History of Workington established on the north bank of the mouth of the River Derwent, near present-day Siddick Pond and Northside. Another fort or watchtower would have been on How Michael to the south side of the river, near present-day Chapel Bank. In 122, the Romans begin building Hadrian's Wall from Bowness on the Solway Firth to Wallsend on the North Sea. The discovery of a Roman fort around the parish church in Moresby to the south, and fortifications to the north at Risehow (Flimby), Maryport and Crosscannonby support the argument that the coastal wall extended down the whole Solway coast and formed
Solway Firth by fire in 1960. On 9 March 1876 a French 79 ton Lugger called the St. Pierre was stranded and finally declared lost on Blackshaw Bank, an ill-defined feature which extends for a considerable distance on both sides of the channel of the River Nith. Between 1869 and 1921, the estuary was crossed by the Solway Junction Railway on a 1780 m (5850 ft) iron viaduct (Edgar and Sinton, 1990). The line was built to carry iron ore from the Whitehaven area to Lanarkshire and was financed and operated by the Caledonian Railway of Scotland. The railway was not a