Cleator

This article is about the village in Cumbria, England. For the ghost town in Arizona, see Cleator, Arizona.

Cleator
Coast-to-Coast Path, near Cleator
Cleator Location in Copeland Borough Cleator Location within Cumbria
OS grid reference	NY015135
Civil parish	Cleator Moor
District	Cumberland (unitary authority)
Shire county	Cumbria
Region	North West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	CLEATOR
Postcode district	CA23
Dialling code	01946
Police	Cumbria
Fire	Cumbria
Ambulance	North West
UK Parliament	Copeland

Cleator /ˈkliːtər/ is a village in the English county of Cumbria and within the boundaries of the historic county of Cumberland. The village formed part of the Borough of Copeland, which on 1 April 2023 was abolished and its functions were transferred to the new unitary authority Cumberland.

Cleator is near the port town of Whitehaven and lies 1½ miles south of the town of Cleator Moor on the A5086 road. Cleator was the original village, Cleator Moor being the moor above the village. It is the site of the former Kangol hat factory. The factory buildings and shop are now closed. Cleator is located on the River Ehen, which is joined by the River Keekle at Longlands Lake.

On Thursday 19 November 2009, rainfall of over 300 mm was recorded in Cumbria. The surge of water off the fells of the Lake District flowed back to the Irish Sea down the rivers of West Cumbria, including the River Derwent which caused flooding and damage at Keswick, Cockermouth and Workington. The River Ehen burst its banks at Cleator, near to the Kangol factory, flooding fields and a number of residential properties.

Though it has suffered down the ages, Cleator boasts a witness to distant times in St Leonard's church, whose site may have housed an earlier building even as early as the 5th century. While the current building underwent major interventions in 1841 and in 1900-1903, the chancel at least dates in part to the 12th century. In the long years since the 16th-century Reformation the present building has been the Anglican parish church.

The sizeable Catholic St Mary's church (officially titled Our Lady of the Sacred Heart) was designed by the architect E. W. Pugin (the son of the better known A.W.N. Pugin, whose works include the Houses of Parliament). The church was constructed in the years 1869–1872 and opened in 1872. In the grounds it has a grotto, constructed to give work to the unemployed men of the parish during the depression of 1926, and which is modelled on that of Lourdes and is the venue for an annual procession.

Other churches in the area include in Cleator Moor the Cleator Moor Methodist Church, first built in 1862 was rebuilt following a fire in 1934, and the grade 2 listed Anglican Church of St John Evangelist, designed in an Norman architecture Anglo-Norman style by the Carlisle-born architect Charles John Ferguson (1840-1904) and consecrated in 1872. Other nonconformist chapels, now closed, included the Presbyterian church, the Primitive Methodist chapel, a Congregational chapel, and a United Methodist Free church.

Cleator was the site of a number of textile mills (originally linen), which was how the Kangol firm came to establish itself there, in 1938. Following the development of iron ore mining in nearby areas, Cleator was the site of associated works (hence the street name "Kiln Brow" and the location "The Forge"). Longlands Lake nature reserve is on the site of the former Longlands iron ore mine that first produced ore in 1879 from four pits. By 1924 the Cleator mines had been abandoned. In 1939 they started to subside and flood the area, creating Longlands Lake which was acquired by Cumbria County Council in 1980.

The population of the village has varied considerably over the years, especially reflecting the fortunes of local industrial development. While an estimate for 1688 (the year of the Glorious Revolution) put it at 330, it had increased but little, to 362, by 1801. It then more than doubled, to 763, by 1841. This was the beginning of a relative explosion which continued for the greater part of the rest of the century, with the arrival of immigrants from Ireland, and, thanks to mining prospects, even from Cornwall. Developments included the creation on the former common to the north of what became the town of Cleator Moor by the 1880s. If the 1861 population had reached 3,995, it hit well over double that only twenty years later, in 1881, at 10,420. That was the peak. It fell by 1901 to 8,120 by 1901 and a half-century later in 1951 was registering 6,411. Changed conditions once more brought it to 7,686 by 1971; which stabilized to a figure of 6,939 in 2001.

Cleator Cricket Club, whose home is the picturesque J.D. Campbell Memorial Ground, field three teams, the 1st XI playing in the North Lancashire League. On 8 September 2013 the club achieved fame by winning the National Village Cup at Lord's Cricket Ground in London. They defeated the Gloucestershire team of Rockhampton by 1 wicket with 8 balls to spare in a tense and closely fought final.

Cleator forms part of the recently instituted unitary authority of Cumberland, which covers 77% of the area of the historic and former administrative county of Cumberland (excluding Penrith area) and 90% of its population.

Modern Cleator is an agreable spot, located on the edge of the Lake District, with Dent Fell on the skyline to the south east. It is included in many nature initiatives such as Alfred Wainwright's Coast to Coast Walk.

Though they had in common a history in mining, Cleator village has no collection with the township of the same name, now reportedly little more than a ghost town, formerly called Cleator, Arizona Turkey Creek, at the base of the Bradshaw Mountains in central Arizona, in the Southwestern United States, which was founded in 1864 during a gold rush and in 1925 purchased by the Manx-born James P. Cleator (died 1959), who named it after himself.

See also

• Listed buildings in Cleator Moor

External links

• Cumbria County History Trust: Cleator (nb: provisional research only – see Talk page)

• Cleator Moor Town Council
• Some details of the parish church
• Little Ireland website