As lockdown restrictions ease shoppers are returning to Barrow's high street – and what better time to take a trip down memory lane at some beloved traders of the past.
To give a taste of how Barrow town centre has changed in the past 60 years, details from a trade directory from 1959 reveal that the town then had eight banks, nine bakers and another nine fish merchants.
BARGAINS: Sale day at the Barrow Co-op department store, Abbey Road, in the 1980s
You could visit 14 drapers, 17 outfitters or 25 confectioners.
Barrow also had 33 specialist butchers and an amazing 56 grocers – many of them trading from traditional corner shops.
BUSINESS: Staff at Morris’s wallpaper shop, on Dalton Road, Barrow, around 1970
As time passed, many familiar names have vanished – such as the Dolings hardware store.
There was also Story the jeweller,Woolworths – with its famous pick-and-mix sweets – and other popular chains such as the tailors Burton and Greenwoods, or Dewhurst the butcher and the Maypole Dairy.
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