6 - Solway Basin : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

The Solway Basin National Character Area (NCA) is a broad, lowland landscape of low rounded hills grading to a coastal plain that is fringed to the north and west by the relatively remote coastline of the Solway Firth and Irish Sea. It is framed by the Cumbria High Fells NCA to the south, the hills of the Scottish borders to the north and the Border Moors and Forests NCA to the north-east. The pastoral landscape of the broad Eden Valley NCA stretches away to the south-east. The outward views from the NCA are to the encircling uplands of the Lake District, North Pennines and southern Scotland, broken only by the open mouth of the Solway Firth as it expands into the head of the Irish Sea.

The Solway estuary receives water from catchments that drain a large part of North Cumbria and the Scottish borders including, in England, the upland NCAs of the Cumbria High Fells, the Orton Fells, the North Pennines, the Tyne Gap and Hadrian’s Wall, and the Border Moors and Forests. Many of these river systems join to form the River Eden which flows down from the Eden Valley NCA, forming an important physical and cultural corridor. Along the coast the relationship with the West Cumbria Coastal Plain NCA is important as the source of sedimentary material that moves northwards along the coast to feed the barrier coastline of the outer Solway.

The eastern part of the area acts a major transport hub with the main routes linking Scotland and England west of the Pennines, such as the M6, A7 and the West Coast Main Line railway, and east-west links such as the A69, A595 and the Carlisle to Newcastle railway line converging on Carlisle. The upland fringes of the NCA are still a broad and open landscape but forestry plantations and more extensive farming systems mark the transition to the adjoining uplands.

Between the first millennium ad and the 16th century, the Solway Basin was a contested and fluid boundary between English and Scottish cultures; accordingly, cultural links with Scotland to the north and Newcastle to the east are as significant as links with other parts of Cumbria. The Roman frontier of Hadrian’s Wall with its World Heritage Site status, links the Solway Basin with the Tyne Gap and Hadrian’s Wall NCA.

The Solway Basin today

The Solway Basin NCA is a shallow basin composed of a broad, lowland plain landscape framed by the uplands of the Cumbria High Fells NCA to the south, the hills of the Scottish borders to the north and the Border Moors and Forests NCA to the east and opening out into the northern parts of the Irish Sea. The dominant character is of a mainly pastoral landscape, with significant areas of arable cropping on gentle hills of glacially streamlined, sedimentary geology and glacial deposits, and extensive areas of reclaimed flood plain and former wetland.

The open expanse of the inner Solway Firth is dominated by large expanses of intertidal mudflats etched by shifting dendritic channels. The intertidal expanse is bordered by wide salt marshes, grazed by cattle and sheep. To the south of the estuary mouth, the Irish Sea coastal fringe, the estuary becomes more exposed and the sediments coarser. Here, intertidal sand flats, with occasional boulder-skears formed from eroded drumlins, are bordered by a narrower strip of shingle and sand beach and sand dune. Along this coast are a few villages and the Victorian coastal resort of Silloth. The dunes themselves are nationally important for their dune communities and are popular with visitors; there are a number of caravan parks spread along the coastal strip.

The coastal zone is designated for its landscape quality as the Solway Coast AONB and is internationally important both for the coastal habitats and for the species they support including large numbers of waders and wildfowl, and natterjack toads. The geomorphology of the Solway is also nationally important, as is the sedimentary record of past sea level change. Inland from the coastal margin is the broad flat expanse of the Solway Plain. Throughout the coastal plain the landscape is dominated by pastoral agriculture in rectilinear fields framed by hedges, but with some arable particularly on the more elevated land. The pastoral agriculture includes many dairy and beef enterprises with associated land managed for silage. The farmsteads, hamlets and small linear villages are mainly to be found on higher ground and are often linked by road networks that have Roman origins. The larger settlements are generally linked to former religious settlements, the former railway network, key river crossings or trade points. The smaller settlements are often surrounded by systems of narrow linear fields while field patterns on the lower-lying reclaimed land are larger and more regular.

Crossing the NCA to enter the Solway are a number of rivers. In the west the Ellen and in the east the systems of the Sark, Esk and Eden are relatively natural in their courses and river structure. Slow-flowing and stable near the coast, they are more dynamic when moving into the upland fringes where they flow through deepened channels in the landscape – the result of erosion by glacial melt water. Between these lie the rivers Waver and Wampool. The lower stretches of these rivers have been greatly modified with embanked overdeepened channels and a network of connected drainage channels that have allowed the reclamation of a formerly more extensive wetland landscape for agriculture.

Broadleaved woodland is largely restricted to shallow valleys around the upland fringes with some larger blocks of conifer and mixed woodland. Many of the woodlands are under-managed. The town of Brampton is set in an undulating agricultural landscape which is characterised by semi-natural woodland and mature specimen trees. Sandy knolls, of glacial origin, which support impressive stands of mature beech and Scots pine, are notable features of the area. The land to the north and north-east of Carlisle in the lower reaches of the rivers Esk and Lyne is flatter, with larger blocks of mainly coniferous woodland. The River Eden is particularly important for wildlife and as a landscape feature.

Across the low-lying plain are a series of lowland raised bogs, some of the largest and most intact sites in England. These bogs with their raised peat domes blanketed in specialised plants are of international importance for their wildlife and past ecological record, and contrast with the improved pastures that surround them. As well as the raised bogs, the freshwater wetlands of the area include rivers, kettle hole lakes and low-lying fens often present as pockets of semi-natural habitat in a surrounding matrix of intensively managed pasture.

At the head of the Solway, guarding a crossing point on the lower reaches of the Eden and acting as a focus for the transport routes from all directions, sits the cathedral city of Carlisle. Today, surrounded by a suburban spread, the medieval walled city at its core is built of red St Bees Sandstone. Though sandstone dominates as a building material across the area, there is a mix of building styles. On the outer coast, beach cobbles are a regular building material feature, while many farmsteads have walls built of clay, known as clay dabbin, with a limewash render. Post-17th-century buildings show an increase in the use of bricks. Most buildings are slate roofed.

To the east of Carlisle and to the south of Wigton, the area starts to gradate into an upland fringe character. Although the gently rolling open topography persists, the river channels become deeper, often forming steep-sided valleys clothed in native woodland, and rush pastures and conifer plantations become more frequent.

There are many historic assets and influences in this landscape, most notable being the features associated with the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site including Hadrian’s Wall itself as well as a series of milefortlets, larger forts and features such as salt pans. More recently the landscape has been heavily influenced by medieval monastic activity and by its position as the Debatable Land – an administrative no man’s land that once separated England from Scotland and was dominated by the Border Reivers (raiders). This has left a legacy of abbey ruins, tower houses, defensible farmsteads (bastles) and a nucleated rural settlement pattern as well as the field patterns and areas of ridge and furrow that are a key feature of the rural landscape. There are some rare surviving examples of clay-walled houses and barns, some of which date from the 14th-16th centuries. The most recent features of the historical landscape are again associated with conflict – a suite of Second World War airfields now largely adapted to light industrial uses.

In the 19th century, Solway was popular with contemporary artists who were attracted to the area by the seascapes and the quality of light. Samuel Bough (1822-78), Robert Salmon (1775-1844) and Joseph Heard (1799-1859) were all influenced by the area’s marine connections. While literary portrayals of the areas are limited, Sir Walter Scott set his historical novel Redgauntlet (1824) in the general area of the Solway Firth and Charles Dickens also visited and wrote about the Solway coast in 1857. More recently, the area around Wigton has provided the settings for several novels by Melvyn Bragg who was born and brought up in the town, while the author Margaret Forster was born and brought up in Carlisle.

Today, recreation remains an important part of the rural economy with the (partly overlapping) AONB, World Heritage Site and various nature conservation designations, and their associated nature reserves, as well as National Trails, encapsulating a landscape rich in environmental assets that are popular with those seeking quiet recreation. To these can be added coastal links golf courses, other areas of historical heritage and open access areas enjoyed by local residents and visitors alike.

The landscape through time

The Solway Basin NCA is generally underlain by Lower Triassic deposits of St Bees Sandstone and Mercia Mudstone, with a Jurassic/Triassic Lias plateau of mudstone, siltstone, limestone and sandstone west of Carlisle. In the northwest of the NCA there is a narrow belt of Permian sandstone and conglomerate bordering the Carboniferous limestones and sandstones beyond Longtown.

The basic landform of the Solway owes its origins to smoothing and streamlining of the land by ice flowing from surrounding upland areas during the Quaternary period. This left a broad open landscape that was subsequently modified by fluvial and coastal processes, including the development of a number of peat-forming wetlands. Evidence of the effect of different ice flows over the landscape can still be seen in both the shape and orientation of the streamlined hills and drumlins. The area is also characterised by features formed by glacial erosion and deposition, including melt water channels, moraines and eskers, and the formation of kames, ice-contact deltas (for example, at Holme St Cuthbert) and kettle hole lakes from ice decay at the end of the last ice age. Since the last ice age, climatic amelioration allowed the lower part of the Solway Basin to develop into a network of coastal wetlands formed by the accretion of estuarine material behind the barrier spit running north from Maryport to Grune Point. These coastal wetlands gradually evolved into peat-forming freshwater wetlands, including fens and raised bogs that characterised the landscape of the lower parts of the Solway Basin until they were drained in the Middle Ages. The sediments along the margins of the Solway estuary contain records of past sea level changes and the raised bogs contain an important record of past environmental change.

While there is some evidence of Neolithic to iron-age settlement, including early woodland clearance, the Romans appear to be the first people to have heavily influenced the character of the area although, as the edge of the Roman Empire, this was largely limited to fortifications. From Bowness-on- Solway eastwards, Hadrian’s Wall was built. To the west, a series of milefortlets, separated by watch towers every third of a mile, were established along the coast as far as the garrison forts at Beckfoot and Maryport. These defences were serviced through a road network that forms part of the basis of the modern road network. Despite the coming and going of the Roman frontier in rural areas, it is likely that there would have been little change in agricultural and settlement practices from the late Iron Age into the early medieval period. The present settlement patterns, reflected in settlement names, were influenced by the Irish-Scandinavians who arrived in the 9th and early 10th centuries.

From the late 11th century, following the Norman conquest, the entrenchment of the Norman feudal system created a distinctively medieval barony-type landscape, with significant religious centres and associated settlements established at Holme Cultram Abbey and Lanercost Priory. The Cistercian monks at Holme Cultram had a particularly strong impact on the landscape, being responsible for draining some of the inland marshes, establishing sea dykes, clearing woodland, encouraging the establishment of farms and introducing sheep grazing in an area that had hitherto been largely wilderness.

The era of peace and expansion came to an abrupt end in 1296 when the Scots invaded and the northern part of the Solway Basin became known as the Debatable Land, suffering intermittent warfare and border raids locally known as ‘reiving’.

The decline in prosperity following the Dissolution of the Monasteries from the late 1530s, combined with the ongoing border conflicts and raids, meant that there was little change in the rural landscape until the late 17th century. From this period, and given added impetus by the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, the agricultural economy recovered with an intensification of the cattle trade through the droving of Scottish cattle across the Solway ‘waths’ (crossing points over the estuary), combined with a new phase of land reclamation and increased arable cultivation (particularly wheat) and, from the late 18th century, the introduction of rotations using turnips. Modernisation continued with the development of the railway system, which survived until the 1960s, that helped the growth of a dairying industry in the coastal plain by allowing milk to be transported to markets, but simultaneously brought to an end the centuries-old pattern of cattle droving. The railway also led to the development of Silloth both as a Victorian seaside resort and as a port.

Through the first half of the 20th century, military need once again reshaped the landscape of the Solway Basin with the construction of the huge munitions factory and armaments depot at Longtown and a suite of airfields with associated hangar buildings and aircraft parking pads at Silloth, Kirkbride, Anthorn, Great Orton and Carlisle. These sites, along with recent wind farm developments, survive as industrial sites in an otherwise rural landscape.

The modern agricultural landscape includes sheep and cattle that wander freely on the unenclosed salt marshes, regulated by ‘marsh committees’ and managed under a stinted system (restricting the number of animals) that dates back to the 16th century. Inland, the enclosed land lies mainly in holdings of 20-40 ha and is dominated by land that has been improved for agriculture by drainage, fertilising and reseeding. Arable cultivation is found on the betterdrained land, particularly over the low hills. Recent years have seen further significant changes with the shift from hay to silage production and the introduction of maize as a fodder crop. As well as the agricultural economy, the area is popular with visitors seeking the open-air recreation afforded by the area’s wildlife, coastal AONB landscape, golf courses and Hadrian’s Wall.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen improvement of the road network with the arrival of the M6 and the subsequent, and continuing, upgrading of its linking trunk road network, most recently in the areas north and east of Carlisle. Across the rural parts of the landscape, wind farms have become a common feature with installations both inside the NCA and in the surrounding upland fringes, on both sides of the Solway, and out to sea.