Millom, silly 'un (Millom in General)

Member Name: iamasadlittleboy

Product:	Millom in General
Date:	04/08/09 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I know the area

Disadvantages: Sadly its a crap thing to know

Having lived nearly all my life in Cumbria I've spent most my time in the little towns that no ones ever heard of, places like Kirkby-In-Furness, Greenroad, Thwaites, Haverigg, Silecroft and Millom.
Whilst really young, I used to pretty much live with my grandparents, and as Millom was the "local" town I'd often be taken there for the shopping with my grandma. Living in the sticks we had sheep...or ...grass so Millom which was about 5 minutes down the road was a whole new world, with shops, people and cars.

So what is Millom?
Millom is a town in Cumbria, contained in the Copeland borough and on the edge of the Duddon Estuary. The town has a population of around 10,000 mainly of a working class background, and neighbours the smaller villages of, Thwaites, Greenroad, Haverigg, Kirksanton, Silecroft and Bootle, being almost like a hub for many of those settlements and the people from them.

The town features the biggest station between Sellafield and Barrow-in-Furness, which leads to most of the population working at either the nuclear power plant in Sellafield (formerly Windscale) or at the BAE facility in Barrow-in-Furness. The line is supported by the Cumbrian Coast Line rail route and is overseen by Northern Rail, sadly however the link is relatively poor as it operates relatively little numbers of trains. In fact to go north the customer needs to get a train before 18:00, southbound is hardly better. Worst yet there is no service at all on a Sunday. Most of the service that is provided at peak rate is covered by a single carriage between Lancaster and Carlisle, a problem Northern Rail should swiftly try to remedy.

As well as the station the town provides much of the local education through a number of schools ranging from the nursery to the secondary school. Having not been to the nursery or any of the primary schools I can't comment on any of them though many of the students do continue to go to the secondary school which also runs as the Sixth Form college.
Having gone there I can say it's a pretty averagely run school, that for many years failed to provide to the needs of it's students, regularly the teaching standard was poor, and seemed to be done by those who couldn't be bothered. Without naming names, I'd say the business studies teacher I had for much of the time I was there was as reliable as an old SAAB; the head of IT for much the time I was their had a Napoleon complex and no sense of common decency, no manners and was regularly a thorn in the side of the students education; The English department often seemed aimless with the teaching aims changed completely from class to class, regularly concerning watching videos instead of anything else; The art department was regularly a joke with the technology one close behind, the teachers turning a blind eye to people chasing each other around with scissors.
Despite this the Maths, Science, History, Geography and RE we're surprisingly well run with heads of the departments that knew what they were doing. Often these were the more old skool (excuse the pun) of teachers who ran the departments and had been grounded in proper teaching methods, that didn't include "Not turning up for lessons" (a trick usually done by students I know).
As you can tell I didn't really enjoy my time there, often feeling ignored by the teaching staff and bullied throughout much of my time there.
Though since leaving a lot of redevelopment has been put into the school creating an all surface football pitch and a network centre for the town's population. Sadly the teaching standard doesn't seem to have improved, with a rather enlarged feeling of "If your face doesn't fit" coming into the schooling environment.

Much of the industry originally formed around the iron works in the town, though this is long gone, with the remnants of the slag banks still in the town. The town has moved on into what could well be called an auxiliary town providing workers for the aforementioned BAE systems and Sellafield, though for internal jobs the positions are limited. The major local employer is the prison based in Haverigg, which is a C-class men's prison dealing mainly with the prisoners on the way back to society. With a handful of locally run shops such as Tommy Tools (a tool shop) alongside the more mainstream of national stores like Co-op and Somerfield (previously the store was a Safeways then temporarily a Morrison's). The basis for the commercial area is pretty much based around 2 streets after that the residential area makes up the mass of the town. The industrial area is on the far side of the town and is mainly based around the CGP book company providing nationally used texts books for schools.

In recent years the town has seen a downscaling of government funding, most notably in the closing of the local job centre. This has resulted in those requiring to go, to travel the 30 or so miles to Barrow-in-Furness a rather excessive measure in the current economic climate where the job centre should be on the local peoples doorstep. Though opposite the former job centre is the local palladium, which having not been in I can't make much of a comment on though it regularly hosts plays by local cast members. Near that is the first of the sporting venues, the cricket ground which host Millom CC home games who play in the première division of the North Lancs and Cumbria cricket league.
The town also host's a Rugby League team (with a Rugby Union team under the Millom name who play in Haverigg). Millom RLFC is one of the oldest amateur rugby teams in the world having be founded in the 1870's. The current team plays in theNational Conference League Division 1 and has seen over 50 former players playing at national level.
The Rugby Union team play in the more local Cumbrian league.
As well as the Millom Cricket club, local rivals Haverigg are based just a 5 minute walk from the Millom CC ground leading to regular local derby's often played in high spirits and often rather tense games.

Although the town has produced few people of note, Jimmy Settle (former England football player) was born there, as was Normal Nicholson, who had the schools library named after him when it opened (much after his death). The upcoming writer Scott Graveson was also educated there (oh come on I can publicise myself right?)

In the foreseeable future it is unlikely the town will change dramatically, though the rumour of a Nuclear power plant being built in Kirksanton that could well see the town again grow (though it is more likely that the surrounding area will grow and Millom could well become the outskirts of a bigger settlement). If this goes through then hopefully the entire area will grow and links to the rest of the country will be established, with the effective need for transport. Sadly the town currently has no links to the wider world and with no internal growth the town seems to be going nowhere.

Overall the town is an ageing and shrinking town that seems to be going nowhere quickly and sadly with the better teachers leaving due to age what was the good part of the education system seems to be leaving. The towns lack of new blood will swiftly be a problem as will the high level of unemployment. Hopefully a change in the town will be forth coming, because if it's not it really could be "a place of despair".

Summary: Dump...and this time locals can't edit the article like they did when i wrote a piece on wikipedia