About the town » Barrow in Furness, Cumbria, England, Great Britain

Barrow-in-Furness, historically a part of Lancashire, is a large industrial town and seaport which forms about half the territory of the wider Borough of Barrow-in-Furness in the county of Cumbria, England. It lies 49 mi north of Liverpool and 59 mi northwest of Manchester. The town is situated at the tip of the Furness peninsula close to the Lake District bordered by Morecambe Bay, the Duddon Estuary and the Irish Sea. In 2011 Barrow had a population of 69,100 making it the largest town in Cumbria and the second largest settlement overall after the city of Carlisle. In the Middle Ages, Barrow was a small hamlet within the parish of Dalton-in-Furness. Furness Abbey, on the outskirts of the modern day town, controlled the local economy before its dissolution in 1537. Even as late as 1843 there were still only 32 dwellings including two pubs. 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 in 1850, of sufficient size to develop factories for smelting and exporting steel. By the late 19th century, the Barrow Hematite Steel Company-owned steelworks was the largest in the world. 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 and the local yard's specialisation in submarines. The original iron- and steel- making enterprises closed down after World War II, leaving Vickers shipyard as Barrow's main industry and employer. The Royal Navy flagships HMS Hermes, HMS Invincible and HMS Albion as well as numerous ocean liners, oil tankers and all Swiftsure-class, Trafalgar-class and Vanguard-class submarines were manufactured at the facility. From the 1960s the shipyard increasingly specialised in the construction of nuclear-powered submarines. However with the end of the Cold War and subsequent decrease in military spending the town suffered high unemployment through lack of contracts; despite this, the shipyard remains operational and the only submarine production facility in the UK. Today Barrow is a hub for energy generation and handling. Several wind farms located off the coast of the town form one of the highest concentrations of turbines in the world, including Walney Wind Farm, the world's single largest offshore wind farm. Rampside Gas Terminal and Roosecote Power Station utilise gas from the Irish Sea gas fields, while a significant percentage of the local population work at the nearby nuclear facilities at Sellafield and Heysham.