Askam and Ireleth is a civil parish in the county of Cumbria, in North West England. It originally consisted of two separate coastal villages with different origins and histories which, in recent times, have merged together to become one continuous settlement.
Ireleth has its origins as a mediaeval farming village clustered on the hillside overlooking the flat sands of the Duddon Estuary. Askam was established following the discovery of large quantities of iron ore near the village in the middle of the 18th century. The pair originally fell within the boundaries of the Hundred of Lonsdale 'north of the sands' in the historic county of Lancashire, but following local government reforms in 1974 became part of the county of Cumbria, along with the rest of Furness.
The nearby River Duddon estuary and surrounding countryside have made the area well known for its wildlife, while the villages' exposed position on the eastern bank facing the Irish Sea have encouraged the establishment of wind energy generation, amid local controversy.
Around 1790 Dalton seems to have considered taking up law or medicine, but his projects were not met with encouragement from his relatives, and he remained at Kendal until, in the spring of 1793, moving to Manchester. Mainly through John Gough, a blind philosopher to whom he owed much of his scientific knowledge, Dalton was appointed teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy at the Manchester Academy. He remained in that position until the college's relocation to York in 1803, when he became a public and private teacher of mathematics and chemistry.
Image 5Former head office of the Girobank in Bootle; it closed in 2003; it was taken over by Alliance & Leicester in 1990; it was established in Bootle in the late 1960s with help from Hugh Baird; it was the first financial institution in Europe to be fully computerised from the start (from North West England)
Image 8A Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MR2 (HS 801), built at Woodford (former Avro) and designed in Manchester in the mid-1960s, with XV148 (former Comet 4C) making its first flight on 23 May 1967, flying from Chester (Broughton, which had built many de Havilland fighter jet aircraft) to Woodford; 49 Nimrods were made for the RAF, entering service with 201 Sqn on 6 November 1970, serving until March 2010 with 38 Sqn (from North West England)
Image 10Kelloggs in Manchester, looking north along the A5181 next to GMFRS's Stretford Area Command HQ; the site is the largest producer of cereals in Europe (from North West England)
Image 30Old meets new at the Stockport Viaduct; designed by George W. Buck, it is the largest free-standing brick structure in the UK, built in 1840 when it was the largest viaduct in the world; it features in many L. S. Lowry paintings. (from North West England)
Image 37Vauxhall's plant in Ellesmere Port exports 88% of its cars, although many of the components are imported, and has made over 5 million since 1962, also making the Vectra from 1995 to 2008; it makes 686 a day (two a minute, 100,000 a year) and the latest model was designed by Mark Adams and Malcolm Ward. Three million Astras have been sold in the UK since 1979, and featured on the Top Gear test track until 2015; the production is split with the Opel Manufacturing Poland site at Gliwice in southern Poland; the Corsa is made at Opel Zaragoza in north-east Spain, with 3-door versions at Opel Eisenach; the Insignia is made at Opel Rüsselsheim (from North West England)
Image 44Ineos ChlorVinyls at Runcorn in 2006; the UK chemicals industry is worth £57bn, with 180,000 people in around 3,000 companies (from North West England)