Street scenes

Being a young town which boomed from the mid 1800s, there was a constant shortage of housing for workers and their families. To accommodate them huts were build on Barrow Island, of either wood or brick. Owned by the Barrow Shipbuilding Company, by the early 1870s there were some 500 of these huts, built in rows on different parts of the island. The people who lived in them endured horrendous squalor. The huts were condemned in 1877, but not pulled down until the mid-1880s. In the 1890s some of the 'A-named' streets on Barrow Island were built incuding Aberdare, Athol etc.

The street shown here, with unfinished pavements, was added later - in this picture it looks fairly new.

One of the iconic images of the Barrow Island tenements. What have become known collectively as the 'Old Barrow Buildings', the tenement blocks, were built in two phases. First were the Devonshire Buildings (not shown) completed in 1873-1875, which were made of sandstone (they were named after the Duke of Devonshire).

Later, in 1884, came a series of more austere blocks of flats in red brick, as shown here. Built to help alleviate the shortage of housing for shipyard workers, they are now one of the few examples of such tenements still standing. The first sets of flats like these to be built in Barrow (between 1872-1875) were sited near the steelworks in Hindpool; called the Scotch Buildings, those blocks of flats were demolished in the mid-1950s.

In a town where it seems there was either a shop or a pub on every corner a scene like this was common. Here we have the Bull Hotel on the corner of Dalton Road and Paxton Street. Further down on the left was The Snipe pub. There are shops on either side of the street.

The imposing Town Hall stands proud in the background. The children and a couple of adults are still interested in what the photographer is doing, even though photography had been around for decades when this picture was taken. I wonder what they would make of today's photograph-obsessed society?

A shortage of housing due to the rapid rise in the growth of Barrow and the need to house its workers, led Vickers Sons and Maxims Ltd to buy the proposed Isle of Walney Estates Co. in May 1899. Vickers arranged the building of the houses 'of modern style and on a model plan similar to those built …. at Port Sunlight' (on the Wirral). The Vickerstown houses, built by contractors, were designed by Ulverston architect William Moss Settle.

The first tenant was David Mason, a clerk, who moved into 28 Latona Street in November 1900. By 1903, 737 houses had been completed with a further 114 in construction. Eventually about 950 were completed. Here we have Vengeance Street on South Vickerstown; these 'A' class houses, the most numerous type built, would have a rent of about 5 shillings per week - about £31 today. (Wages then were between £165-£243 a week, in today's money, for a skilled worker in the shipyard).

A view across the Market Square in Millom from the church entrance. Central is the clock tower and the Council offices (the tower is much reduced in size today). On the far side is Mills and Sons 'Department Store', with the library beyond.

A horse-drawn ice cream cart is on the left and another horse waits to the right. In the centre two motor cars – taxi or bus? – are waiting. Also shown are Nicholson's newsagents, and Beesley’s drapery store (with an awning). Men ride along on pushbikes.

From a pin to a Piano' was the slogan for this large corner shop on Duke Street. In this picture there is crockery, luggage and chocolates in the windows. Pass's also sold toys, musical instruments, furniture and radios. In 1882 the shop was further down Duke Street at No 100, but had moved here to Nos 54 - 56 by 1912.

When the shop closed in 1962 it first became a Chinese restaurant, then a bed shop and then a pub. It was knocked down in 1999; the site is now a car park. In the background of this image, on the left, can be seen the Mason's Arms on a corner of Forshaw Street and Paxton Terrace. One of Barrow's oldest pubs, built in 1861, it disappeared in the 1960s, along with the streets it sat on, when the new market was developed.

The R80, an airship built on Walney of Duralumin alloy, first emerged from its shed on 19 July 1920 but was damaged - and shot up to a height of 4,000ft. It must have been very scary for her crew who most likely had never flown in anything before. One of the rear girders bent and she was returned to her shed not to emerge again until early 1921.

On 11 February 1921 the Controller of General and Civil Aviation announced that the ship was not required. Seen here from Duke Street on what was proabably a test flight, there is a remarkable similarilty to a photograph taken in 1936 when a German Zeppelin airship flew over Barrow en route to America. You can imagine one of the Sankey's rushing out of their Duke Street shop to capture this image.

It's off to work we go. This photograph, looking toward Schneider Square in the town, shows hundreds of workmen on their way to Vickers shipyard in the early part of the 20th century. A full tram is turning from Duke Street into Michaelson Road, heading towards the bridge; the photographer must be on the top deck of another tram to get this high viewpoint.

In 1914 there were 22,000 employees at the shipyard, and by 1917 35,000 - including by then quite a few women. Of all the people in this picture almost every single one is wearing a flat cap, the exceptions being one or two bowler hats. There are only two women in view, one walking away near the left hand tram and a lone cyclist dead centre in front of the Mc part of the Mc Dowells advert.

This photograph beautifully captures the immediacy of a small and unexpected event in the town centre. Boys and girls run to catch up with the Scouts, whose march along Duke Street looks to be impromptu; it’s clearly not part of a bigger parade. At a time when entertainment was in very short supply, it’s not surprising this little column attracted attention.

Adults were interested too: some are well dressed but others, some of the women and girls, are wrapped in shawls, the kind of clothing associated very much with working people. That’s no surprise given that the part of town the Scouts were walking through was, behind the grander main roads, criss-crossed by streets of small terraced houses rented from local industries like the steelworks.

Developed from the mid-late 1860s, Cavendish Street is one of Barrow’s best known shopping streets, with a number of fine buildings; one of which was a large theatre, with adjoining bar, called The Roxy (it was replaced in 1937 by a Streamline Moderne-style cinema of the same name). The Theatre Bar is, however, still there. In fact Cavendish Street has kept more of its original buildings than many nearby shopping streets.

This image shows the street, from Dalton Road to Duke Steet, when it was in its hey-day. Shoppers were attracted by the many specialist family-run stores, which sold products for the ordinary household: bread and cakes, hats and suits, lace and dress material. The street still boasts a number of independent retailers. The listing in the 1906 Year Book for Dalton Road, for the corner shop on the right in the foreground, states it was a pork butcher’s. Since then the building has had many different uses, most recently as a travel agents.

The old and new town halls of Barrow. An eye-catching image of the Fire Brigade as it showed off the prowess of its new engine. One of a series of photographs, some taken from the front of the Town Hall, this one shows a crowd of onlookers closely following an event that would be interesting at any time.

Yet the other thing of interest in this image is that of the smaller building to the right; the original Town Hall, built in 1865, which hosted council meetings for Barrow for over twenty years. Situated next to the covered market, the old town hall served as a public meeting place when its grander civic neighbour was opened in 1887. Destroyed by fire in 1933, the building was rebuilt, and is still remembered as the Public Hall where dances took place.

This image of everyday bustle on Rawlinson Street was taken at the corner of Greengate Street, looking north towards Abbey Road. The shop on the left, with the gas lamp outside, was built in 1873. Opposite is a combined shop and post office. Behind the photographer, on the left, is a pub, built in 1874 it was ooriginally known as the Haematite Hotel.

It was then renamed The Waterloo, then the ‘Last Orders’, but became The Waterloo again in 2021. Opposite the post office/shop is Greengate Junior School. This is one of the few junctions in Barrow with the original buildings, or the same use of a site, from over 100 years ago: the school site still has a school; the post office is a private house; the pub is still open, and the corner shop still sells bars of chocolate.