EXTRA housing for hundreds of wartime workers on Walney came at a price 100 years ago – a new hotel where you couldn’t buy a pint.

The story of expansion in Vickerstown and the struggle to get a drinks licence for the new George Hotel has emerged from research by Peter Schofield, of Rampside.

As staff numbers increased at Vickers before and after the outbreak of the First World War, the company sought to counter a scarcity of housing.

Mr Schofield writes: “Already the firm owned large numbers of properties, but took steps to build a further 406 workers’ houses at Vickerstown.

“The workmens’ houses were built at Dartmouth, Liverpool, Delhi, Hastings, Dover, Bristol, Portsmouth and Plymouth Streets.

“There were six fully licensed houses on the island, but only three could be said to serve parts of Vickerstown.

“A new hotel - with a third of the space to be utilised for selling intoxicating liquor - was proposed to serve the district recently developed.

“The erection of the hotel was carried out in six months during 1916, in conjunction with the creation of new roads and streets which cut across the Island from Walney Bridge.

“The cost of the building work was estimated at £4,000 and with streets and furnishings the total cost was approximately £8,400.

“This was a considerable achievement at a time when labour, materials and money were all scarce and more workers houses were needed.

“The hotel was to be under the control of the Barrow and Isle of Walney Public House Trust, an offshoot of the Earl Grey Central Trust Public House Association which already held the licence of the King Alfred Hotel and an off-licence at Vickerstown.

“In February 1916 a liquor licence was applied for at the Barrow Licensing Sessions by David Kay, on behalf of the Isle of Walney Estate Company, represented by Mr Wingate Saul, barrister.

“The company set forth in the deeds that the sale of intoxicants was to be discouraged and the managers given a special percentage for the sale of non-intoxicants.

“The new hotel would also provide accommodation for teas for people visiting the west side of the Island for the purpose of health and recreation after long hours in the workshops.

“Vickers strongly opposed anything that would increase drunkenness.

“The application was considered by the Vickers board of directors, who after careful study of the site and plans recommended the application in the interests of the Vickerstown residents.

“In opposition were the British Women’s Temperance Association and certain Walney residents - all represented by a Mr Batty of Manchester.

“The Liquor Control Board also threw its weight behind the opposition, sending a notice asking justices to carefully scrutinise applications for new licences before granting them, to keep down expenditure on dangerous liquor at time when war production was vital.

“It was said ‘England depended on the efficiency of the work done in Barrow, and England would rub its eyes in the morning if the Barrow justices granted a full licence to a house one-and-a-half miles away from Vickers works’.

“In conclusion, it was pointed out that the country was at war, and the proposal would not have been entertained for one moment if it had not come from anyone but Vickers.

“The justices retired, and on their return the chairman said they had given their best consideration to the application but under the present unsettled state of things the application was premature and therefore refused.

“The hotel opened on August 26 in 1916 and was said to be designed in conformity with the houses on the island - with spacious refreshment rooms but not as somewhere to partake in alcohol as had originally been proposed.”

The first pint was not pulled at the George Hotel until 1919 – after the guns had fallen silent in the First World War.

It had finally won a drinks licence after several rejections.