SIR JOHN BARROW MURAL - ULVERSTON

This absolutely stunning mural was painted by Gill Barron (ipaint.org.uk) to co-incide with the opening of the restored Sir John Barrow monument in August 2010. Below is a general shot of part of the ginnel with about two-thirds of this 102 foot painting (a few inches longer than the monument is tall).....it's so unusual and special it's worth travelling across the country to see it! Ask for the Bodycare shop - it's on the south wall outside. For copyright reasons it is not possible at present to show any details of the mural.
John Barrow was a remarkable Ulverston man whose story is told on the mural in fascinating detail. He lived through, and was often at the heart of, a period of history of great drama; the American, Industrial and French Revolutions; the Napoleonic Wars; the rapid expansion of the British Empire; an age of great exploration and scientific discovery.
By the age 14 he had already risked his life repeating Franklin's experiment gathering electricty in a storm with a kite and wet string, started a Sunday School, surveyed the Conishead Priory Estate and left home to become head book-keeper and manager at an iron-foundry in Liverpool! By the age of 20 he had been whaling off Greenland and been thrown onto an ice shelf as a whale's tail tossed his boat through the air and smashed it!
He entered Government service in China, becoming a leading authority on that country. He became Auditor-General of Public Accounts in the new Cape Colony, which had been seized from the Dutch to prevent Napoleon gaining control of the sea route to India. Here he travelled over 2000 miles - about half on foot - to produce the first map of the Colony and was charged with attempting to resolve the many disputes with and between the Boers and the native tribes that ultimately led to the Zulu and Boer wars.
In 1804 he became the first permanent civil servant in Britain as Second Secretary to the Admiralty, holding the post for almost 40 years. His first task was to organise the rebuilding of the Navy which was in a state of ruin. There were few ships, as most had been moth-balled and left to rot after the Treaty of Amiens. There was no hemp (for the sails and ropes on which the Navy depended) as it had all been sold off to the French to save money! His efforts were timely, as within a few months he was making final preparations with Nelson before he departed for the Battle of Trafalgar.
Once Napoleon was banished and a prolonged period of peace established, he turned his attention for the next 35 years to organising Navy expeditions of exploration and discovery as a way of occupying the officers. Most of the expeditions were doomed to failure, but they were a huge undertaking for the time. There are many parallels with the space missions of the 1960’s and 70’s. The cost was on a similar scale, there was little of worth in the final destination but an awful lot was learned getting there, and they were driven by a fear of others getting there first!
He wrote many books and artricles and an autobiography (reprinted in 2009 by Cambridge University Press).

P.S. Life can be unfair. Nelson has a Square in London and a huge Column and 18 ft statue to commemorate his achievements. Barrow gets the frozen, windswept, northernmost tip of Alaska named after him! Few people outside of Furness have ever heard of John Barrow yet, without his reorganistaion and resupply of the hapless Navy of the time, Nelson would have had few ships to command and we'd probably now be speaking French and moaning about going out of the 2010 World Cup even earlier! But Nelson did pay with his life.

P.P.S. You will note that the mural is sited in a ginnel named after one of Sir John Barrow's less salubrious Ulverston contemporaries. While Barrow was busy equipping the Navy for the Battle of Trafalgar, "Colonel" Bolton (he was born in the "Hare and Hounds" pub which used to be on the site of the Bodycare shop, hence Bolton's Place) was busy equipping a company of volunteers to counter the threat of a Napoleonic invasion. This was paid for with profits from the "West Indian" trade i.e. slaves. He also killed an employee in what was supposed to be the last legal duel in England and was alleged to have dumped a female slave, who had offended him, into Windermere in the middle of the night, cutting off her hands when she tried to climb back on the boat! Nice man.

P.P.P.S. Colonel Bolton was reputed to import his slaves through the quay at Penny Bridge, named after the Penny family who were major landowners in the area. One of the family, James Penny (d. 1799), left the area and became a prominent slave trader and merchant in Liverpool and a vocal anti-abolitionist. Penny Lane, immortalised by the Beatles, was named after him.

LANTERN PROCESSION - ULVERSTON - SEPTEMBER 19th 2009

Ulverston's Lantern Procession at the end of the Charter Festival is a highlight of the Festival year. Three "rivers of light" join up at the Coronation Hall and parade to Ford Park. Several hundred lanterns, large and small, illustrated this year's theme of "WONDERLAND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS"........it's not every day that a large teapot and a grinning Cheshire cat hold up the traffic on the A590. And for one year only, Hoad Monument got in on the act as its shrouded scaffolding became a huge lantern above the town!