The Great Moor Metamorphosis: The Legal Evolution

The historical development of Moor Row, a village situated within the coastal plain of West Cumbria, serves as a profound case study in the socio – legal transformation of the English landscape. This transformation is characterised by a fundamental shift from a communal "moral economy," governed by the feudal customs of the Barony of Egremont, to a privatised industrial regime defined by the extraction of high – grade haematite.

At the centre of this metamorphosis lies the "Great Moor," an expansive tract of wasteland traditionally known as the Egremont Waste, which for centuries provided essential subsistence resources to the inhabitants of the Lowside Quarter. The mechanisms of this transition were encoded within the Manorial Court records of Egremont Castle, where the local representatives known as "Turnmen" adjudicated the rights of "Turbary" – the legal entitlement to cut peat for fuel – and the complex disputes arising from communal grazing.

The significance of these legal records extends beyond mere agricultural regulation; they document the structural foundations of the Industrial Revolution in West Cumbria. The Egremont Enclosure Award of 1783 represented a pivotal legal rupture, carving the communal Great Moor into private "parcels". This process did not merely reassign the surface of the land; it strategically formalised the Lord of the Manor’s reservation of mineral rights, thereby facilitating the subsequent issuance of massive mining leases to industrial pioneers such as John Stirling and the Dalzell family. The resulting industrial landscape, characterised by the "Red Gold" of the haematite mines and the intricate rail network of the Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway, was built directly upon the legal and physical ruins of the ancient manorial system.

The Feudal Architecture of the Barony of Egremont and the Lowside Quarter

To comprehend the evolution of Moor Row, one must first analyse the administrative and judicial structures of the Barony of Egremont, historically referred to as the Barony of Copeland. Established in the early 12th century when the barony was granted to William le Meschin by Henry I, the Lordship of Egremont exercised jurisdiction over the vast territory between the rivers Derwent and Duddon. The administrative centre was Egremont Castle, which, despite being "slighted" in 1569 and falling into structural decay, remained the functional heart of manorial governance well into the 19th century.

The barony's descent through the Rumilly, Lucy, and Moulton families eventually led to its partition in 1338 into three portions, which were later consolidated under the Earls of Northumberland, the Percy family. For administrative purposes, the lordship was divided into bailiwicks, with the "Lowside Quarter" serving as a key division for the lowland townships. This division was not merely a geographical marker but a judicial unit responsible for sending "Turnmen" to the Manorial Court at Egremont to represent the interests of the community and uphold the customs of the manor.

Historical Period	Administrative Milestone of the Barony of Egremont
Early 12th Century	Grant of the Barony of Copeland to William le Meschin.
1200	Borough of Egremont established at the foot of the castle.
1334 – 1338	Death of John de Multon and partition of the barony into three shares.
1530 – 1539	The Percy family acquires shares, including the Lord Fitzwalter’s portion.
1569	Egremont Castle is slighted but remains the administrative seat.
1578	Inquisition of the Lordship defines the rights of the Lord and tenants.
1625	Emergence of "Moor Row" as a series of enclosures on the Great Moor edge.
1783	The Egremont Enclosure Award formalises the transition to private parcels.

The Lowside Quarter encompassed the area where Moor Row would eventually emerge as a residential hub. During the 17th century, the area was characterised by "scattered longhouse style farmsteads" clinging to the periphery of the Great Moor. These tenants operated under "customary tenantright," a northern form of tenure that provided significant security – allowing tenants to sell or inherit property – provided they performed their obligations to the Lord of the Manor, such as maintaining the defences of the castle and paying annual fines.

The Jurisprudence of Turbary and the Moral Economy of the Moor

The economic viability of the farmsteads in the Lowside Quarter was inextricably linked to the exercise of communal rights on the Great Moor. These rights were not unrestricted; they were governed by a complex set of rules established in the Manorial Court and enforced by the Turnmen. The two most critical rights were "Common of Pasture" (grazing) and "Common of Turbary".

Turbary was the legal right of a tenant to cut peat or turf for use as fuel in their dwelling. In a landscape where timber was often a reserved resource for the Lord (estovers) or required for construction, peat was the primary source of domestic heating and cooking fuel. The extraction of peat was subject to the principle of "appurtenance," meaning the right was attached to a specific messuage or house and could not be severed or sold as a separate commodity. Peat cut under turbary rights had to be consumed within the tenement to which the right was attached; selling peat to external markets was a punishable offence in the Manorial Court.

The Manorial Court records of Egremont Castle detail frequent disputes over the "unreasonable" extraction of turf. The Turnmen of the Lowside Quarter were tasked with ensuring that tenants did not exceed their needs or encroach upon the "mosses" assigned to other residents. This regulation was essential because peat is a slow – growing resource, and over – extraction could lead to the permanent loss of fuel for the community. The "Moss Reeve," an official appointed by the court, worked alongside the Turnmen to oversee these turbary rights and settle boundary disputes on the peat bogs.

Grazing Rights and the System of Stinted Pastures

The management of livestock on the Great Moor was equally rigorous. Grazing rights were governed by the principle of "levancy and couchancy," which dictated that a tenant could only graze as many animals on the common as their private in – bye land could support through the winter. In the Lowside Quarter, this was often quantified through "stints" or "cattle gates".

A cattle gate represented the right to graze one cow, which could be mathematically converted into rights for other animals, such as ten sheep.

Common Right	Legal Definition and Manorial Application
Common of Turbary	The right to cut peat or turf for fuel, overseen by Turnmen and Moss Reeves.
Common of Pasture	The right to graze livestock, limited by the rule of levancy and couchancy.
Common of Estovers	The right to take wood for fuel or repairs (housebote, haybote, ploughbote).
Common of Pannage	The right to graze pigs in woodland for acorns or beech mast.
Common of Marl	The right to take sand and gravel for soil improvement or construction.

The Turnmen were responsible for "drifting" the moor – a periodic process of rounding up all livestock to ensure no tenant was exceeding their allotted stints and to identify any "strays" or animals belonging to non – tenants.

Disputes over grazing were a recurring theme in the Manorial Court of Egremont, often involving "unringed swine" or livestock that had broken through the "hain" (the boundary between common and private land). These disputes were more than personal grievances; they were essential mechanisms for maintaining the ecological balance of the moorland, ensuring that the resource was not destroyed by overgrazing.

The Egremont Enclosure Award of 1783: A Pivot to Private Property

The era of the "Great Moor" as a communal resource effectively ended with the Egremont Enclosure Award of 1783. This legal act was part of a broader national movement to "improve" agricultural land, but in West Cumbria, its implications were profoundly industrial.

The enclosure transformed the vast, unpartitioned Egremont Waste into the rectangular fields and structured road layouts that define the modern geography of Moor Row.

The process of enclosure involved the appointment of commissioners who surveyed the common land and distributed "allotments" to those who had previously held customary rights. While this resulted in the creation of private "parcels," it fundamentally disadvantaged the smaller tenants. The loss of communal grazing and turbary meant that many smallholdings were no longer self – sufficient, as the newly allotted private fields were often too small to support the livestock levels permitted under the old stinted system.

The Strategic Reservation of Mineral Rights

Crucially, the 1783 Enclosure Award did not grant absolute ownership of the subsoil to the new parcel holders. Following established manorial law, the Lord of the Manor (the Wyndham family, successors to the Earls of Egremont and Northumberland) ensured that while the surface was privatised, the mineral rights remained vested in the lordship. This legal manoeuvre was of immense foresight; it allowed the Lord to lease the rights to the underlying haematite deposits to industrial corporations without the need to negotiate with the dozens of surface – level landowners who now occupied the former Great Moor.

This separation of surface and mineral rights was the catalyst for the industrial boom that followed.

The "Great Moor" was no longer just a source of peat and grass; it was a site of potential "Red Gold". The formalisation of titles provided by the enclosure gave industrial investors the legal certainty they required to commit the massive capital needed for deep shaft mining.

The Industrial Metamorphosis: Haematite and the Montreal Mine

By the mid – 19th century, the discovery of massive haematite deposits beneath the former Great Moor initiated a period of "Iron Fever". 

This iron ore was particularly valuable because of its low phosphorus content, making it ideal for the newly developed Bessemer process of steel production. The transition from the agrarian era of the Turnmen to the industrial era of the mine owner was embodied in the Montreal Mine complex at Moor Row.

Owned by the industrialist John Stirling, the Montreal Mine was famously known as the "Great Moor" due to its sprawling footprint across the land that had once been the communal waste. The operation was a feat of Victorian engineering, with Pit No. 10 reaching depths of approximately 210 metres to tap into the horizontal ore bodies known as "flats" within the Carboniferous Limestone.

Mine Property	Owner / Operator	Peak Production / Workforce	Geological Focus
Montreal Mine	John Stirling	250,000 tons per year; 1,200 men.	Fourth and Fifth Limestones.
Gutterby Mine	Richard Barker / Lindow Family	Short – lived; 1825 – 1834 initial output.	Namurian 1st and 2nd Limestones.
Sir John Walsh Mine	Lonsdale Estate	Major district operation.	Carboniferous Limestone.
Wyndham Pit	Wyndham Family	Historical site near Bigrigg.	Marginal ore deposits.

The Montreal Mine alone employed over a thousand workers, many of whom were migrants from Cornwall, Ireland, and Scotland. This influx of labour necessitated the rapid construction of a village where previously only a "row" of farmsteads had existed.

The Dalzell family, who had inherited the Wildridge estates through marriage, leveraged their landholdings to facilitate this expansion. Street names such as Penzance Street (referencing Cornish tin miners) and Dalzell Street (referencing the industrial landowners) serve as enduring toponymic evidence of this transition.

The Infrastructural Layer: The Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway

The industrial success of the haematite mines was dependent on a reliable transport network to move the "Red Gold" to the coastal ports and furnaces. The Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway (WC&ER), formed in 1854, provided this essential link. Moor Row was selected as the operational heart of this network because of its strategic position at the junction where the lines from the various mining districts met.

The railway was the final architect of the modern Moor Row landscape. It split the village with branches heading northeast to Frizington and south to Egremont, creating a dense web of industrial infrastructure. The arrival of the railway in 1855 and its opening for goods in 1857 marked the definitive end of the area’s agrarian isolation. The shunting yards at Moor Row became the most important in West Cumberland, and the village thrived on the constant movement of ore, stone, and coal.

Railway Milestone	Date	Significance for Moor Row and the Great Moor
Formation of WC&ER	1854	Planning the mineral corridor to tap the haematite field.
Opening for Goods	1855	First transport of iron ore and coal to local ports.
First Passenger Train	1 July 1857	Connecting the mining community to the wider region.
Extension to Sellafield	1869	Linking the WC&ER to the Furness Railway main line.
Peak Mining Traffic	1880s	Relentless movement of ore from pits like Florence and Bigrigg.
End of First Act	7 Jan 1935	Cessation of public passenger services due to industrial decline.
Final Mine Closure	1980	Closing of the Beckermet mine and the end of deep mining.

The interaction between the railway and the mines was so intensive that it created unique environmental challenges. The extraction of haematite beneath the tracks led to perpetual ground instability. Structural planning in Moor Row was dictated by the threat of "mining subsidence," a physical manifestation of the industrial exploitation that had replaced the ancient "Mereditches" of the Great Moor.

Socio – Legal Continuity and the Nuclear Transition

The decline of the iron ore industry in the 20th century did not result in a return to the communal practices of the 17th – century moor. Instead, the infrastructure and land – use patterns established by the enclosure and the mines were repurposed for a new industrial epoch. The reopening of the railway line between Moor Row and Sellafield in 1940 and again in 1949 provided the mobility for the workforce of the emerging nuclear industry.

The "Energy Coast" of the 21st century is built upon the same geographical footprint that once supported the Turnmen and their turbary rights. The transition from "Common Land to the Energy Coast" represents a trajectory of increasing state and industrial control over the landscape. Today, the Great Moor survives as a series of modern fields, while the village of Moor Row – once a literal row on the waste – is a residential community of approximately 750 residents.

The Legacy of the Great Moor

The history of Moor Row is a history of legal and physical displacement. The Turnmen of the Lowside Quarter, who once trekked to Egremont Castle to settle disputes over peat and grass, belonged to a world defined by communal sustainability and local custom. The Egremont Enclosure Award of 1783 dismantled this world, replacing it with a regime of private property and industrial extraction.

The "Great Moor" was not simply enclosed; it was mined, built upon, and integrated into a global industrial economy. The reservation of mineral rights during the enclosure process was the decisive legal act that allowed the "Red Gold" of West Cumbria to be extracted on such a massive scale. While the physical traces of the mines are now largely hidden beneath the surface, the socio – legal transformation of the land remains the defining feature of Moor Row’s identity. The transition from communal grazing to private parcels was the essential prerequisite for the village’s industrial existence, forever altering the relationship between the people of West Cumbria and the land they inhabit.

Visualisation of The Great Moor c1600