Poems

Appendix

 

MINING

 

Horses were used to pull carts containing iron ore which was mined at Whitriggs, Thwaite Flat, and Lindal Moor pits. It was quite common to see a string of twenty to thirty such cards, often in the charge of young boys or even young girls, travelling along Barrow Lane from the pit-heads to the ore yards. The ore was put into ore wagons called bogies, which were pushed by hand along the jetties. Then the ore was shovelled into vessels called sloops, which were lying at the end of the jetties. The iron ore was shipped to South Wales, Chester, The Midlands, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Coal was brought back from Wales, and timber from Scotland.

 

In the nineteenth century, ore was raised by means of a horse gin, and pits were never drained. The miners were raised and lowered in buckets. Because of the dangerous conditions in the Furness mines, accidents and deaths were all too common. On 25th November 1828, William Fisher records . . . . "Two men wear sufacated by the foul air at Crosgates Iron Ore Pit . . . there was two others in at the same time which escaped with dificulty be accinding by the shaft in the bucket both the unfortunate men have left widdows and small famileys to bewail there loss" . . .  On the 26th May 1838 . . . . "two men named Anthony Hall and David Parkinson was suffocated at Stainton Iorn ore works by the cabbin taking fire at the smook decending down the shaft Hall has left a widow and seven Childer Parkinson has left a widow but no family".

 

 

Note: All extracts from William Fisher's Diary are written with spelling and punctuation errors as contained in the original diary.

TRAVEL

 

Before the opening of the Furness Railway (1846), travellers used the Turnpike Road (completed in 1820), but the journey to and from Lancaster took several hours, so most people used the cross-sands route from Ulverston to Lancaster because it was quicker, and also because of the dust raised in clouds, by the carriages on the roads. Travelling by this method was very unpleasant. A regular cross-sands passenger service operated between 1871 and 1857. However, there were many fatal accidents. In January 1841, "two young men were drowned on Leven sands . . . . and wehn found next morning,t he horse and gig was stuck fast in the channel and one of the two men entangled about the step of the gig, the other found a little below in some fishing nets the wear a long way below the ford". May, 1846, "a mellancoly los of life 9 Persons in attempting to Cros the Sands from Ulverstone to Cartmell on the 4 May got into what the call Black Scare hole which is a hole 13 feet deep at Low Water the wear all in one cart every one with the horse perrished it was suposed that the weare the wors for licquor"

(Extracts from William Fisher's diary).