Port Carlisle - The village of Port Carlisle, originally known as Fishers Cross, was developed as a port in 1819 to handle goods for Carlisle using the canal link built in 1823. The Carlisle Canal was built to improve facilities for coastal craft from Liverpool, Ireland and Scottish ports already trading with the city via the Solway Firth and the River Eden. Various proposals were made, but the canal that opened in 1823 was eleven and a quarter miles long. From a wooden jetty at Fishers Cross, renamed port Carlisle, through the entrance lock and one other, the canal ran level for nearly six miles. Then followed six locks in one and a quarter miles, with a level stretch to Carlisle Basin. Packet boats and steamers ran to Liverpool from 1826. Despite plans for improvements to navigation along the estuary, and to the docks at the canal entrance, the canal succumbed to competition from the railways and suffered the ultimate fate of being drained, filled in and converted to railway use!
The canal was 11¼ mile long, and had 8 locks which were all built 18 feet wide. Sailing boats made their way by the canal from Port Carlisle to the heart of the City of Carlisle. Boats were towed to the City enabling Carlisle to be reached within a day by sea from Liverpool. Barges collected the grain and produce destined for Carlisle's biscuit and feed mills. The canal built specially for this purpose ended in the canal basin behind the present Carrs (McVities) biscuit factory in Carlisle. The canal was later replaced by the railway, which brought many Scandinavian emigrants through Carlisle on their way to the USA.
Drumburgh - Located on a small drumlin on the edge of Burgh Marsh overlooking the wide mud-flats of the Eden and Esk estuaries, the Wall fort at Drumburgh lies about 1½ miles north of the Stanegate, half way between the Trajanic fort at Kirkbride and the Hadrianic fort at Burgh-by-Sands. The only visible Roman remains in the vicinity of Drumburgh are a couple of short stretches of the vallum, visible in the fields north-east of The Cottage Camp Site, mid-way between Drumburgh and Bowness. Drumburgh Moss is one of the last remaining peat bogs on the Solway plain. Whilst peat bogs, or raised mires, used to be extensive in Cumbria, less than 4,700 hectares of this habitat type remain today. Drumburgh accounts for roughly 2% of this. Mire habitats make up the bulk of the reserve but wet woodland and grassland is also present. The reserve was purchased by Cumbria Wildlife Trust in 1981.