Barrow-in-Furness

Barrow-in-Furness, commonly known as Barrow, is an industrial port town and civil parish in the Westmorland and Furness area of Cumbria, England, historically part of Lancashire. It stands at the tip of the Furness peninsula, 24 miles south-west of Kendal and 18 miles west of Lancaster, with Morecambe Bay to the east, the Duddon Estuary to the west and the Irish Sea to the south. Barrow was a small hamlet controlled by Furness Abbey until the nineteenth century, when the Furness Railway carried iron ore and slate to new docks, hematite deposits allowed a steel industry to grow, and the town became a shipbuilding centre; it was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867. Its economy is now dominated by defence, notably the BAE Systems shipyard, and by energy handling including offshore wind. Its population was 55,489 in 2021.