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Wigton is a market town in the Cumberland district of Cumbria, England. It lies just outside the Lake District. Wigton is at the centre of the Solway Plain, between the Caldbeck Fells and the Solway coast. It is served by Wigton railway station on the Cumbrian Coast Line, and the A596 road to Workington. The town of Silloth-on-Solway lies to the west, beyond Abbeytown.
The Romans had a cavalry station, Maglona, known locally as Old Carlisle, just to the south of the town with a large vicus (civilian settlement) associated with it. The fort was approximately half-way between Carlisle and the Roman settlement of Derventio (now known as Papcastle), linked by the Roman road that is now the A595. From this location they could react to incursions from north of Hadrian's Wall, using the Roman road to sally east or west before traversing northward across the countryside.
In the period of late antiquity after Roman rule, Wigton was within the native British kingdom of Rheged. Probably of Anglian origin, Wigton was an established settlement in the Kingdom of Northumbria long before the Normans arrived in the area. Wigton and most of then Cumberland were a part of Scotland in 1086 when the Domesday Book was written for William I, so are not included in it.
The Norman invaders created the County of Carlisle (later called Cumberland), building Carlisle Castle in Carlisle in 1092 for its administrative centre. Odard de Logis became William II's Sheriff of Carlisle and was made Baron of Wigton about 1100 ADsource: Testa de Nevill 1212 quoted in Higham p5 when it became a Norman barony. Wigton gained its market charter in 1262.source: Quo warranto Inquest c1292 quoted by Higham p6 The de Logis barons changed their surname to de Wigton around 1208 but the male line of the family died out in 1348, so the manor passed to the Barony of Cockermouth. Although the town's layout is generally Anglian or medieval, its architecture is mainly in the 18th-century Georgian style which remains largely intact.
St Mary's Church dates from 1788, but there was a church on this site from the 12th century.
The population in 1841 was 4,738.
In the middle of Wigton's market place is the George Moore Memorial Fountain built in 1872; of particular interest are the four bronzes around the fountain, the work of the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner. These depict the "four acts of mercy".
A private secondary school, the Wigton School (also called the Friends' School or Brookfield) was founded to the north of the town in 1815 with an initial enrolment of eight pupils. After reaching a maximum enrolment of 250 or so in the 1970s and 1980s, the school closed, following sustained drop-off in student numbers and, finally, damage by fire.
The appearance of the church owes much to the vision of Rev John Ford (father of the broadcaster Anna Ford) in the 1950s, when he had gravestones laid flat and the interior painted in the present colours. Highmoor Bell tower, built during the Industrial Revolution and completed in 1887, played tunes three times daily.
The town has its own secondary school, called The Nelson Thomlinson School, which is a comprehensive with close links to the Innovia factory.
In 2004 the town was the first settlement in the United Kingdom to enforce a curfew on teenagers under the age of 16. It was in place for two weeks, and its aim was to reduce the amount of vandalism in the town centre. It followed nightly vandalism campaigns, which included smashed shop fronts, as well as intimidation of elderly members of the community. The curfew attracted national attention, with the local secondary school receiving visits from agencies such as Sky News. It had some effect, with less vandalism taking place ever since.
A Wigton local government district was created in 1875, covering parts of the Wigton and Woodside civil parishes, administered by an elected local board. The civil parishes of Wigton and Woodside were united into a short-lived parish called Wigton cum Woodside in 1887. Local government districts were reconstituted as urban districts under the Local Government Act 1894. The 1894 Act also directed that civil parishes could no longer straddle district boundaries, and so the Wigton cum Woodside parish was split into a Wigton parish matching the urban district and a Woodside parish which covered the remainder outside the urban district. Wigton Urban District was abolished in 1934, with the parish being reclassified as a rural parish within the Wigton Rural District and given a parish council.
Wigton Rural District was abolished in 1974, becoming part of the borough of Allerdale in the new county of Cumbria. Allerdale was in turn abolished in 2023 when the new Cumberland Council was created, also taking over the functions of the abolished Cumbria County Council in the area.
Wigton is the headquarters of the British National Party.
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