Barrow-in-Furness

BARROW, or Barrow-in-Furness, a seaport town and two chapelries in Dalton-in-Furness parish, Lancashire. The town stands at the terminus of a branch of the Furness railway, opposite Walney Island, 8 miles SW of Ulverston; was only a village, with a pop. of 325, so late as 1847; rose to a pop. of about 2,000 in 1847, and to a pop. of more than 12,000 in 1868; owed its rise mainly to rapid development of mineral wealth in its vicinity; began, in 1867, to acquire a grand artificial harbour, with docks and wharves, estimated to cost about £300,000; imports large quantities of timber and coal; has a long range of blast furnaces, extensive foundries, and steel-works, large timber-yards, ship-building yards, and saw-mills: draws from neighbouring mines about 400,000 tons of iron ore a year; produces about 4,000 tons of pig-iron weekly; converts about one-fifth of that quantity into steel by the Bessemer process; exports, in addition to its iron produce, about 3,000 tons of copper ore and about 20,000 tons of slate a year; is built on a regular plan, chiefly with streets crossing at right angles; and has a head post office, a fine new r. station with telegraph, a spacious town hall and market house built in 1865, an assembly-room, a temperance hall, a subscription newsroom and library, a mechanics' institute, a police office, a custom-house, a church in the geometric style built in 1859, another church built in 1867, an Independent chapel in the early English style, a Wesleyan chapel of 1863, a Welsh chapel of 1864, a Roman Catholic chapel of 1866, and a national school. The chapelries are St. George and St. James, and were constituted, the former in 1863, the latter in 1867. The livings are p. curacies in the diocese of Carlisle. Value of St. G., £149.* of St. J., £150. Patron of St. G., the Duke of Devonshire; of St. J., Trustees.

John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72)