Moor Row: A Village of Many Names

The history of Moor Row, nestled on the West Cumbrian coastal plain, is far more than a simple industrial timeline. It is a story told through shifting names, recorded in the scribbled margins of census reports, railway ledgers, and medieval land deeds. Tracing these names reveals the evolution of a community that was once the "beating heart" of the regional iron industry.

The Earliest Layers: Scalegill and the Wildridge Estate

Long before the first "row" was built, the area was known by its Norse designation, Scalegill. This name, meaning "shieling by the ravine," reminds us of a time when the land was used for seasonal grazing. By the mid-1700s, the landscape was dominated by scattered homesteads. Records from 1762 onwards identify the Low Moor Row and High Moor Row estates. One of the most significant early families was the Wildridge family, who lived at the Low Moor Row homestead on what we now know as Church Street. The marriage of Elizabeth Wildridge to a local gardener named Dalzell transferred these estates into the hands of the Dalzell family, whose name remains a central spine of the village today.

Obscure Identities: Ingwell View and Low Keekle

As the settlement began to coalesce in the early 19th century, it often appeared under names that are now largely forgotten. In various census reports and land documents, portions of the settlement were referred to as Ingwell View - referencing the proximity to Ingwell Hall - or Low Keekle, a nod to the River Keekle that borders the village. During this period of fluid orthography, you will also find the village written as Moorroe or even Murrow, phonetic interpretations of the local Cumbrian dialect.

This linguistic fluidity is not unique to Moor Row. Nearby, the settlement of Foulyeat provides a parallel example of how dialect defines the map. Where 'Yeat' is the Cumbrian word for a gate. Foul evolved from Fold. In the same way that 'Foulyeat' has been preserved as a whisper of the area's agricultural past, the phonetic spelling of Moor Row as 'Murrow' in 19th-century ledgers captures the broad West Cumbrian vowel sounds of the miners and farmers who actually lived there, rather than the polished 'Moor Row' preferred by the railway clerks in London.

🔍 Archive Deep Dive

To understand the linguistic shift from traditional agricultural boundaries to modern mapping, explore the specific evolution of the Foulyeat name. This analysis examines how "Fold Gate" was phonetically captured by Victorian surveyors, preserving the local Cumbrian dialect within official records.

Read: The Hidden History of Foulyeat →

The Railway Hub: Moor Row Junction

The village's modern birth was triggered by the Whitehaven, Cleator & Egremont Railway in 1855. It quickly became the most important railway junction in Western Cumberland. For decades, the village was defined by the station, with official documents almost exclusively using the name Moor Row Junction. This era also saw an influx of Cornish tin miners, who brought their own heritage to the village - a legacy preserved in the name Penzance Street.

Era	Name Variant	Significance & Origin
Med.	Scalegill	Norse origin; 'shieling by the ravine'. The oldest recorded name for the landscape.
1760s	Low Moor Row	The original Wildridge family homestead; the first instance of 'Row' in local deeds.
1762	High Moor Row	Located near Scalegill Road; the home of the Dalzell family prior to the 1768 marriage to Elizabeth Wildridge and recorded as a distinct residential site through the 1840s.
1800s	Ingwell View	A transient census designation linking the settlement to the proximity of Ingwell Hall.
1840s	Murrow / Moorroe	Phonetic dialect variants; reflects the same corruption seen in 'Fold Gate' becoming 'Foulyeat'.
1855	Moor Row Junction	Official railway nomenclature; marks the transition to a major West Cumbrian transport hub.
1865	Moor Row	Formalised village name on Ordnance Survey maps, standardising the local Cumbrian phonetic 'Murrow'.

To understand the evolution of West Cumbrian place names like Foulyeat and Moor Row, one must view archival documents not as records of "correct" English, but as phonetic snapshots. Before the advent of national education standards, scribes, enumerators, and railway clerks often recorded what they heard, creating a linguistic bridge between the spoken Cumbrian tongue and the written page.

Education and the Phonetic Archive

The divergence between local names and official records was largely driven by the tension between local speech and "Standard English." Until the late 19th century, literacy was functional and often taught by those who themselves spoke with heavy regional accents. When a census enumerator visited a homestead near Moor Row, they were tasked with transcribing the broad vowels of a miner or agricultural labourer.

In these archival documents, we see phonetic usage rather than orthographic accuracy. This is why Fold Gate was recorded as Foulyeat; the scribe was capturing the breathy "foul" sound of "Fold" and the "Yat" sound of "Gate" common to the West Cumbrian coast. These "errors" are actually vital historical data - they tell us how the village sounded 200 years ago. As formal education became standardised through the 20th century, these phonetic spellings were gradually scrubbed from official maps in favour of "correct" English, often stripping away the local meaning in the process.

Term	Dialect Usage	Evolution & Phonetic Shift
Yeat	Gate (Yat)	Derived from Old English 'geat'. Often appears as 'Yat' or 'Yeat' in documents, as seen in the transition of Fold Gate to Foulyeat.
Scale	Shieling	A temporary summer shelter for livestock. It remains fixed in 'Scalegill' but often softened to 'Sca' in local speech.
Beck	Stream	Old Norse 'bekkr'. Unlike 'stream', which was the Victorian standard, 'beck' survived because it was too ingrained in the local topography.
Thwaite	Clearing	Meaning a meadow or clearing. In quick speech and early ledgers, it often reduced phonetically to 'fit' or 'thet'.
Row	Terrace	Used for industrial workers' housing. Phonetically recorded as 'Roe' or 'Raw', leading to 'Moorroe' or 'Murrow' in early census papers.
Gill	Ravine	A narrow valley or stream-way. Often transcribed as 'Ghyll' by Victorian Romantics, though locals maintained the harder 'Gill' sound.

Walking through the village today, you are walking through these layers of history. Whether it is the Cornish echo of Penzance Street or the industrial shadow of the Montreal Mines, the many names of Moor Row continue to tell the story of a community built on iron and steam.

High Moor Row Illustration