The National vs. The Local, Amenity vs. Employment and Housing: The Case of the ‘Sunderland’ Seaplane Assembly Factory, Calgarth, Windermere, the Lake District

When the decision was taken by the Ministry of Aircraft Production to site a ‘Sunderland’ seaplane assembly factory and accompanying workers’ accommodation on requisitioned farm land at Calgarth on the shores of Lake Windermere in late 1941 in support of Britain’s war effort, it set in motion an often bitter contestation over the future of the site that would rumble on for nearly twenty years.  It pitted a national perception of the amenity value of the site against a local perception of the site as a source of future employment and housing.  Whilst the factory site was, prior to foundational work being undertaken, regarded by locals as ‘just a big bog’, to FLD it was an ‘open green sward, reaching from the main road to the lake shore and being the foreground to one of the most attractive long-distance views … in the southern part of the Lake District’ [and] ‘the emerald green of these forty acres of the Troutbeck land was one of the most attractive features of the surroundings to Windermere town’.^[1] 

This article explores how, why and what happens when the same location can mean such different things to different people.

The decision to locate the factory in the middle of the nascent Lake District National Park was taken within the space of a few weeks in December 1941 by the Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP) and was bitterly opposed by two leading preservationist organisations, the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE) and the Friends of the Lake District (FLD).  On the other hand, local authorities – whilst they had not the time to lobby in favour of the factory, generally regarded it as a welcome source of employment, although there was some concern initially about where those workers would live which were not already local to the area.

Whilst the organisations were unsuccessful in stopping the factory and associated ‘workers’ village from being built across 50 acres of pasture, they did extract a written promise from the then Minister of Aircraft Production (MAP), Lord Beaverbrook, committing the Government to the removal of the factory at the end of the war.  It was subsequently agreed by the State that this undertaking included the removal of the workers’ accommodation.  This commitment was underpinned by an amenity-friendly clause in the Requisitioned Land and War Works Act of 1945, to the effect that any government would be bound to remove military-industrial infrastructure built on requisitioned land in support of the war effort if there was a strong amenity case made to do so. 

For the FLD and CPRE, ‘if a factory can be placed on Windermere, then a factory can be brought into National Parks anywhere and all ‘planning’ [of these National Parks] becomes contingent on accidental circumstances and local pressure’.[2]  The matter was of great relevance for all national parks therefore, not just the proposed one in the Lake District, and was therefore perceived as a national issue by both CPRE and the FLD, for despite the latter’s name, about half of its 2,000 individual members were from outside the area.[3] 

Neither CPRE’s opposition to the factory in the first place, nor the written promise from Beaverbrook that the factory would be removed, nor the implications of the clause in the Requisitioned Land and War Works Act, were known to the workforce at the factory or the wider local community until at least March 1945, or possibly as late as the summer that year, when the amenity societies made the facts known.  Until this time all the parties to the war-time agreement had been prevented from publicising it as to do so would have identified the site, potentially to the enemy.[4]  For four war-time years therefore the workforce, local population and authorities had been operating on the assumption that the factory and associated workers’ village was there to stay in some form or another.  In June 1945 the 600-strong workforce was given a month’s notice.[5]  Reporting on the site for the first time since war-time restrictions had been lifted, The Manchester Guardian wrote sympathetically in support of local interests that ‘nearly six hundred people […] will be on notice as from today in a district which offers little alternative employment [due to] the Government’s having to fulfil the undertaking given to various amenity-protection societies’.[6]

Whilst MAP’s commitment to the amenity organisations to remove the factory did not extend to removing the concrete slipway and factory foundations, the Ministry of Health – responsible for the workers’ village – undertook to restore the ground to its former condition, so that it could be used again for agricultural purposes; this would involve digging out the concrete foundations of the workers’ village buildings, and the roadways on the site.[7]  The carrying out of the undertakings were however delayed for years, ostensibly due to a shortage of the necessary labour to undertake the demolition and restoration. 

The delay throughout the mid-to-late 1940s over the removal of the factory allowed for opposition to the removal to ferment and a number of uses for the factory buildings to be proposed, including permanent industrial use and part uses such as food warehousing and a base for the Freshwater Biological Association.[8]  These were supported by varying combinations of the local tradesmen’s association, the factory shop stewards, Calgarth Estate Residents’ Association, Westmorland County Council, the Lakes Urban District Council, Windermere District Council, the local hoteliers’ association, Kendal and District Labour Committee, the British Legion, and the local Trades Council.  Local authority support for the various schemes may have been because when in operation the Calgarth factory had paid the not inconsiderable sum then of £2,872 p.a. in business rates, about one per cent of the total business rates collected in the area.[9]  This clearly shows the dispute to be between amenity interests at a national level versus practical, economic interests at a local level.  The high point of the opposition came when the local MP for Westmorland, W.H.F. Vane, launched a public petition which obtained over 8,000 signatures.  He subsequently tabled it in Parliament, calling for ‘clean light industry’ to be installed at the factory site.[10]  It did not succeed. John Freeman MP, Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Supply, said that the petition ‘does not alter the fact that the wartime promise was given which has now passed into law.[11]

The level of animosity generated towards the amenity societies from stakeholders at a local level was most striking: one local councillor – against the removal of the factory — was reported as saying that whilst the name of the FLD might sound very nice in London it was ‘beginning to stink’ in the Lake District;[12] another described the amenity societies as ‘self-elected autocratic bodies’.[13]  That said, CPRE could stoke these localist fires through its own institutional arrogance; in a letter to a local government body, CPRE stated combatively:

as a national body [CPRE] has throughout considered the future of the Calgarth Factory as a problem of national planning and our refusal to agree to the use of any part of the premises for industrial purposes has not been dictated by representations received from local subscribers. Where our individual subscribers live, or whether any of them live in the Lakes Urban District, would appear to be immaterial.[14]

Further, CPRE was dismissive of the MP’s petition, describing it, in a ‘Private and Personal’ letter to Vane, that it ‘hardly seems worthy of your ‘powder and shot,’’[15] and elevating the national over the local with the aid of upper case lettering: ‘quite apart from the crudity of the actual drafting, and the inaccuracies which it contains, it appears to me to be a considered attempt, by a suppression of actual facts, on the part of those responsible, to conceal the National Interests as distinct from the purely local interests, which are attached to this case.’

The land’s owner, Major Hedley, eventually regained use of the factory site and – making use of the factory foundations – was given planning permission to open the White Cross Bay Holiday Park in 1954, with the factory’s slipway fenced off and made into a children’s paddling pool.[16]  In the following years hardcore and three feet-deep soil were used to cover the foundations and timber lodges with small gardens were added to the site; the original factory paths and roadways down to the lake were tarmacked but still follow the same routes.[17]  Today the site is known as the White Cross Bay Holiday Park & Marina.

In keeping with the conditions laid down by the State for its removal, the pace of transition from its military association depended on the Ministry of Health being satisfied that the housing was no longer needed; this proved to be an even more protracted issue than the factory’s removal.[18]  CPRE and FLD favoured a ‘progressive evacuation’ of the village, but such was the shortage of housing in the region, even though the Calgarth Residents’ Association itself regarded the 250 workers’ bungalows as an ‘eyesore’, many former workers and their families were still living on the housing estate and Windermere Council had fifty-five people on a waiting list wanting to move into them.[19] 

As at September 1951—as the main factory buildings were finally being dismantled and removed—there were still 1,000 people living on the estate, and as a result the Ministry of Health gave special consideration to Windermere Urban District Council to acquire and develop a new council housing site at nearby Droomer Stile.[20] This allowed for demolition work on the estate to begin in 1954, one block of housing at a time as they became vacated; rubble from the demolished homes were used as a hardcore base for the roads on the new estate.[21]  The last eight homes were not demolished until 1961, sixteen years after the end of the war – and twenty years since the site was constructed.[22]

The end result represented a partial victory for both national and local interests.  CPRE and the FLD got their removal of the factory, although it was not returned to its pre-war greenfield origin; nevertheless, it did acquire an amenity identity in the form of the holiday park.  In the case of the site of the workers’ village, nearly every semblance of its existence was removed, but the intended closure of the accommodation site acted as a catalyst for the creation of additional permanent housing capacity in the locality.

In the end both national and local interests could be simultaneously satisfied and dissatisfied, but came no closer to appreciating each other’s respective points of view.

[1] Allan King, Wings on Windermere: the History of the Lake District’s Forgotten Flying Boat Factory, (Mushroom Model Publications, 2008), p.20; ‘The Housing Site in Calgarth Park’, Friends of the Lake District letter to Major J. Hedley (Owner of the Calgarth Estate land), 1 November 1956, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/2/6/32, Calgarth Housing Estate; ‘Calgarth Housing Estate’ letter from Hon. Sec, Friends of the Lake District to M.B. Tetlow, Regional Controller, Ministry of Town and Country Planning, 22 June 1948, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/2/6/33.

[2] Friends of the Lake District Report and News Letter, August 1950, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/10/13, p.11.

[3] King, Wings on Windermere, p.114.

[4] Friends of the Lake District: ‘The Calgarth Factory, The Facts’, June 1949, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/10/13, p.1; letter from H.H. Chapman, Ministry of Aircraft Production, to Short Bros., Rochester, 3 March 1945, National Archives AVIA 15/3622 Factories: Short Bros. Ltd (Rochester and Bradford) Local Objections to Factory Premises, Windermere.

[5] King, Wings on Windermere, p.81.

[6] ‘A Windermere Problem: Future of Air Factory’, The Manchester Guardian 30/6/45, p.3.

[7] ‘The Housing Site in Calgarth Park’, Friends of the Lake District letter to Major J Hedley, 1 November 1956; Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/2/6/32 Calgarth Housing Estate.

[8] ‘Calgarth – Years of Struggle’, Friends of the Lake District 1934-1959: Retrospect and Annual Report, June 1959, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal WDSO 117/10/13, p.9; King, Wings on Windermere, p.114.

[9] ‘Deputation on Calgarth’, Westmorland Gazette, 30 April 1949, Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle, DSO/15/31; ‘Calgarth Factory Could Make Nylons, Union Told’ The Yorkshire Post, 21 June 1949, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/2/8/12.

[10] ‘Petition (Aircraft Factory, Windermere)’, House of Commons Debate, 28 June 1949, Hansard Online, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1949/jun/28/petition-aircraft-factory-windermere (accessed 28/10/22).

[11] ‘More About Calgarth’, Westmorland Gazette, 2 April 1949, Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle, DSO/15/31.

[12] ‘Ministry Loss of £100,000: Decision to Move Lakeside Factory, The Liverpool Post, 29 October 1948, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal WDSO 117/2/8/12.

[13] ‘Lake District Petition to Parliament’, Westmorland Gazette, 29 January 1949, Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle, DSO/15/31.

[14] ‘Calgarth Factory, Windermere’ letter from Griffin to The Clerk of Lakes Urban District Council, 4 December 1948, Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle, DS0/15/32.

[15] ‘Private and Personal’ Letter from H.G. Griffin to W.H.F. Vane, 19 March 1949, Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle, DSO/15/32.

[16] Exhibition Display Boards, ‘From Auschwitz to Ambleside’ Permanent Exhibition by the Lake District Holocaust Project, Windermere Library, Ellerthwaite, Lake District (visited 29 April 2020); ‘Demolition Work Begun on Calgarth Bungalows’, The Westmoreland Gazette, 4 September 1954, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/2/6/32 Calgarth Housing Estate.

[17] King, Wings on Windermere, p.124.

[18] ‘Calgarth Estate’, Friends of the Lake District 1948 Report and News Letter July 1948, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/10/13, p.4.

[19] Friends of the Lake District 1948 Report and News Letter July 1948, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/10/13, p.5; ‘Clash Over an ‘Ugly’ Windermere Estate: Residents to Fight Hard, The Manchester Guardian, 5 May 1947, p.6; King, Wings on Windermere, p.119.

[20] Friends of the Lake District Report and News Letter September 1951, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/10/13, p.16.

[21] ‘Demolition Work Begun on Calgarth Bungalows’, The Westmorland Gazette 4 September 1954, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/2/6/32 Calgarth Housing Estate.

[22] King, Wings on Windermere, p.121. ‘Calgarth Housing Estate’, Friends of the Lake District 1934-1959: Retrospect and Annual Report, June 1959, Cumbria Archive Centre, Kendal, WDSO 117/10/13, p.15.

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