








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-
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-
(Extracts from William Fisher's diary).