Pevsner and Postboxes

It is a while since I've been out into the NW corner of Cumbria so I decided on a Sunday jaunt out to the Solway plains. 

I have a solo show in the Shipping Brow Gallery called Both Sides of the Solway in October so I'm re-exploring the area again. I've already painted most of the Pevsner buildings in this region but still one or two to do and I also want to hunt out the best postboxes by the Firth. 

First stop Kirkandrews-upon-Eden. Some rather lovely listed buildings. Unfortunately the church is long gone just a graveyard remains. It was once on the Carlisle to Silloth line before Dr Beeching's axe. The current postbox was a modern EIIR but in the village were a number of old boxes in personal use including an old Ludlow box from the old post office.  

Next stop the church at Beaumont, on a 'beautiful mount'. The church built on the site of a turret of Hadrian's Wall and made from wall stones. Attractive old houses surround the little green with a wall postbox in the church wall.  

I paused only briefly in Burgh by Sands to photograph the postbox. It is a GV in a red brick building in the centre of the village. The old black and white cumberland county council road sign looks particularly striking in front of an old red brick building.

There was another attractive postbox in the wall as I drove down towards the coast road where the warning signs of road liable to flood begin. 

 I parked by the side of the road in a little car park next to the turn for Boustead Hill. I got out to walk up to the hamlet. It is an unusual place, almost an island surrounded by salt marsh and fields that often flood. There I found the only Victorian box of the day in a brick pillar stood on its own below the row of houses.

The tide was high and there were people fishing all along the banks. I caught sight of a heron gracefully landing and then stalking through the marshland.

People were flying model airplanes. It looked like they were having a dogfight in the skies above them.

The postbox at Drumburgh was a modern EIIR but there was a sweet little model postbox in the garden of an old post office.

Drumburgh castle is a medieval Pele tower on the site of a former tower of Hadrian's Wall with a Roman altar built into an exterior wall. Built and altered a couple more times it is an interesting building to stop and admire though it is a private residence.  

Next stop was Port Carlisle. I'd come to photograph the row of Georgian houses. I'm going to paint them in four paintings. They really take you by surprise as you drive along the almost deserted coast to suddenly come across these imposing houses.

Port Carlisle was originally Fisher's Cross but it was renamed when it bacame one end of the Carlisle canal. It didn't last long though and was filled in to become the Port Carlisle Railway. It closed in 1932. 

There is a little Methodist chapel and evidence of the wharf. There is a car park where the old railway station stood. The pub that I went in to last time I visited looked to be permanently closed. 

I stopped at the church in Bo'ness on Solway. Bo'ness the end of Hadrian's Wall. I saw many walkers doing the Hadrian's Wall Path. Situated on the site of the Roman fort Maia and with evidence of the wall stonework in some of the buildings. 

From the little car park by the black and white signpost featuring Rome I had my lunch and watched the birds wheeling overhead and some children having fun, jumping across the salt flats. From there you can see the remains of the old viaduct that once took trains across the Solway to Annan and was demolished in 1934. 

I passed only two cars on my drive around the coast, both sides of the road bright with gorse. The abandoned Royal Naval Air Station buildings stand alone towered over by the huge masts of Anthorn Radio Station.

The postboxes were all EIIR but one was set attractively into a bright red brick wall. 

Turning inland to Kirkbride and onto Wigton, then home along the A596 I snapped three nice brick built postboxes in Kirkbride, Crosscanonby and Birkby.