CUMBERLAND & WESTMORLAND ASSOCIATION FOR 

 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 



Iroactrmgs at ll^e Annual Piffling at ^ohiness, 



1885. 



The Tenth Annual Meeting of the Association was held this year at 

 Bowness-on- Windermere, on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 2nd and yd. 



The Proceedings began, as usual, with the Address of the retiring President, 

 Mr. R. S. Ferguson. The subject was "Potsherds and Pipkins," being an 

 able sketch of the rise and progress of the potter's art from the earliest times. 



The party — now numbering about seventy — afterwards sat down to lunch at 

 the Old England Hotel, at the close of which Mr. W. H. Schneider, the 

 President of the Windermere Literary and Scientific Society, said a few words 

 on the rise and progress of Barrow, which he justly described as being almost 

 unique among English towns during the present century. When he first came 

 to it in 1839, there were only about half-a-dozen houses. In 1859 began its 

 real era of progress with the opening of the Park Mine, its population increasing 

 in the two following years from 700 to 3,000. In 187 1 the number was 

 18,000; in 1881, 47,000; and in 1883, 53,000. Having received much 

 interesting information on the steel works, to .which Barrow owes so much of 

 its rapid advance, the company, to the number of about one hundred and 

 twenty, embarked on Colonel Ridehalgh's beautiful steam-yacht The Britannia, 

 which had been most kindly placed at the disposal of the members, and had a 

 pleasant sail to Lake Side. Here a special train was waiting to take the party 

 to the Barrow Steel Works ; arriving at 3-30. Divided into parties of twenty- 

 five, each accompanied by a courteous guide, the members were shown the 

 various processes of iron and steel making. The smelting furnaces were visited, 

 and then the grooved sand beds into which the molten iron flows, and is shaped 

 into the well known pig iron as it cools. The steel works were next visited, 

 and the huge Bessemer blast furnaces where the liquid metal is deprived of its 

 carbon, afterwards mixed with the spiegeleisen, and then, as steel, poured into 

 the moulds. It is now rolled out to a length of perhaps eighty or ninety feet, and, 

 after being cut to the proper size, left to cool and consolidate into steel rails. About 

 ten years since, a length of thirty feet was the utmost that could be obtained ; now, 

 one hundred and eighty feet is the maximum length to which a rail can be 

 rolled. About five o'clock the company left for Furness Abbey, the interesting 

 features of which were ably described by Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite, F.S.A., the 

 well known authority on monastic buildings, and by Mr. Paley of Lancaster 

 After tea at the Furness Abbey Hotel, the party returned by special train 

 Lake Side, and thence in Colonel Ridehalgh's yacht to Bowness, arriving 

 shortly after eight p.m. 



