Furness Journey The Great British Story: Regional Histories

I'm Stuart Maconie and like thousands of other people I'm

passionate about the Lake District. But a part of Cumbria that's just

as fascinating but not as well known is this - the Furness

known is this - the Furness peninsular. With Barrow-in-Furness

at its tip and surrounded on three sides by water with mountains along

the top, the peninsula is geographically cut off from the

rest of the country. It's not the kind of place you'd stumble across

by accident or pass through on your way to somewhere else. But as we'll

see there's more to this peninsula than the famous shipyard behind me.

It may not enjoy the tourism the lake district but people have been

coming here for centuries by land and sea all contributing to the

history of Furness - a great British story. --Lake District

Furness was named by the Vikings. 'Ness' meaning headland, so

literally this is the far headland. And there are plenty more Viking

names around. Biggar, Barrow, Ormsgill. But the Norsemen left

more than just a linguistic heritage. Under this very rock,

last summer, an amateur treasure hunter armed with a metal detector

uncovered some rather spectacular evidence of Viking settlement in

the 10th century. And this is the treasure that was found in the

field. Sabine, can you tell me what's here? We have a really mixed

bag as you can tell. We have coins and ingots and even a bracelet.

This shows that it is definitely a Viking hoard and one of the coins

is from thousands of miles away. It's an arabicdirrum. It's a

beautiful coin and in really lovely condition. The shows what great

traders the Vikings were. They had massive trading links. Of course,

we think that the Vikings are the reason why we have Russia. There's

a popular image of Vikings being Pillagers but they were more

cultured and cultivated than that? Absolutely. They were probably

settled here and had farms here. And that was one of the reasons why

we've not found a great town. Maybe they were just staying in

countryside dwellings. But perhaps they were still doing elements of

raiding and trading. We don't really know as we don't have any

documentary evidence of that area. So hoards like this give us a lot

of information. So is this quite exciting for you? Oh, yes, really

exciting. We're delighted. We've been waiting for this for a long

time and we're delighted it's come and it really shines a spotlight on

the whole area. After the Vikings came another invasion of sorts. In

1127, Norman monks came and built this beautiful abbey here in this

remote part of the Furness peninsula The Abbey grew into one

of the richest and most powerful organisations in the country.

Controlling the peninsula, the monks were adept businessmen and

landowners. What would day to day life for monks have been like? What

would it have entailed, I mean prayer obviously? Seven times a day

for prayer, in the church and the lay brethren that supported them.

Quiet contemplation, obviously. But a work ethic as well, getting on

with things that needed doing, whether it's manuscript production

or whether it's working in the gardens and caring for the sick. So

there's an active life for the monk within. For the Abbey without

there's a whole economy to run. Would there have been a fairly big

community? Do we know how many people would have been here, how

many monks? We know when it's dissolved by Henry the eighth,

there was only 28 monks left, which is kind of a shrinking number, I

suspected its peak you're probably not looking at much more than a

hundred. It waxes and wanes during the 14th century with the famine

and black plague. It's dipping and they never really recovered from

that in all honesty. I'm slightly staggered, Kevin, by that figure,

about a hundred, cause I would look around here and think about

thousands of people would live here? Yeah it's a big place isn't

it for just a few pretty privileged people who society gains. So we're

really talking about a small group of powerful people, and one who

eventually get their, if I can mix up all my historical eras, meet

their Waterloo with Henry VIII? Does that put paid to them

completely?' Yes. The impact on Furness in 1537 is closure, is

stripping of the lead and any other valuable things for the kings

resources. And what about the monks, scattered to the four winds?

Furness fights, Furness has always been independent. It tries to fight

suppression but in the end has to give up. But they'll have got

everything out. They'll have got their plate and their silver and

their manuscripts. They'll have moved it out and set themselves up.

They'll have known where they were going. Historians will now be able

to find out even more about the lifestyle of the Monks following a

really exciting discovery. When carrying out some repairs to the

Abbey's presbytery, they unearthed a previously undiscovered grave of

an Abbot who'd been buried with his bronze crozier. We expected the

19th century antiquarians to have stripped the lot but they missed

one. Imagine the wooden staff coming off and you've got it rising

up curling round this rather beautiful detailed head here. It

looks like a dog, probably a dog serpent. And then we've got St

Michael the archangel slaying the dragon here with a sword in his

right hand just inset into the Croziers hook. It's a particularly,

well, unexpected, rare, extraordinary find. And, again,

opulent. Tells you a little bit about how rich an establishment

this must have been. Found with the abbot's skeleton, what does that

tell us about him and the lifestyle here? He seems to have been a

fairly portly chap, he's obviously lived quite well. He's about 40 or

50 years old when he dies, he'd got a bit of arthritis, a bit of

diabetes setting in, but otherwise his bones are actually pretty

healthy, he's done pretty well. he himself, his bones are now all

over the place being analysed? bones are scattered around the

known universe, being analysed by all sorts of people. We hope to get

a date on him, from the radiocarbon. We hope to analyse his teeth and

find out where he might have come from and we hope to look at him

compared to his brethren that were also excavated, to see, you know,

what the difference is in health, stature was. So the monks of

Furness Abbey may have been long since forced out but they have left

these wonderful ruins to remember Just over a hundred years after the

dissolution of Furness Abbey, a new religious movement was founded in

more modest surroundings a short distance away. It was here at

Swarthmoor Hall near Ulverston that Judge Thomas Fell and his wife

Margaret received a strange and unconventional visitor, who was to

change their lives, and the lives George Fox hailed from

Leicestershire. In the 17th century the charismatic firebrand travelled

the country preaching a controversial message that God is

within us all and we have need for priests or organised religion.

Having had a vision at the top of Pendle Hill in Lancashire, George

Fox made his way to Swarthmoor Hall where he would go on to found the

Quaker movement with the help of the people of the Furness peninsula.

What he knows about Swarthmoor Hall is it is the home of a judge,

Thomas Fell, and his wife Margaret. They are sincere Puritans. Judge

Fell is quite a bigwig, he's a lawyer, he's a friend of Cromwell's,

a former MP. And he uses this house, Judge Fell, as a sort of open house

for travelling Puritan preachers. So it's natural, I think, that Fox

would have made his way here. the Fells taking a great risk in

sheltering and protecting Fox? Was it seen as a very scandalous thing

to do? After the execution of the King in 1649 there's this huge,

almost desperate search for truth in religion and creating a Godly

country. That's what people are trying to do. So at that time,

Quakerism is one of a whole range of different possibilities. Yes, it

is threatening at the very beginning and it's threatening

because it challenges the status quo and it challenges the status

quo socially, religiously, politically. So to that extent they

are taking a risk. George Fox travelled extensively but always

returned to his base at Swarthmoor and following Judge Fell's death,

he married his widow Margaret, who is seen as the mother of the Quaker

movement. And three hundred and sixty years after George Fox first

arrived here, Swarthmoor still hosts Quaker meetings which are

held in silence. So you come into the Quaker meeting, you try to drop

the cares of the world, as it were, concentrate on things of the spirit.

If somebody feels moved to speak they can stand up and speak.

There's no separate clergy, there's no fixed liturgy. It's using the

silence as a way of worship. personal experience is all we need

I thought I knew Cumbria pretty well. I do spend a lot of time here

and yet I had no idea that a major world religion was founded here

just a few miles outside Ulverston. I also had no experience until this

morning of a Quaker meeting, and far from finding it odd or

uncomfortable or self-conscious, it seemed both quiet and reflective

and the most natural thing in the We don't normally associate Cumbria

with heavy industry. We may have a picturesque Beatrix Potter notion

of gambolling lambs, the odd ruminative cow. In fact, these

beautiful Cumbrian hills are rich in the mineral deposits which

transformed the Cumbrian peninsula. The Burlington Quarry is one of the

deepest man-made holes in Europe. As you can see, people are still

working here. But demand really peaked during the housing boom of

the Victorian era. The blue slate was needed for roofing tiles. This

land, which was rich in slate and iron ore and copper, was owned by

the Duke of Devonshire. He needed a way of transporting these valuable

minerals to the docks at Barrow. So, in 1846, he built the Furness

What started as a hobby for father and son Geoff and Marc Dobson has

now become a cottage industry. They make and sell models of the Furness

Railway all over the world from their workshop in Geoff's garage.

So this is a scale model of the Furness Railway. When the original

railway came, what kind of impact did it have on this area? Massive.

It can't be underestimated. It was the area. If it wasn't for the

railway, the mines wouldn't have taken off. If the mines hadn't

taken off, there wouldn't then be steel mills. If there wasn't any

steel mills, there wouldn't be a shipyard. I think you've got to

transport yourself back. Pre- railway, the only way they got iron

ore or anything out of the minerals was on a horse. Or on a sledge.

Dragged along the road and the road wouldn't be surfaced. We didn't

have the surface roads we take for granted. So the railway linked the

peninsula in with the country? It became less of an isolated spot in

general? Very much so. There has always been that isolation. So the

railway link to the peninsula and it became less isolated? Very much

so. If you look at the far line, there's 2 NE hopper wagons. Over

80% of the coal and coke that came to the steelworks came from the

North East in those. And who buys what you make here? There's lots of

enthusiasts all over the country. In fact, we've got export orders to

Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand. Ex-pats who want to build

what we have in front of you. thought they would be very keen on

this. Yes. So, initially, I'm thinking you weren't as keen on

model railways as your dad? No. I wanted a Scalextric, but I never

got one until last year. My wife got me one for Christmas. Is it

good? Very good. I've got two Mini Coopers at long last.

The Furness Railway is still running. I'm going to retrace the

journey of copper, slate and iron ore. It would've went from Kirkby

in Furness down to Barrow-in- Furness. The train hugs the West

Coast of Cumbria. It really is one of the most scenic railway journeys

in the country. Just across the sands from the Furness Railway in

Millom, there lived a poet called Norman Nicholson. His verse is

steeped in the landscape and industry of this part of the world.

I'd like to read a poem. It's When the sea's to the west.

The evenings are one dazzle. You can find no sign of water.

Sun upflows the horizon. Waves of Shine.

Heave, crest, fracture. Explode on the shore.

The wide day burns. In the incandescent mantle of the

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the railways on

the peninsula. The Duke of Devonshire hired James Ramsden to

oversee the running of them. And together with the metallurgist

Henry Schneider, these three became the founding fathers. They

transformed this sleepy backwater into a boomtown. Britain's very own

Chicago. With the railways now linking the peninsula with the rest

of the country, the three men could bring in smelting coke and build

their own iron and steel works. And while they had steel, why not build

some ships? And thus, waves of people from all across the land

were attracted to the booming town. They were coming from places you

wouldn't expect. There was a great influx from Cornwall. The tin

miners came up. Staffordshire iron workers came. Irish navvies to

build the docks. And then, when the shipbuilding came, a lot of people

came down from Glasgow. So it was from all over the country. I guess

that made for a lively mix of people. It must have caused

problems? It did, because they were mainly young men in their teens,

twenties and thirties. Young men in the late 19th century are pretty

much like young men are today. So it was pretty lively. Bez measures

were taken by the city fathers to subdue the gentleman workers. For

example, in 1867, they built a flax and jute works. It was to try to

bring wives and children in to work in the flax and jute works. This

also had an ulterior motive, of course, of keeping money in the

town. Because these itinerant workers were sending money back to

Belfast or Glasgow and Staffordshire. And the money was

exiting the town and they wanted to keep it in the town. So it had a

dual effect of subduing the male workforce and keeping the money in

the town. In the 1860s and 1870s, Barrow would have resembled one

massive construction site as the town's founding fathers built homes

for the new workers. If people think this is reminiscent of

Glaswegian tenement buildings, that's not a coincidence? Not a

coincidence at all. The shipyard started in 1871. They were trying

to encourage experienced shipbuilders to move to Barrow.

They were from Scotland So they brought in architects who had built

the tenements and Glasgow to build peace -- to build the East. --

these. The railways may have transformed Barrow from a sleepy

rural backwater to an industrial boomtown. But it was shipbuilding

that put Barrow on the international map at a time when

Britain was the most powerful trading nation in the world. The

first ship out of the yard was the Duke of Devonshire. And the yard

continued to build ships up until the First World War. At one stage,

it employed a staggering 30,000 people. After the war, "the yard",

as it's always been known, started building civilian as well as naval

vessels. Launch days would be occasions of great pride and

excitement. Children would be given the day off school. And there would

usually be a royal on hand to name the ship. I name this ship Oriana.

May God bless her and all who sail in her. In 1960, the Oriana was

launched. It was one of the world's fastest and most recognisable ocean

liners. It had a voyage time to Australia of three weeks instead of

four. She was kitted out in ultra- modern style. Every detail has been

designed by teams of architects and co-ordinated by a design team of

perfect harmony. Here is they own television station. Closed circuit

television throughout the voyage, net work programmes when the ship

is in port. You have a choice of evening entertainment. The lush,

plush cinema, or television in Ewing lounges and some cabins. --

viewing lounges. The shipyard is still going strong. These days, it

specialises in a rather different kind of boat - the submarine. It's

incredible to think that the first submarines were built here in 1886.

And the first Royal Navy submersibles were built here in

1901. In 1960, Dreadnought - Britain's first ever nuclear-

powered submarine - was launched here by The Queen. I name this ship

grit not -- Dreadnought. Make God bless her and all who sail in her.

CHEERING. Submarines, like Ambush of the astute class, are still

built here in the great dock hall which bears the Duke of

Devonshire's name. And there's still great pride in the

achievements of the town. Joe Murphy has spent his entire working

life as a welder at the yard. He came here as a boy of 15. When I

was an apprentice, the Valiant was on one side. There would be a

thousand-ton tanker. The British admiral on the other. On the big

slip. We used to diversify and do all sorts of things like that. But

mostly now, we concentrate on submarines. Prior to this, what

would this have been? Outside on the berth, on all weathers. The

tide would have been underneath you. A canvas to get behind while you

were welding. And equally, you used to get inside the boat. It would be

like a steel fridge. And cold inside. And look at this facility

now. It's fantastic. Is it a source of pride that the Furness

Peninsular is known all over the Yes. Everybody's proud of this spot.

It's given me a good living. I have a son in here now. He's the fifth

generation. That's five families that have been brought up on it.

Can you imagine Barrow without a shipyard? Not at all. This is the

lifeblood of this town. And we all depend on it. Hopefully, we'll be

But the nature of the Yard's work hasn't been without controversy. In

the 1980s, America and The Soviet Union were engaged in a nuclear

arms race. Plans for Britain's Trident nuclear submarines, which

were to be built in Barrow, were strongly opposed by The Campaign

for Nuclear Disarmament. They held their national rally in Barrow in

1984. Among the protesters were local activists Kate Blanshard and

Norman Hill. I remember being absolutely amazed by the number of

people. The car park down at Craven Park there. It was full. There were

hundreds of people on the bridge. There was a die-in on the bridge

where everyone lay down on the bridge. It was symbolic to show

what would happen if a nuclear bomb went off. It would cause mass death

and devastation. These are some of your badges? That was the classics

Login, protest and survive, referencing the Government's

campaign of Protect and survive, what to do it in a nuclear war.

Hide under the nuclear table? other people from that era, I will

not dive for Thatcher. And vegetarians against it. -- will not

die. There was a broad coalition. Yes. What was the mood for people

who did not support this? The Tory slogan was Trident means jobs. So

people were going round repeating this parrot fashion. It was a good

slogan. But we put our alternative view. We said, if Barrow puts all

its eggs in one business, this removes all the opportunities for

surface ship building. Civilian ship building. Yes. So there's a

danger there. After this project, what are you going to be left with?

The CND supporters, the shipyard workers. All have a part to play

and a voice to be heard in a people's history, which is my

favourite kind of history. And folk music, which I often like, often

tell these kinds of stories and history through song. One's music

all -- one person's music often # The simple life is all we knew #

Before the ashes came falling... # The Furness will never be some

people's idea of a perfect tourist destination. But the bleak and

bracing beauty. The complex and sometimes turbulent history. And

the way in which waves of people have made their mark here between