Millom

Millom, a market town in the Egremont parliamentary division of Cumberland, England, in the extreme south-west of the county, on the Furness railway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 10,426. The church of Holy Trinity, Early Norman and Decorated in date, is chiefly of interest for its curious pillars, alternately round and octagonal, and for a window in the north aisle, which has five lights, and is known, on account of its unique shape, as the "fish-window." A massive roodstone stands in the churchyard. Millom Castle, dating from shortly after the Conquest, was fortified in the 14th century by Sir John Huddlestone, whose descendants held it until 1774. For centuries, they exercised the power of life and death; a stone stands where the gallows were formerly erected, and indicates that here they exercised jur y regalia. Though strongly built, the castle was never of great size, and it has been largely dismantled. A fine carved staircase, however, still exists in the main chapel. In 1648 the Parliamentary forces besieged Millom Castle, and early in the 19th century its park was converted into farmland. In the neighbourhood of Millom there are blast furnaces and highly productive mines of red haematite ore. The deposit lies partly under the foreshore of the river Duddon, and a company has expended upwards of 120,000 upon a sea-wall and embankment to protect the mine from the sea.