Beckfoot
| Beckfoot | |
|---|---|
 North end of Beckfoot. |
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 Beckfoot
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| Beckfoot shown within Cumbria | |
| OS grid reference | NY0949 |
| Civil parish | |
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | WIGTON |
| Postcode district | CA7 |
| Dialling code | 016973 |
| Police | Cumbria |
| Fire | Cumbria |
| Ambulance | North West |
| EU Parliament | North West England |
| UK Parliament | |
Not to be confused with Beck Foot, near Grayrigg, Beckfoot railway station, near Ravenglass, or Beckfoot School in West Yorkshire.
Beckfoot is a hamlet in the civil parish of Holme St Cuthbert in Cumbria, England. It is located on the B5300 coast road, three miles south of Silloth-on-Solway and two miles north of the village of Mawbray. The county town of Carlisle is twenty-five miles away to the east.
The name "Beckfoot" is derived from the Old Norse bekkr-futr, meaning "the mouth of a stream".Beck is a local word in Cumbrian dialect for a stream. Such a beck empties into the Solway Firth at the southern end of the hamlet, and it is this watercourse which gives the settlement its name. There are two known recorded variant spellings: Beck and Beckfoote.
The area around Beckfoot was fortified during Roman times, as a series of milefortlets were constructed to guard the coast beyond the western end of Hadrian's Wall. The remains of milefortlets 14 and 15 are located nearby. In 2010 a broken pottery vessel containing 308 Roman coins was discovered by a local archaeologist using a metal detector.
During the 14th century, a castle was built at Wolsty, approximately one-and-a-half miles to the north, to guard the vulnerable Holmcultram Abbey at Abbeytown from raids across the Solway Firth. The castle had been demolished by the year 1700, and not much remains today, but an archaeological survey was carried out in July 2013.
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Wikipedia