Barrow’s medical needs have been served by Furness General Hospital since 1984, but one of the local facilities it replaced carried on for a few more years before it finally closed.

Roose Hospital had been been running for 120 years when the decision was made to shut its doors for the final time in 1993, with chief executive of the South Cumbria Health Authority Charles White describing it as an “antiquated building that can’t provide modern medicine.”

The hospital still employed 130 people and cared for more than 70 patients, so the announcement was unsurprisingly met with plenty of opposition.

The Mail was there when Barrow Council’s meeting had to be abandoned after protesters invaded the chamber at the Town Hall.

Members had been due to vote on the budget on the coming year, but Mayor Joyce Fleet had to call off the meeting when Roose nurses and other protesters refused to leave.

Over 3,000 people signed a petition calling for the hospital to be kept open in less than three hours, as the town showed its support to the nurses lined up on Dalton Road.

Branch secretary of the health service union CoHSE Jim Herron said: “There is a lot of support to keep Roose open. Many of the people who have spoken have got relations, or have had relations in Roose.”

Sadly, that support wasn’t enough and Roose Hospital was closed down in August of that year.

By 1996, the building had been stripped of its assets and was then demolished.