Great Broughton

Great Broughton is an English village in the Cumbrian Borough of Allerdale and the civil parish of Broughton. It had an estimated population of 1,823 in 2017.

Location

Great Broughton is 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Cockermouth, just north of River Derwent and the A66 road, and 4 miles (6.4 km) from the sea at Flimby. Neighbouring villages are Camerton to the west, Broughton Moor to the north and Papcastle to the east.

Governance

The village is in the parliamentary constituency of Workington. In the December 2019 general election, the Conservative Party candidate for Workington, Mark Jenkinson, was elected the MP, reversing a 9.4 per cent Labour majority in the 2017 election. The 2019 result ejected the shadow environment secretary, Sue Hayman, by a margin of 4,136 votes. Before that, the Labour Party had won the seat in every general election since 1979. The one previous Tory success there since the Second World War had been in a 1976 by-election. Historically Great Broughton had long been a Labour-supporting area.

For local government purposes, the village is in the Broughton St Bridget electoral ward of Allerdale Borough Council, which stretches north to Bridekirk and had a population at the 2011 Census of 4,178. Broughton is part of the Dearham and Broughton Ward of Cumbria County Council.

The village has its own parish council, Broughton Parish Council, which covers Great & Little Broughton.

Amenities

The village has a local shop, holiday cottages, a primary school, three pubs and a Royal British Legion branch. There is a 15-room hotel named the Broughton Craggs at the bottom of the village on the road heading to Cockermouth. Several houses offer bed and breakfast. Great Broughton also borders the village of Little Broughton, which is made up of new housing estates and older houses. It has a pub, the Sundial.

The churchyard of the Anglican Christ Church contains a Grade II listed war memorial erected in 1921, bearing the names of 22 servicemen killed in the First World War and five servicemen and a female civilian killed in the Second.

There is a Methodist church in the village, but the congregation is no longer active. A planning application was approved in 2005 to turn the building into a dwelling.

Broughton Carnival takes place every July.

Until decommissioned in 1992, the RNAD Broughton Moor bordered the top end of the village. The Ministry of Defence police houses remain as South Terrace. The rest of the former RNAD site is still up for tender from its current owners, Cumbria County Council, which purchased it from the Ministry of Defence for a nominal sum in 2007.

Access

The village is on a bus route to Cockermouth. It once had a station on the Cleator and Workington Junction Railway, but it closed to passengers in 1908 and completely in 1921. The nearest station today is at Workington, 7 miles (11 km) away, which has services to Barrow, Whitehaven and Carlisle.

During the floods of November 2009, the main bridge over the River Derwent, giving access to the village from the A66, sustained structural damage and was closed pending a structural report from engineers. The bridge was built in 1832. It re-opened after structural work in early 2010.

Notable residents

• Jane Fearon (née Hall, 1654 or 1656–1737), a Quaker pamphleteer, was born in Great Broughton.