Discover what life was like in Barrow in the old days. Part of our series featuring the history of Cumbria on DVD, this film captures the atmosphere of the young town over a hundred and fifty years ago right up to the present day. Ambitious businessmen and hard working, hard living workers struggled to create an industrial powerhouse which gained a reputation as something of an ‘English Chicago’. See the problems of those early days of overcrowded housing and the remarkable social experiment that resulted in Vickerstown. The age of the tram and the corner shop along with the fledgling tourism industry and the heyday of shipbuilding are all here.
These were the days before supermarkets when the corner shop was a thriving centre of the community. There are the effects of the boom and bust economy that sometimes brought wealth and sometimes left the town in the grip of depression. There is also the terrible toll that the war years took on Barrow. The blitz and the black-outs which affected both young and old alike. This programme really is a nostalgic trip down memory lane.