Special buildings

The Coliseum Cinema was on Abbey Road, Barrow, at the corner of Rawlinson Street. Opened in September 1914, it was built on the site of the earlier wooden theatre, the Hippodrome, which had met its inevitable fate in a fire. The Abbey Road façade, which housed four small shops and the impressive curved corner, surmounted by a copper dome, was covered in white tiles; those above the canopied entrance incorporated ornate carvings. The photograph seems to have been taken soon after opening; the cinema is showing the Mary Fuller film ‘Two Little Britons’ which was released in October 1914 and shown at the Coliseum as part of its continuous programme from 6:30pm to 10:30pm. For a number of years the Sankeys ran one of the shops attached to the Coliseum Buildings; the furthest left (nearest the railway line), The cinema continued in use until 1964, and then stood empty; becoming increasingly derelict until demolition took place in 1977. What remains of the site is a landscaped area.

Note: in the photograph two conversations are taking place, alongside the Abbey Road thoroughfare, in the middle of the junction with Holker Street! Other pedestrians pick their way among the horse muck to cross the roads.

In the 1870s, as Barrow’s population rapidly expanded, there was a crippling shortage of housing. Many terraced homes were hastily built in town with a basic water supply and an outside toilet. The most desperate conditions, though, were experienced by those living in the huts on Barrow Island - mainly migrant workers who came to build houses and the docks. This photograph, of a photograph, held in the Sankey collection, but taken before their time, shows six children outside a row of single storey, two room brick cottages. The road, unfinished, is full of stones and three of the children are not wearing shoes.

There is graffiti on the end wall – a cartoon of a person with a big nose, wearing a hat (possibly an old-fashioned navy officer’s hat), along with the word ‘We’. It was not known who this was aimed at. These ‘cottages’ were at the south end of what is now St Andrew’s Street. There were similar sets of huts on other parts of the island, and other areas of Barrow. All were notorious for their unsanitary conditions – blocks of families shared one toilet, and a single stand-pipe for water. Local protests, following outbreaks of smallpox, typhoid and cholera, saw the authorities improve sanitation, along with a promise to demolish the huts within ten years.

Rapid population growth of Barrow in the 1860s led to the development of more housing, but it was not always of quality. Commissioned by the Barrow Hematite Steel Company for its workers, the ‘Scotch Buildings’ on the triangle between Duke Street, Hindpool Road and Blake Street - the first tenements blocks in the town - were built of sandstone in 1872-1875 with an internal courtyard where a midden building stood.

Housing over 1,000 people in 260 flats, the complex included two shops and a working men’s club.Additional information, including an interview with a former resident: https://signalfilmandmedia.com/sankeyphotoinfocus2-scotchbuildings/

Facing Cornwallis Street, Barrow, next to Pass’s department store (which claimed it sold everything “from a pin to a piano”), the Palace Theatre building was completed in the late 1890s. Used for some years as the home of the Salvation Army, before been converted to a theatre, by the First World it was showing films.

It changed to being a cinema full time in 1925, and showed its first talking movie in 1931, after it had been “luxuriously” refitted (giving it a capacity of 2,000 seats). It managed to remain unscathed during the Second World War, and was converted to a bingo hall in 1963. In 1998 it was demolished to permit redevelopment.

As Barrow rapidly developed, it centred around the Strand, and St George’s Square. In 1864, the Lancaster Bank opened the town’s first bank across the road from the then town station in this fine building (now Listed and part of a Conservation Area). Its name may be seen (2022) etched in the glass above a door and an outline on stonework above. The town developed so quickly that by 1874 the main branch was a much bigger building in Ramsden Square.

The original building is now in residential use.

The Sankey photographs show the hall stranded; surrounded by the encroaching shipyard and, where there were once trees and lawns, dock walls and dredgers had taken their place.Yet these images tell us nothing of the history of the hall or the Michaelson family. Originally from Cartmel, they came into possession of Barrow Island (or Old Barrow, as it is known), by marriage, in the early 1700s. The central part of Michaelson Hall, built around 1726, had the wings added much later at the beginning of the 19th century. The only other buildings on the island at the time were a farmhouse, built much earlier, and a cottage for the labourers and servants. There were less than 100 people living in Barrow in 1845, and the Michaelsons were the most rich and powerful family. The last owner of the house, Thomas Michaelson, born at the hall in 1814, was educated at Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Thomas’s mother died in Sept 1822, followed a few days later by her husband Robert, who died aged only 30. The hall was advertised To Let in early 1823 and the contents put up for sale, yet Thomas was still living there in September 1835. The inmates of Dalton Workhouse were treated on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Coronation by Thomas ‘who regaled all his tenantry ‘on his beautiful island of Old Barrow.’ Thomas, a JP and Captain in the Furness troop of the Yeomanry Cavalry, died aged 41 in 1855. His wife Jane remained at the hall until it was sold to the Duke of Devonshire in April 1862, for the sum of £7,058.16s.6d. The family moved to Lancaster, living in High Street House. Less than eighteen months after buying the hall the Duke, a shareholder in the Furness Railway, sold it to the company, for £17,321.9s 2d. That £10,000 profit is the equivalent of £1.25 million today.The hall was demolished in the First World War to allow for the Howitzer Shop, later the General Machine Shop, to be built as part of the shipyard.

This is a three-storey building with 12 square chimneys on the roof, known locally as the 12 Apostles. Originally the front was perforated by 14 windows but many were bricked up around 1810, possibly because of the infamous window tax. The windows were re-opened around 1987.In 1634 a John Knype was resident in the hall with his wife Jane, and the Knype family remained there until the end of the century. On 15 February 1685, Rampside was struck by an earthquake which caused a crack to appear in the west wall of the hall, and damage to almost all of the chimneys but it got off lightly compared with the three or four other buildings at Rampside which had to be pulled down due to the damage caused.In 1842 it was the Rampside Hall estate trustees who sold Roa Island to John Abel Smith, which enabled him to build the causeway and provide a railway from Roa to the Concle. A financial disaster, this line was taken over by Furness Railway in 1847 and the rest is history.In 1935 a barn of the hall was struck by lightning causing a hole in the roof 10ft by 6ft.

The hall is Grade 1 listed.

Looking down from Abbots Wood across the Barrow-bound platform of Furness Abbey Station (opened 1846, closed 1950) to Furness Abbey Hotel - formerly the Manor House of the Preston family until the early nineteenth century. Bought by the Furness Railway, it was transformed into a hotel and when tourism and industry developed in the 1860s it was extended further to create the building seen.

During the Second World War, the hotel sustained bomb damage when it was in use by the military and Air Raid Precaution control. It didn’t reopen as a hotel and most of it was demolished in the 1950s. The remaining part of the building operated as The Abbey Tavern, and is now a Listed Building. Though closed, this 'tavern' section still stands. It is owned by English Heritage and a new operator is being sought in 2023.

Designed by Sir Edward Lutyens as a guest house for Vickers Sons & Maxim, operators of the shipyard and Barrow Engineering Works, this vaguely Tudor/Elizabethan-style Grade 2* Listed Building opened in 1914. After World War Two, it was bought by the local authority to use as a residential home for the elderly and its condition deteriorated. Sold to a hotel operator in 1984, it underwent major refurbishment and opened as an impressive 4-star hotel which was extended in the early 2000s.

It is now called the Abbey House Hotel.

This former Cistercian monastery, one of the richest in England, was founded in 1123 and dominated the life of a large area of Furness and the Lakes until its destruction in 1537 as part of the Reformation. From the earliest years of tourism, the Grade 1 Listed ruins of Furness Abbey have excited the curiosity of visitors, who have included Queen Victoria, the poet William Wordsworth,the landscape painter JMW Turner, and US President Theodore Roosevelt and his family.

Now under the care of English Heritage, the site is open to the public.

Walney Theatre on Natal Street was a prominent building for visitors crossing the bridge to the island due to its size and elevated location. It had been sponsored by Vickers, whose shipyard and engineering works it faced across the Channel.

Designed as a dual-purpose theatre/cinema, it opened in 1915. It had a balcony added in 1919, increasing the capacity from 500 to nearly 800. It closed in 1959 and became a supermarket a few years later, but the growth of superstore shopping in Barrow led to its closure; demolition followed in 1983 to allow housing development on the site.

During the World War Two ‘Barrow Blitz’, bombs fell again on the night of 15th/16th April 1941. On this occasion the Abbey Road Baptist Church, which had opened in 1873, received a direct hit which destroyed it and the neighbouring Waverley Hotel - as well as causing major damage to the Public Baths which were next door.

The church's minister and a parishioner, who were on fire watching duty at the church, were both killed, along with two of the hotel guests next door. It took another twelve years before work got under way on a replacement church building at the corner of Abbey Road and Park Drive. The original site of the church and hotel is now the Coronation Gardens.