David Wiseman, who was a minister in Workington in the mid-1960s, has shared some of his memories of the town with us.

I am writing this in 2016, exactly 50 years since I first became a minister at the Congregational Church in Workington.

Since then, my wife and I have had ministries in Poulton le Fylde, Wigan, Bournemouth and Rochdale.

The football that I helped to start in this town in 1966 grew to be over 500 children in my Poulton club, over 750 in my Wigan club and over 1,500 children in Bournemouth.

Altogether over 25,000 children have spent their childhood and youth kicking balls in clubs and leagues I have organised, on hundreds of various pitches, beginning at Curwen Park in 1966.

Writing in the local newspaper has grown over the years to having a dozen books published. But it all first began in Workington.

From travelling around churches in Cumberland, I have travelled the world, preaching everywhere from San Francisco to Sydney.

And from being mayor’s chaplain in Workington in 1967, I found myself conducting prayers for John Major’s government at the annual Conservative conference in Bournemouth in the 1990s.

All in all, a lot of water has flowed underneath the bridge since those hard days in the 1960s when the mines had closed, the steelworks was about to close and you could literally smell the unemployment on the streets in Workington.

We were a very close-knit community in Workington in the 1960s and the churches played a great part in society.

Dozens of children belonged to our Congregational Church, and as I write 50 years later, their names and faces come flooding back – Jeanette Hodgson, Ann Forsyth, Angela Furness, the three Edgar sisters, David and Margaret Little, David and Jimmy Askew, Howard and Deborah Lymer, and so many more.

Teenagers were not as rare in the church as they may be now and we had Joan and Isobel Williams, Andy Langford, Philip Rollins, Brian and Elizabeth Cross, Martin and Ann Uhrig, Peter and Christine Sloan, Denise, Glennis and Russell Norman and Stella Scarrott.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but I was learning my apprenticeship in Workington for what was to follow in later years.

So to those who were part of it all and to those who put up with a very naive minister for four years, thank you.

And to anyone else who can remember those distant days of the 1960s, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Please email me at davidwiseman1@sky.com

Here are my recollections of my time in the town.....

Fifty years ago, in July 1966, my wife Margaret and I came to live in Worklngton.

We had been married a fortnight and after five years in a theological college, I was due to be ordained at the Workington Congregational Church on South William Street.

My connections with Workington were few and my knowledge of the town was sparse.

I had for a summer, in 1962, been the student minister of Bootle Congregational Church, whose members will vaguely recall my ministry in the village with amusement.

At Workington, I was following the Rev Bernard Spong who had left the church to become a missionary in South Africa some three years before.

Our home in Workington was on Corporation Road, and everything was new to us both - new wife, new husband, new home, new job, new town.

My service of ordination was on Saturday, July 23 1966 at the church.

The week before, England had won the World Cup.

We were watching the game on our new TV, when a knock came to the door.

Just as Kenneth Wolstenholme was saying ”They think it’s all over. It is......” at the door stood Canon Attwell, the six feet-plus rector of St Michael’s. "Just called to welcome you to the town. Dashed quiet in town today, is something on?”

Neither Margaret nor I could drive, so we went everywhere by bus (This was 1966 folks!).

We soon discovered how conservative Workington was in everything but politics.

The church had a constitution which said that all meetings must be over by 9pm and they were!

Curiously in 1966, there was an influx of younger, newer ministers who arrived in town, several young curates like Michael Buck and Crawford Murray at St Michael’s, a young Baptist, Guy Finnie, a young Salvation Army officer, Colin McDonald, a Methodist, Edward Watson, and myself.

The older ministers in Workington must have been fascinated by our somewhat different approaches to the church.

I was practically adopted by the priests at Our Lady and St Michael's fathers D’Arcy, Gregory, MacAulley and company and Canon Attwell became a great and trusted friend.

I was the only West Cumberland Congregational minister between Whitehaven and Carlisle, so I often found myself representing our denomination on committees with the Anglican Bishop of Carlisle and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Lancaster.

I was only 26 and three months into the ministry!

Fortunately, we had a fine fraternal of Christian ministers in town amongst the 29 churches- Congregational, Presbyterian (the Rev Ted Geldard), St John’s (the Rev Riley Eckersley), St Gregory’s (Father Jack Harrison), St Mary’s Westfield (the Rev Alan Park), Trinity Methodists (the Rev John Brocklehurst), Seaman’s Bethel (Jim Jamieson), etc, etc.

We were to do a lot together and the late 1960s saw a real wind of change breezing through the churches in Workington.

They were great and challenging times and I’ll tell you a bit more next week...