THERE has been an amazing range of ways to earn a living in South Cumbria's industries through the decades - making everything from iron ingots and electrical equipment to pharmaceutical products.

Cumbria Industrial History Society aims to record and celebrate the range of industrial sites and processes which have existed in the county and hosted a talk at Greenodd village hall by David Ellwood about ropemaking.

He retired in 2003 but his family firm had been producing rope in Kendal since the 1850s, most recently at Stockbeck, near Bensons for Beds and the railway station.

He said: "We had a small labour force and made a wide variety of products."

This ranged from heavy rope in natural and synthetic materials for boats,factories and farms to white string for the tails of sugar mice. Rope was once made at both Barrow and Ulverston.

Glaxo Laboratories chose Ulverston as the site of an additional factory to produce penicillin after the Second World War.

The building work was carried out by Taylor Woodrow but some use was made of former North Lonsdale Ironworks buildings. Production started in 1948 for penicillin and then streptomycin. Just 260 people worked at the new factory but by 1967 - when the company gained the Queen's Award for Industry - it employed 1,200. Acrasytle was founded at North Lonsdale Road, Ulverston in 1962 by Brian Hargreaves and Brian Harry Mangnall. In the late 1970sthe Chapman family took over control and the firm grew to be a leading producer of electrical systems, power transmission gear and distribution equipment with customers all over the world. The opening ceremony for Barrow Ironworks was held on Tuesday October 18 in 1859 and the building project had need two million common bricks and another 1.4 million fire bricks for the furnaces. There was no official redundancy pay outs at the Barrow Ironworks when it closed in March 1963 – just ex-gratia sum to those with at least three years' service. Three years was worth £15 while 41 years brought £328. A foundry at Hindpool Road, Barrow, was started in 1884 by David Caird to make high-class castings. The last molten iron was poured on December 22 in 1987. In Victorian times it was one among many foundries in the town.