age of 78. Despite all the setbacks which Hilda faced, she deserves to be remembered as one of the great trailblazers in women’s swimming and one of Britain’s earliest sporting heroines.
