Silloth and the Solway Firth – The Real Location Behind The Marsh
Silloth, or Silloth on Solway, is a real town on the northern edge of Cumbria, where the county meets the Solway Firth. The marshes a few miles east of the town are the setting for The Marsh, book 8 in the Cumbria Crime series I write with Joel Hames.
I've been to a lot of unusual places in the name of crime fiction research.
But Silloth might be my favourite.
Where is Silloth?
Silloth sits on the northern edge of Cumbria, where the county meets the Solway Firth. The other side of the Firth is Scotland. It's a long way from the Lake District, from the fell-walking tourists, from Windermere and Grasmere and all the postcards.
It's also a long way from what I expected.
When Joel and I were choosing a location for The Marsh, we knew we wanted it to feel different. The story needed somewhere with its own distinct personality, not just another beautiful stretch of lakeside.
The Solway coast has personality in abundance.
Where does the sea go at Silloth?
I arrived at a flat overlooking the water. The tide wasn't too far out. I looked out of the window and felt entirely normal about the sea view. Nice. Coastal. Fine.
Then the tide went out.
And out.
And out.
The Solway Firth is extraordinarily shallow. When the tide drops, it doesn't just expose a beach, it removes the sea almost entirely. There's a nine-metre tidal difference (compared to two metres in Bournemouth). The next morning I woke up to find the water had been replaced by what I can only describe as a very large quantity of mud, stretching away towards Scotland.
This is extraordinary. It's also, I will admit, a little bit bleak.
But it's absolutely perfect for a crime novel.
Grune Point and Skinburness Creek
A few miles east of Silloth is Grune Point, a promontory surrounded by sea at high tide and mud at low. Behind it is a huge stretch of marshland, Skinburness Creek: a network of channels and ditches that shift and deepen depending on the tide. Long, straight sea walls mark the edge of the flood defences.
Joel walked around at low tide and found locations. I visited at high tide. We compared notes.
The result was the opening of The Marsh: a body in the marshes, found by someone who knows this landscape well enough to be there at dawn, and who has rather a lot to say about the neighbourhood.
Is Silloth worth visiting?
The northern edge of Cumbria doesn't get many visitors. Most people heading to the Lake District never make it this far north.
But for The Marsh, it felt exactly right. Somewhere slightly strange, slightly forgotten, and quite extraordinarily atmospheric when the tide is out and the mud goes on forever.
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New to the series? Start with The Harbour, or get the prequel novella The Castle free.
