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Barrow-in-Furness (; commonly known as Barrow) is a town and seaport in the county of Cumbria, England. Historically part of Lancashire it was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867 and merged with adjacent districts in 1974 to form the Borough of Barrow-in-Furness. Situated at the tip of the Furness peninsula close to the Lake District it is bordered by Morecambe Bay, the Duddon Estuary and the Irish Sea. In 2011 Barrow's population stood at around 57,000, while 69,000 lived in the wider borough making it the second largest urban area in Cumbria after Carlisle. Natives of Barrow as well as the local dialect are known as ''Barrovian''. In the Middle Ages, Barrow was a small hamlet with Furness Abbey, on the outskirts of the modern-day town, controlling the local economy before its dissolution in 1537. The iron prospector Henry Schneider arrived in Furness in 1839 and, with other investors, opened the Furness Railway in 1846 to transport iron ore and slate from local mines to the coast. Further hematite deposits were discovered, of sufficient size to develop factories for smelting and exporting steel. By the late 19th century, the Barrow Hematite Steel Company-owned steelworks was the world's largest.〔(Barrow Steelworks )〕 Barrow's location and the availability of steel allowed the town to develop into a significant producer of naval vessels, a shift that was accelerated during World War I and the local yard's specialisation in submarines. The original iron- and steel-making enterprises closed down after World War II, leaving Vickers shipyard as Barrow's main industry and employer. Several Royal Navy flagships, the vast majority of its nuclear submarines as well as numerous ocean liners and oil tankers were manufactured at the facility. The end of the Cold War and subsequent decrease in military spending saw high unemployment in the town through lack of contracts; despite this, the BAE Systems shipyard remains operational as the UK's largest by workforce and has major future expansion plans associated with the Trident successor programme.〔 Today Barrow is a hub for energy generation and handling. Several wind farms located off the coast of the town form one of the highest concentrations of turbines in the world.〔(World's biggest offshore wind farm opens off Britain as new minister admits high cost ) ''The Telegraph'', 9 February 2012. Accessed: 9 February 2012.〕 ==Toponymy== The name was originally that of an island – the name 'Barrai' can be traced back to 1190. This was later renamed 'Old Barrow', recorded as Oldebarrey in 1537, and Old Barrow Insula and Barrohead in 1577. The island was then joined to the mainland and the town took its name. The name itself seems to mean 'island with promontory', combining British ''barro-'' and Old Norse ''ey'', but it is more likely that Scandinavian settlers simply accepted ''barro-'' as a meaningless name, and so added an explanatory Old Norse second element. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Barrow-in-Furness」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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