Background
This is an account of an insignificant port on the Lancashire coast: Glasson Dock, situated where the waters of the River Lune empty into Morecambe Bay. Nationally unimportant though the port was, the mighty London & North Western Railway Company (the ‘Premier Line’) considered it important enough to connect Glasson Dock by a line of rail to the county town of Lancaster. The line was just over five A long and represented a tiny portion of Richard Moon’s empire in 1883.
Before Glasson Dock became a port, it was known by the name of Old Glasson, a simple settlement of farmers and fishermen. Nearby Lancaster had long been a river port but the Lune was a fickle river, making navigation difficult and restricting the size of vessels. The Lancaster Port Commissioners determined to make Old Glasson an outport, and land was purchased for this purpose in 1780. By 1872 a stone pier had been constructed, though, unfortunately, with a defective west wall.
Remedies to the defective pier were not cheap. The engineer Thomas Morris produced plans in 1783 to rebuild the bulging west wall, in addition to the construction of a second pier extending from the northern side of the river, with gates situated between the two. The approximate cost was £2,700, and completion was effected in March 1787. Old Glasson had by this developed into an outport of Lancaster, with dockside facilities.
The Lancaster Canal (1792) already existed when John Rennie’s plan for a branch canal gained Royal Assent in May 1793. Work on the 2½-mile branch canal was not completed until December 1825. As a measure of its use in 1830, some 10,000 tons of freight were said to have passed along it, destined for Lancaster or Preston. The branch canal prompted the building of properties within the bounds of the port.
When the new Glasson Dock opened there were few residences or dockside buildings. There were three inns, ‘The Grapes’, the ‘Old Ship House’ and ‘The Caribou’: these three represented places in which to seek accommodation and in which to obtain alcoholic drink. In Andrew White sums up the development of the port: “It was the link to the Lancaster Canal, built in 1826
