 |
| Lighthouse on a hill: The Sir John Barrow Monument in Cumbria. |
Today's Saturday Snapshot may look like a lighthouse on a hill, but it's never had a lamp, and
it's not on the coast (although it does look out across Morecambe
Bay). Perched on the top of Hoad Hill, in the Cumbrian town of
Ulverston, it's known to residents as the Memorial, and was built to
honour Sir John Barrow, who was a great traveller and naval man.
Wherever you go in the town you can't escape it, and it's visible for
miles around – when our daughters were small and we travelled up
there they would watch eagerly through the car windows, each wanting
to catch the first glimpse of the inland lighthouse.
 |
Smeaton's Tower, on Plymouth Hoe, which we
visited a couple of months ago - do you think
the Monument pictured above looks like this? |
Owned by the Sir John Barrow Trust, which is part of Ulverston Town Council, the Monument has been extensively repaired and restored in recent years, thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and a lot of hard work from the Friends of the Sir John Barrow Monument and the Ulverston Partnership. The structure is based on one of the lighthouses built at the Eddystone
Rocks at Plymouth – there have been four over the centuries, and
the upper part of this particular one, known as Smeaton's Tower,
stands up on the Hoe, where Drake played bowls while he waited for
the Armada to arrive, but that's another story...
 |
Sir John Barrow's birthplace at Dragley Beck. In his day the cottage
had a thatched roof, but since then it's been replaced with slate. |
Sir John Barrow (by the way, his name is nothing to do with the nearby town of Barrow in Furness) was the son of a tanner. He left school at 13 to work as clerk in iron foundry, then joined a whaling trip to Greenland, and was part of a British Embassy expedition to China. His diplomatic work also took him to the Cape of Good Hope, where he married and set up home, but he returned to England in 1804 to become Second Secretary to the Admiralty – a position he held until 1845.
 |
By the cottage is Dragley Beck, from which the area
takes its name. A beck is a stream, and this is not
very big, but just before we were there it was a raging
torrent and flooded the road and surrounding land. |
To
get back to Sir John, he was born in 1746, at Dragley Beck, which
must once have been a small village, or even a hamlet, but is now on
the outskirts of Ulverston. The cottage where his family lived still
stands and is occasionally open to visitors. It was shut during our
visit to the area, but we have been inside because years ago it was a
sweet shop, and I can remember going in with the girls, when it
seemed to be very dark and musty. However, I assume restoration work
has been carried out since then, and it is probably very different.
We passed it each time we walked into Ulverston from the campsite
where we stayed, and in the town itself one of the little alleyways
off the main street has the most amazing murals showing Sir John's
life and achievements. There are a series of beautiful, colourful
paintings along each wall, and they are much too big to get into one
photograph.
 |
One of the wall paintings showing the young John Barrow -
you can see his cottage in the background. |
A
keen astronomer, he helped develop navigation techniques, was a
founder member of Royal Geographic Society, and promoted British
exploration in various parts of the globe, including West Africa, and
the north polar region, as well as supporting the search for a north
west passage through the Canadian Arctic. During his retirement he
wrote his autobiography and compiled a history of Arctic voyages.
 |
Another part of the mural celebrating Sir John Barrow's work.
I think this is such a fantastic way to remember someone. |
Sir
Robert Peel (MP for my home town of Tamworth), made him a baronet, in
1835, while Barrow Strait, Barrow Sound, Barrow Point and Cape Barrow
were all named after him. And after his death in1848, at the age of
84, Ulverston honoured him by raising £1,250 through public
subscription and building a lighthouse, with a lower room for a
Keeper, and 112 steps leading to the lightless lantern room. Some
8,000 people climbed the hill for a special ceremony when the
foundation stone was laid in 1850, and they must have been been
jolly fit, because Hoad Hill is pretty steep. Mind you, all the hills
on the Furness Peninsula seem pretty steep, and although we always
promise ourselves we will walk up this one and look inside the
Monument, we never do.
 |
| A colourful panel marks the start of work on the Monument. |
The
Man of the House, who scrambled to the top when he was younger and
slimmer, remembers buying fizzy pop and snacks there, and says you
weren't allowed to climb the Monument in bad weather, which sounds
sensible (I think a flag flies to show when it is open). The ground
was certainly muddy after all the rain, and quite windy, and the
thought of staggering 450 feet to the summit, then crawling up a
spiral staircase which is almost 100 feet high, was singularly
unappealing – so we wimped out again!
For more Saturday Snapshots see Alice's blog at http://athomewithbooks.net/
