THE "REBUILDING" OF
PARTON PIER, 1695-8
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This is not a transcript or, strictly speaking, an abstract of original documents. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the Lowther family who controlled and developed Whitehaven actually preferred to live most of the time in London, where they could influence the powerful and make deals. They employed agents and land managers to look after their estates, who would keep them updated with letters every few days. Most of these letters still survive, and the correspondence between 1693 and 1698 has been transcribed and published, as "The correspondence of Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven 1693-1698", edited by D.R. Hainsworth (1983). There are many references to Parton scattered among these letters, as the famous pier was being developed at this time. What I have done to help myself see the flow of events is put all the Parton extracts together, then read through them and turn them into a story in my own words. It's a story without an ending, of course, because 1698 is an arbitrary date to stop, but I hope you'll agree that it is still fascinating.
First though, a word of caution. Another researcher who has extracted information from the letters over a much longer period and published several books and articles about the Lowthers, Prof. J.V. Beckett, has pointed out the main pitfalls of using them as historical evidence; and I shall mention just two that apply particularly to what follows. First, when the Lowthers were in Whitehaven, there was no need to communicate with their local staff by letter, so there are gaps during which some important decisions probably got made. Second, although they had a very good intelligence network, everybody knew that they had a very good intelligence network, so people would sometimes perform misleading actions in order to divert them from what was really going on!