MEMBERS of the Cumbria Industrial History Society went on a walking tour of Barrow as the town marks 150 years as a borough and the opening of its first dock.

The walk started overlooking the original entrance to the Devonshire Dock which was officially opened on September 18 in 1867.

Walk leader Jonathan Wignall pointed out a surviving metal capstan from 1867 and the brackets which once held the Devonshire Dock gates in place.

Passing the Dock Museum – built above the old Graving Dock for ship repairs – the walkers went along the Channelside footpath.

Here landscaping and industrial units are on ground where steel ships were once built and launched into the channel and where iron and steel was produced from millions of tons of iron ore mined at places like Roanhead, Askam and Lindal.

Near the old Cocken Tunnel, facing Ormsgill, the sides of the railway bridge are covered with the solidified air pollution from decades of burning hot slag – the waste product from the blast furnaces at Barrow Ironworks from 1859 to the 1960s.

By 1864 the ironworks was taking 250,000 tons of local ore a year and in 1872 the complex had a dozen furnaces working day and night.

Barrow Steelworks started work in 1866 with 18 Bessemer converters each of five-ton capacity.

A large proportion of the steel output was used for Barrow’s rolling steel rails.

A visit was made to Hawcoat Quarry, where sandstone was taken by railway wagons to construct many of Barrow’s early industrial buildings and the walls of its dock system.

The source of another building product provided a finishing point for the walkers – the deep pond at the back of the Asda car park.

It once provided the raw material for a brickworks which was only demolished in the early 1970s.

The Industrial group is holding a talks day at Caldbeck parish hall on Saturday, October 14, called Industries of the Northern Fells and this will see the official launch of a book called Cumbria’s Industrial Past Through the Lens of Mike Davies-Shiel.