There used to be a saying around the West Cumbrian coast: 'Workington rails held the world together.' It was the kind of phrase a town earns by exporting steel rails to every corner of the British Empire, and Workington had earned it. The world's first large-scale steelworks opened in the Moss Bay area of town because Cumbria's iron-ore field — to the south of Workington — produced phosphorus-free haematite, which was, for the first quarter-century of the Bessemer process, the only kind of ore that could make mild steel in volume. With cheap local coal feeding the furnaces and the docks loading rails outbound, a small Cumberland port became an industrial pillar.
The place name comes from an Anglo-Saxon charter of 946: Wurcingtun, the settlement of Weorc or Wirc's people. Before the Saxons came the Vikings — a Viking sword turned up at Northside, suggesting a settlement by the river mouth — and before the Vikings, the Romans built forts and watchtowers along this stretch of Cumbrian coast between 79 and 122 CE to guard against Scoti raiders from Ireland and Caledonii tribes from what is now Scotland. St Michael's Church on the south bank of the Derwent dates parts of itself back to the 12th century. Workington Hall went up in the mid-14th century as a peel tower, then grew into the seat of the local lord of the manor, and now stands ruined above the town. The bones of a much older town lie scattered under the housing estates.
The Industrial Revolution turned a small port into an iron and steel centre. Henry Bessemer's process, patented in 1856, made mass-produced mild steel possible — but for its first twenty-five years it required phosphorus-free haematite, and Cumbria was the world's premier source. Moss Bay Steelworks opened, employing thousands. Workington rails went out to railroads on six continents. Distington Engineering Company, on a site called Chapel Bank, designed continuous-casting machines for British Steel and at one point housed six of the seven electric arc furnaces in town. During the Second World War, an electric steel furnace producing aircraft ball-bearing steel was moved here from Norway to keep it out of Axis hands. The Bessemer converter at Moss Bay kept turning until July 1974. The steelworks itself closed in 1982. Rail welding continued at the plant until 2008, finishing rails rolled at Corus's French mill at Hayange, because the Scunthorpe site could not initially match Workington's quality.
After coal and steel, West Cumbria became one of the country's most quoted unemployment blackspots. The town pivoted into chemicals, cardboard, electronics recycling, and dock work, and many residents now commute north-west to the nuclear industry around Sellafield. Eddie Stobart, the haulage company, bought the former British Leyland bus plant at Lillyhall in 1995 — a factory that once built Leyland National buses styled by Italian designer Giovanni Michelotti, plus the bodyshells for British Rail's Pacer trains. By 1993 the bus plant was closed; by the late 1990s it was a warehouse. In 2019 a London think-tank coined the term 'Workington man' to describe a particular kind of voter the national parties wanted to reach. The town's name briefly became shorthand for political demography. The actual Workington carried on quietly, as it has through every previous transformation.
Bill Shankly managed Workington A.F.C. early in his career — one of the first teams the future Liverpool legend ran. The club had been founded in 1888 by 'Dronnies,' a group of steelworkers who had migrated to Workington from Dronfield in Derbyshire. Workington A.F.C. was a Football League side until Wimbledon F.C. replaced it in 1977. Workington Town plays rugby league at Derwent Park, and the town's professional speedway team — the Workington Comets — returned to league racing in 2023 at Northside Speedway. Every year, the streets host Uppies and Downies, a traditional mob-football game with medieval roots that has raised over £75,000 for local charities since 2001. The ball is made from four pieces of cow leather, weighs about a pound, and only three are produced each year. Each one is dated. The game survives because the town will not let it stop.
Workington sits astride the River Derwent on the West Cumbrian coastal plain, with the Solway Firth and the Irish Sea to the west and the Lake District fells rising to the east. The river that powered the docks for two centuries also flooded the town in November 2009, damaging or destroying several bridges and prompting the temporary opening of Workington North station so people could cross the river by train. A free service to Maryport ran while the bridges were repaired. The town's post-industrial regeneration has continued in fits and starts: the £50 million Washington Square shopping centre opened in 2006 and won a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors award the next year. The Lookout Clock and the Coastline sculpture by Simon Hitchens decorate the town centre. Above it all, the Derwent runs down to the docks that built the place — slower now, less commercial, but still the reason there is a town here at all.
Workington lies at 54.64N, 3.55W at the mouth of the River Derwent on Cumbria's west coast, roughly 24 nm south-west of Carlisle. From the air, the river splits the town: north of the Derwent, Seaton and Northside; south, the historic core, Moss Bay, and the docks at Prince of Wales Dock. The breakwaters and Workington Lifeboat Station mark the harbour mouth. Cumbrian Coast Line tracks run through town. The Lake District fells rise visibly to the east; the Solway Firth opens north-west. Nearest field is Carlisle Lake District (EGNC) some 24 nm north-east. Westerly winds funnel along the coast between the Cumbrian fells and the Isle of Man.