Chapelcross Atomic Power Station near Annan

Chapelcross Atomic Power Station near Annan


The Border discovered

BORDER TELEVISION LIMITED

London Office  ・  14 Curzon Street, W1

Carlisle Office  ・  The Television Centre, Carlisle

First Published 1961

Revised March 1965

Revised April 1966


EVEN TO ONE who has never been there, the very name of The Border Country has the ring of romance and history. The Romans showed their gift for choosing the right place when they built their great wall between north and south across this narrow width of Britain, and it is to Hadrian, who must have been a man of imagination as well as a practical administrator, that much of the character of the Border is due today.

The traveller, by train or car, senses that he is in a land of special character. It is the country of Robert the Bruce; told in legend, sung in many a ballad, it has been the scene of hundreds of years of warfare between Pict and Roman, Norseman and Briton, Scot and Englishman, years which had their climax in the bloody day of Flodden Field. But for two-and-a-half centuries its people have lived peaceably and have intermarried to produce the Borderers of today. The men and women accept their Border status almost as a nationality. Industrious, self-sufficient, they may for all practical purpose acknowledge their Scottish or English obligations, but they are, proudly and by inheritance, the Border People.


The City of Carlisle

The City of Carlisle


The Border is a beautiful part of Britain, seeming to be neither quite Scottish nor entirely English, and it has inspired its own regional literature. Almost as soon as the natural beauty of landscape began to be appreciated in the second half of the eighteenth century, the Border started to produce or attract to it writers of astonishing talent and variety. Robert Burns, born just outside its boundaries, settled for the last years of his life in Dumfries and is commemorated there by some of his finest poems. Within a few years the Romantic Movement was established by the Lakeland writers Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and de Quincey. And Walter Scott, perhaps more than any the true voice of the Border, was shortly afterwards using its ballads and legends in his novels. If Thomas Carlyle, the prophet of Ecclefechan, and James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, are added with other and lesser known writers, this makes an unsurpassed wealth of literary fertility.

Even when this great period was over, writers continued to be associated with the Border. Thomas and Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Hugh Walpole, John Buchan, Dorothy Sayers, Arthur Ransome and Beatrix Potter have all been active here, and many painters and sculptors, though less generally famous, have made the region theirs. This artistic tradition is kept alive by the Rosehill Trust which is bringing music and drama to the people of Cumberland, and the National Trust and the Lake District National Park are memorials to Canon Rawnsley and those others who have worked to preserve its natural beauties.

These great names have carried the fame of the Border to all pans of the English-speaking world. But there is an everyday Border, too, where people live and work and have their being; and this is not so widely famous. The Border’s industry and agriculture, its communications and standards of living may surprise those who have been inclined to dismiss the area as a backwater of modern Britain. For it is in fact a wealthy market with average incomes second only to the London ITV area and per capita retail sales the third highest outside London and the South. While much of its beauty has been preserved from careless development, the Border today shares fully in the living standards of the affluent society and its economy has become mature and balanced. Still largely a rural agricultural area, its towns now support a diversity of modern industries. With almost 600,000 people, the Border is small compared with Tyneside or the Lowlands of Scotland, but in the whole of northern Britain it has the fullest employment and the highest standard of living. Lacking the public entertainments of the large cities, the Border’s countrymen and townsmen have found the window-on-the-world of independent television specially valuable. Television has provided the key, as an advertising medium, to this most worthwhile of all Britain’s regional markets.


Grasmere Sports

Grasmere Sports


The Setting of the Border

The Border Television Area lies astride the boundary between England and Scotland. It extends for almost 200 miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed on the north-east coast to the Isle of Man. Northward it reaches as far as the Lammermuir Hills, within a dozen miles of the Firth of Forth, and southward to the edge of Yorkshire. Within this area of some 5,000 square miles, nearly a tenth of the size of England, live almost 600,000 people, or rather more than one per cent of the population of the United Kingdom. The key to the area and its way of life is its setting, which has moulded both the characters and the occupations of its inhabitants.

Although the mainland Border country is divided equally between Scotland and England, it is by nature a single self-contained region. To the South, it is separated from the rest of England by the Cumbrian Mountains, the Pennines and the Cheviots, while the slopes of the Southern Uplands separate it from the central Lowlands of Scotland. It has a natural centre of gravity in Carlisle, and it has a common way of life. Thus the people of the English Border have much more in common with their Scottish neighbours than with urbanised Tyne-siders or Lancastrians, and the Border Scot looks southwards rather than towards Glasgow.

Situated where the Cumberland plain narrows almost to a point between Solway Firth and the hills, Carlisle has been throughout history the gateway into Scotland. To the South, road and rail fan out to the Cumberland coast, Newcastle, Yorkshire and Lancashire; to the North they radiate to Galloway, to Glasgow by two different routes, and to Edinburgh through the Scottish Border towns. Indeed, before amalgamation in 1923, Carlisle was served by no less than six different railway companies and it has since become a road service centre of equal importance. This means that the city is connected by major traffic arteries to every part of the Border area, and dominates almost all of it.

The Border is made up of three natural divisions. In the coastal strip of West Cumberland lie the mineral resources of the area, the coal and iron fields on which the industrial development of Whitehaven, Workington and Maryport is based. In contrast the Cumberland lowlands, the Eden valley, the Tweed basin and the coastal plain of Galloway support a highly developed agricultural system which has created market towns and local industries based on rural needs and products. The third division is composed of the large areas of hill country surrounding the Border which are devoted mainly to sheep-rearing, with isolated farms and small scattered townships.

Beyond the mainland, out in the Irish Sea, the Border area extends to the Isle of Man, where in a few square miles may be found scenery typical of each of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Blessed with an equable climate, and combining some of the romance of ‘abroad’ with a thoroughly British atmosphere, it has long been one of the thriving holiday resorts of the North of England.


The Industrial Breakthrough

Traditionally, Border industry has been dependent on local natural resources. The fleeces of the Border sheep, combined with supplies of pure water, led to the growth of the woollen industry of the Tweed valleys. The coal and iron of West Cumberland created the typical nineteenth-century patter of heavy industry in its towns. Elsewhere, in the absence of special resources and large markets, there grew up food-processing alongside other industries concerned with the needs and products of agriculture, quarrying and timber. Hence between the wars the great majority of productive employment was of only three main types. Of these, agriculture and mining were affected with particular severity by the slump, especially since the limited and difficult coal seams of West Cumberland were vulnerable to any recession. The Border shared fully in the depression of northern Britain and in certain districts unemployment reached 50 per cent of the working population.

Since the war there has been a double recovery. Agriculture, assisted by guaranteed prices and improvement grants, has flourished. The traditional heavy industries have been asked to meet increasing demands. At the same time many new industries of great importance have been brought into the Border, so that today opportunities of employment have widened enormously. In such a brief survey of Border industry it is possible to mention only a few of the best-known names; they have been chosen to show the great variety of interests which are represented.

Perhaps the most striking of all the areas new industries is nuclear power. The development of Calder Hall, followed by that of Windscale and Chapelcross, has established the Border in the forefront of Britain’s nuclear industry, and has brought extensive new employment. It exemplifies the dynamic revival of West Cumberland’s fortunes. At the same time the five Cumberland mines of the National Coal Board together produce about 900,000 tons a year to satisfy local industrial and domestic demand. The mines together employ some 3,600 men, and under the Coal Board’s latest plans they will remain one of Cumberland’s major employers in the future.

Of the industries dependent on coal, that of iron and steel flourishes today in the Workington Iron and Steel Co., one of the United Steel group of companies. Providing work for more than 4,000 people, Workington’s railway track materials are recognised all over the world. A relative newcomer to the Border is the chemical industry, which has rapidly grown from small beginnings since the war. Of the many companies in the industry an outstanding example is Marchon Products, now part of Allbright & Wilson, whose employment roll has increased a hundred times in the last eighteen years to 2,000. It has expanded beside its associated company, Solway Chemicals, as the demand for sulphuric acid, detergents and phosphates has grown.

Another newcomer is High Duty Alloys of the Hawker Siddeley Group. Since 1940 its factory has been extended to cover 38 acres. It is engaged in the extrusion of aluminium and manganese alloys for products which have an almost endless series of industrial and consumer uses.

Across the Border in Dumfries, the North British Rubber Company has played a similar part in the industrial growth of South-West Scotland. From its first beginnings some ten years ago, this factory now employs about a thousand workers, a most important contribution to the prosperity of an area in which industrial opportunities were previously limited. In addition, Imperial Chemical Industries’ Plastics Division operates a plant in Dumfries which employs about 700 workers manufacturing commercial and industrial film and packaging materials for export to all parts of the world.


Steel is one of the Area’s basic industries

Steel is one of the Area’s basic industries


The developing industries of the Border have brought many opportunities for building and civil engineering. British Plasterboard has its largest mines in Cumberland. John Laing, who have grown in a hundred years from local builders on the outskirts of Carlisle to a great enterprise active in every part of the world, have retained their original connection with the Border. The company has been connected in many of the areas industrial schemes as well as providing a large proportion of new housing and being responsible for the building of Carlisle’s new civic centre.

Textiles are, of course, the great traditional industry of the Border. Carlisle has a complete, though small-scale, cotton industry, concentrated in the highest quality market with, amongst others, Monon Sundour, Edinburgh Weavers and Ferguson Brothers. There are also woollen manufacturers of various types in every part of this area. But the centre of the Border woollen industry is the Tweed which, of course, gave its name, now world-famous, to the local weave of cloth. Today the Border is perhaps even better known for its knitted goods, with such companies as Pringle, Lyle and Scott and Ballantyne. Since the war Tweed-side woollens have played a leading pan in the outstanding export record of their industry. In Langholm, on the Esk, manufacturers such as Reid and Taylor have also helped to maintain the world-wide reputation of the Border for the high quality of its tweeds.

In Cumberland, garment making is an important industry of the West Coast towns, and Cockermouth has a long tradition of boot and shoe manufacture. A company that recalls the mining past of the Cumbrian mountains as well as forming a link with the artistic traditions of Lakeland is Cumberland Pencils of Keswick, one of the foremost producers of lead pencils and crayons. Also Thames Board Mills and Kimberley-Clark are building two plants in West Cumberland and will ultimately employ about 1,600 people.



The prosperous market town of Kendal, the largest in Westmorland, stands at the southern gateway to the Lake District. Among other things, it is an important shoe-manufacturing centre, K Shoes are made there, and it is also the home of the Provincial Insurance Company. Its traditional industries include the manufacture of snuff and the famous Kendal mint cake.

In Carlisle again the food-processing industry ranges from Carr’s, one of the oldest established names in biscuits, and now part of Cavenham Foods Group, to a brand-new accelerated freeze drying plant, representing the latest development in its field in Europe. With engineering firms of every grade - Cowans Sheldon, Distington Engineering, Cochrans of Annan and Simon Carves - and such new industries as packaging and plastics (Metal Box have opened two factories in the area), Carlisle is at the forefront of modern industrial development.

These few examples show how far diversification has gone in the Border since those days between the wars when in a town like Whitehaven, one in every two of the working population might be unemployed. Unemployment is now lower than in any other part of northern Britain, while the average level of income is the highest of all predominantly rural areas of the United Kingdom. With this broadening of the whole base of its economy, the Border is now in a position to face with confidence any recession in a single sector.


Prosperity on the farm

The climate of the Border is affected by the Gulf Stream, which maintains moderate temperatures in every part of the area. The rainfall, carried by prevailing westerly winds, ranges from about 50 inches a year on the west coast (and more on high ground) to about half this amount on the east. So dairy farming predominates on the lush pastures in the west, while mixed farming with barley and beef cattle is of greater importance to the east. On the higher ground, sheep farming is the main enterprise.

The Border is famous for the quality of its stock. Its sheep include the sturdy little Herdwick of the Lakes, the Cheviot and the ‘black faced’ sheep of Tweedside. Hardy and prolific, these breeds are in great demand for crossing with the lowland types to produce such crosses as the Border-Leicester. Among the Borders cattle are the Ayrshire, the Galloway and the Beef Shorthorn; good examples of these breeds often command exceptional prices at the sales, just as sheep do at the famous one-day Kelso ram sales.


Two of Lakeland’s glories - Derwentwater and Skiddaw

Two of Lakeland’s glories - Derwentwater and Skiddaw


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