Article from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrow-in-Furness#History However, Barrow itself was a hamlet in the parish of Dalton-in-Furness on the Furness peninsula reliant on the land and sea for survival. Small quantities of iron and ore were exported from jetties which were constructed into the channel separating the then-village and Walney Island. Amongst the oldest buildings in Barrow, are several cottages and farm houses in Newbarns (now a ward of the town) which date back to the early 1600s. Even as late as 1843 there were still only 32 dwellings including two pubs. In 1839 Henry Schneider arrived as a young speculator and dealer in iron, and he finally discovered large deposits of haematite in 1850. He and other investors founded the Furness Railway, the first section of which opened in 1846 to transport the ore from the slate quarries at Kirkby-in-Furness and haematite mines at Lindal-in-Furness to a deep water harbour near Roa Island. The docks built between 1867 and 1881 in the more sheltered channel between the mainland and Barrow Island replaced the port at Roa Island. The increasing quantities of iron ore mined in Furness were then brought to Barrow to be transported by sea. The investors in the burgeoning mining and railway industries decided greater profits could be made by smelting the iron ore into steel, and then exporting the finished product. Schneider and James Ramsden, the railway's general manager, erected blast furnaces at Barrow that by 1876 formed the largest steelworks in the world at the time. Its success was a result of the availability of local iron ore, coal from the Cumberland mines and easy rail and sea transport. The Furness Railway, who counted local aristocrats The Duke of Devonshire and the Duke of Buccleugh as investors, kick-started the Industrial Revolution on the peninsula. The railway brought mined ore to the town, where the steelworks produced large quantities of steel. It was used for shipbuilding or derived products such as rails were exported from the newly built docks. This caused Barrow's population, originally 700 in 1851, to reach 10,000 by 1864 and 47,000 by 1881, forty years after the railway was built. Barrow Shipbuilding Works circa 1890The sheltered straight between Barrow and Walney Island was an ideal location for the shipyard. The first ship to be built was the 'Jane Roper', launched in 1852; the first steamship, a 3,000 ton liner named Duke of Devonshire, in 1873. Shipbuilding activity increased, and on 18 February 1871 the Barrow Shipbuilding Company was incorporated. Barrow's relative isolation from the United Kingdom's industrial heartlands meant the newly formed company included several capabilities that would usually be subcontracted to other establishments. In particular, a large engineering works was constructed including a foundry and pattern shop, a forge, and an engine shop. In addition, the shipyard had a joiners' shop, a boat-building shed and a sailmaking and rigging loft. During these boom years, Ramsden proposed building a planned town to accommodate the large workforce which had arrived. There are few planned towns in the United Kingdom, and Barrow is one of the oldest. Its centre contains a grid of well-built terraced houses, with long tree-lined roads leading away from central squares. Ramsden later became the first mayor of Barrow, which was given municipal borough status in 1867, and later county borough status in 1889. The imposing red sandstone Town Hall, designed by W.H. Lynn, was built in a neo-gothic style in 1887. Prior to this, the borough council had met at the railway headquarters, the railway company's control of industry extended to the administration of the town itself. The Barrow Shipbuilding Company was taken over by the Sheffield steel firm of Vickers in 1897, by which time the shipyard had surpassed the railway and steelworks as the largest employer and landowner in Barrow. The company constructed Vickerstown, modelled on George Cadbury's Bournville, on the adjacent Walney Island in the early twentieth century to house its employees. It also commissioned Sir Edwin Lutyens to design Abbey House as a guest house and residence for its managing director at the time, Commander Craven. By the 1890s the shipyard was heavily engaged in the construction of warships for the Royal Navy and also for export. The Navy's first submarine, Holland 1, was built in 1901, and by 1914 the UK had the most advanced submarine fleet in the world, with 94% of it constructed by Vickers. Vickers was also famous for the construction of airships (airship hangar) during the early 1900s. Well-known ships built in Barrow include the Mikasa, Japanese flagship during the Russo-Japanese War, the liner SS Oriana and the aircraft carriers HMS Invincible and HMAS Melbourne. During World War II Barrow was a target for the German airforce, the Luftwaffe, looking to disable the town's shipbuilding capabilities (see Barrow Blitz). The town suffered the most in a short period between April and May 1941. During the war, a local housewife, Nella Last was selected to write a diary of her everyday experiences on the home front for the Mass-Observation project. Her memoirs were later adapted for television. The difficulty in targeting bombs meant that the shipyards and steelworks were often missed, at the expense of the residential areas. Ultimately, 83 people were killed and 11,000 houses in the area were left damaged. To escape the heaviest bombardments, many people in the central areas left the town to sleep in hedgerows with some being permanently evacuated. Barrow's industry continued to supply the war effort, with Winston Churchill visiting the town on one occasion to launch the aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable. The end of the war saw the beginning of a long decline of ore mining and steel-making as a result of overseas competition and dwindling resources. The Barrow ironworks closed in 1963,[20] three years after the last Furness mine shut. The then small steelworks followed suit in 1983[21] leaving Barrow's shipyard as the town's principal industry. From the 1960s onwards it concentrated its efforts in submarine manufacture, and the UK's first nuclear-powered submarine, HMS Dreadnought was constructed in 1960. HMS Resolution, the Swiftsure-class, Trafalgar-class and Vanguard-class submarines all followed. The end of the Cold War in 1991 marked a reduction in the demand for military ships and submarines, and the town entered a period of decline. The shipyard's dependency on military contracts at the expense of civilian and commercial engineering and shipbuilding meant it was particularly hard hit as government defence spending was reduced dramatically. As a result, the workforce shrank from 14,500 in 1990 to 5,800 in February 1995, with overall unemployment in the town over that period rising from 4.6% to 10%. The rejection by the VSEL management of detailed plans for Barrow's industrial renewal in the mid-to-late 1980s remains a point of contention. This has led to renewed academic attention in recent years to the possibilities of converting military-industrial production in declining shipbuilding areas to those in the offshore renewable energy sector. In August 2002 Barrow suffered the UK's worst ever outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease. There were 172 people reported to have caught the disease, of which seven ultimately died. This made it the 4th worst outbreak in the world in terms of number of cases and 6th worst in terms of deaths (see list of Legionnaires' disease outbreaks). The source of the virus was later found to be from steam coming out of a badly maintained air conditioning unit. The system was located in the council-run arts centre, with the vent emitting the disease over a busy alleyway in the town centre. The coroner for Furness and South Cumbria criticised the council for its failings with regard to health and safety at the conclusion of an inquest into the seven deaths. In 2006, council employee Gillian Beckingham and employer Barrow Borough Council were cleared of seven charges of manslaughter, but both admitted breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act. Beckingham, the council senior architect ultimately responsible for health and safety at the centre, was fined £15,000 and the authority £125,000. The borough council was the first public body in the country to have faced corporate manslaughter charges. |
