Barrow Day by Day

Barrow seems to have an inordinately high density of Victorian nonconcormist chapels, most of them (but not all) now derelict. I think this may have been part of a hopeless plan to bring Temperance to the influx of migrant workers who drank and brawled in the streets! This one is in Storey Square and I expect an Old Barrovian will be along shortly to tell us its history. Bill? You have time on your hands these days!

I would hardly call it beautiful but it is rather imposing.

While other UK photobloggers are revelling in a once-in-a-generation snowfall, Barrow still hasn’t had more than the barest dusting. At this time of year though there’s often Barrow’s answer to Mount Fuji to fall back on. Black Combe is ever present in the background and capped with snow it looks dramatic even when it’s hazy.

Black Combe is exactly 600 metres high, so you can judge for yourself where the snowline lies.

It’s been a while. Have you missed me?

I’ve been distracted by other things for a couple of weeks. Not least by maintaining a hand-written journal throughout the month of January, which I suspect stands a better chance of being preserved for posterity than anything electronic. And in similarly luddite vein, I’ve been out and about with my trusty old Nikon (oh how I love its clunky clickiness and its heft in the hand!) and a few rolls of Ilford Delta 100 and 400 which I recovered from my freezer when defrosting it. It’ll be a while before you get to enjoy the fruits of my labours but good things come to those who wait. Deferred gratification and all that. Now, where can I get my hands on an enlarger these days?

Now, where was I? I can’t bring you the much vaunted snow because despite what you may have seen in the news, we haven’t got more than a few flurries. So here’s a shot I took last week of the High Bridge in fog.

The service roads that run behind Walney terraces are generously proportioned, much more so than the ginnels, cracks and tenfoots of other northern towns.

This one is probably the most familiar to me from childhood. It’s the only one with a kink in it and it runs between King Alfred Street, where my Nanna and Granddad lived at number 26, and Dominion Street. 26 King Alfred isn’t visible here, being just round the kink on the left.

When I came back to Walney lots of things looked very familiar but this one eluded me for a while. Until, that is, I squatted down so I was the height of six-year-old me - and then it all came back.

Grovelling apologies to followers of this site. I’ve been unwell for the last quite a few days; not feverish and delirious ill but seriously asthmatic ill to the point where I could not only not get out with the Nikoff.

Anyway, just to be getting on with, here’s a shot of Bristol Street. Not a Bristol street, though the steepest street in Britain is in that fine city, but Bristol Street on Walney which nicely dispels any idea that because Walney is low-lying then it must be flat. You should try running up and down it, even without respiratory problems!

Many of the Victorian yard buildings are extremely attractive, especially now that the years of grime have been cleaned off them to reveal the local sandstone underneath. It’s to be hoped that this distinctive architecture will be respected as Barrow tries to reinvent itself. An awful lot of it has already gone.

That grime came from Barrow’s long years as an iron and steel town. Once it was filthy, but now the air is refreshingly clean (except when the freezing fog rolls in as it did a week ago, and asthmatics like me suffer from the traffic fumes in the temperature inversion.) Of course, one day I’ll finally have the Nikoff with me at the moment when the Roosecote Gas Terminal is spouting the distinctive orange fumes of nitrogen dioxide…

This Barrow Island pub seems to have been around forever, unchanged. It’s still open, too, although I’ve never been in there (I believe they run a team in a quiz league though, so it might be worth trying.)

The same can’t be said of its surroundings though. Once it was hemmed in by railway lines. Now it appears through the winter foliage of a public garden, and is overshadowed by the monstrous Devonshire Dock Hall.

Two days into 2009 and the year has lost its seasonal hangover. The freezing fog that has blighted us for several days (making taking photographs a trial as well as the damp cold seeping through to the bones) has dispersed. The sun shone and temperatures rose to a couple of degrees above zero.

A lovely day, then, to get out to the shops by way of the Channelside. Lots of lovely things to see and snap, but I was taken by the pile of fishboxes piled up on the quay. I wonder how they got where they are - it’s not as if they are from Irish Sea ports after all. West of Ireland, mostly, and Pittenweem on the coast of Fife. Ah well, ours not to reason why!

I wonder if the various fishing coops offer a bounty for their boxes?