Place:Barrow in Furness, Lancashire, England

Watchers
NameBarrow in Furness
Alt namesBarrow-in-Furnesssource: hyphenated
Barrowsource: common shortened form
Furnesssource: Family History Library Catalog
Roosesource: hamlet in parish
Piel Islandsource: settlement in parish
Roa Islandsource: settlement in parish
TypeParish, Borough (municipal)
Coordinates54.111°N 3.226°W
Located inLancashire, England     (1867 - 1974)
Also located inCumbria, England     (1974 - )
See alsoLonsdale Hundred, Lancashire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Dalton in Furness, Lancashire, Englandancient parish in which it was located
Borough of Barrow in Furness, Cumbria, Englanddistrict municipality after 1974
source: Family History Library Catalog


the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Barrow in Furness, commonly known as Barrow, is now a town and "borough" in Cumbria, England. Before 1974 it was located in Lancashire. It was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867, and in 1974 merged with Dalton in Furness Urban District to form the Borough of Barrow in Furness.

At the tip of the Furness peninsula, close to the Lake District, it is bordered by Morecambe Bay, the Duddon Estuary and the Irish Sea. In 2011, Barrow's population was 57,000, making it the second largest urban area in Cumbria after Carlisle. Natives of Barrow, as well as the local dialect, are known as Barrovian.

In the Middle Ages, Barrow was a small hamlet within the ancient parish of Dalton in Furness. Furness Abbey, which is on the outskirts of the modern-day town, controlled the local economy before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537.

The iron prospector Henry Schneider arrived in Furness in 1839 and, with other investors, opened the Furness Railway in 1846 to transport iron ore and slate from local mines to the coast. Further hematite deposits were discovered, of sufficient size to develop factories for smelting and exporting steel. For a period of the late 19th century, the Barrow Hematite Steel Company was the world's largest steelworks.

Barrow's location and the availability of steel allowed the town to develop into a significant producer of naval vessels, a shift that was accelerated during World War I. The yard became a specialist in submarines. The original iron- and steel-making enterprises closed down after World War II, leaving the Vickers shipyard as Barrow's main industry and employer. Several Royal Navy flagships, the vast majority of its nuclear submarines as well as numerous other naval vessels, ocean liners and oil tankers were manufactured at the facility.

Image:Dalton ancient parish 50pc.png

The end of the Cold War and subsequent decrease in military spending saw high unemployment in the town through lack of contracts. Despite this, the BAE Systems shipyard remains operational as the UK's largest by workforce in the industry and is undergoing a major expansion associated with the submarine programme. Today Barrow is a hub for energy generation and handling. Offshore wind farms form one of the highest concentrations of turbines in the world, including the single largest with multiple operating bases in Barrow.

History

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Barrow-in-Furness.

Research Tips

  • See the Wikipedia articles on parishes and civil parishes for descriptions of this lowest rung of local administration. The original parishes were ecclesiastical (described as ancient parishes), under the jurisdiction of the local priest. A parish covered a specific geographical area and was sometimes equivalent to that of a manor. Sometimes, in the case of very large rural parishes, there were chapelries where a "chapel of ease" allowed parishioners to worship closer to their homes. In the 19th century the term civil parish was adopted to define parishes with a secular form of local government. In WeRelate both civil and ecclesiastical parishes are included in the type of place called a "parish". Smaller places within parishes, such as chapelries and hamlets, have been redirected into the parish in which they are located. The names of these smaller places are italicized within the text.
  • An urban district was a type of municipality in existence between 1894 and 1974. They were formed as a middle layer of administration between the county and the civil parish and were used for urban areas usually with populations of under 30,000. Inspecting the archives of a urban district will not be of much help to the genealogist or family historian, unless there is need to study land records in depth.
  • Civil registration or vital statistics and census records will be found within registration districts. To ascertain the registration district to which a parish belongs, see Registration Districts in Lancashire, part of the UK_BMD website.
  • The terms municipal borough and county borough were adopted in 1835 replacing the historic "boroughs". Municipal boroughs generally had populations between 30,000 and 50,000; while county boroughs usually had populations of over 50,000. County boroughs had local governments independent of the county in which they were located, but municipal boroughs worked in tandem with the county administration. Wikipedia explains these terms in much greater detail.
  • Lancashire Online Parish Clerks provide free online information from the various parishes, along with other data of value to family and local historians conducting research in the County of Lancashire.
  • FamilySearch Lancashire Research Wiki provides a good overview of the county and also articles on most of the individual parishes (very small or short-lived ones may have been missed).
  • Ancestry (international subscription necessary) has a number of county-wide collections of Church of England baptisms, marriages and burials, some from the 1500s, and some providing microfilm copies of the manuscript entries. There are specific collections for Liverpool (including Catholic baptisms and marriages) and for Manchester. Their databases now include electoral registers 1832-1935. Another pay site is FindMyPast.
  • A map of Lancashire circa 1888 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time includes the boundaries between the parishes and shows the hamlets within them.
  • A map of Lancashire circa 1954 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time is a similar map for a later timeframe.
  • GENUKI provides a website covering many sources of genealogical information for Lancashire. The organization is gradually updating the website and the volunteer organizers may not have yet picked up all the changes that have come with improving technology.
  • The Victoria County History for Lancashire, provided by British History Online, covers the whole of the county in six volumes (the seventh available volume [numbered Vol 2] covers religious institutions). The county is separated into its original hundreds and the volumes were first published between 1907 and 1914. Most parishes within each hundred are covered in detail. Maps within the text can contain historical information not available elsewhere.
  • A description of the parish of Furness from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1914


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Barrow-in-Furness. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.