Whitehaven Candlestick
1850 · Ornamental Chimney of Wellington Pit · Work 326 of 1,871
The Candlestick chimney of Wellington Pit at Whitehaven, a tall slender round chimney shaped like a candlestick with a moulded cap at the top, standing on the harbour cliff beside the castellated colliery gatehouse and the crenellated red sandstone walls of the pit, any pit headgear of plain timber baulks only, the road in front of the gatehouse of bare earth and stone setts with a horse and cart, sea and harbour below the cliff.
- What it was used for
- The chimney belonged to Wellington Pit in Whitehaven, Cumberland, where coal was worked under the sea. The Shropshire Caving and Mining Club writes that it was the original chimney of the boiler house standing next to the winder on the middle level; venting came later, when a pipe was laid through the old boiler flue drift to the Candlestick to release gas at a safe height. The National Trust and Shropshire CMC give sinking in 1838 and closure in 1932, while Visit Cumbria describes twin shafts sunk between 1840 and 1845. The shape is "reputed", as Visit Cumbria expressly puts it, to be based on a candlestick in the Castle. No height figure could be found in any admissible source.
- What was new
- Technically there is nothing new about the structure; the intention is what is new. The National Trust writes that the candlestick chimney "was designed to impress", and the Shropshire Caving and Mining Club places the castellated style of the pit buildings within Sydney Smirke's medievalization of the pits in the 1850s - a colliery dressed as a castle. The barb sits in the same National Trust text: the same pit suffered a disaster in May 1910 which "claimed 136 lives". That figure is disputed. The Northern Mine Research Society narrative gives 147 dead, while the inquest verdict it reprints names 131 listed bodies plus three more found in September and October and never identified. The explosion was on 11 May 1910.