Barrow-in-Furness is an industrial town and port in Cumbria, North West England. It is known for its shipbuilding and steel-making industries. The town, often simply known as Barrow, is situated at the tip of the Furness peninsula. Barrow is the second largest settlement in Cumbria, the seventh largest on the Irish Sea coast, and the nineteenth largest in North West England. Barrow forms the overwhelming amount of territory of the wider Borough of Barrow-in-Furness. Historically a part of Lancashire, Barrow was a small fishing village before the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century. The building of the Furness Railway allowed iron ore to be transported to the area; the village's location made it ideal for smelting and then exporting steel. The natural harbour the booming town possessed allowed the locally produced steel to be put to another use: shipbuilding. During World War II Barrow was a target for the German airforce, the Luftwaffe, looking to disable the town's shipbuilding capabilities. The town suffered the most in a short period between April and May 1941. During the war, a local housewife, Nella Last was selected to write a diary of her everyday experiences on the home front for the Mass-Observation project. Her memoirs were later adapted for television. The difficulty in targeting bombs meant that the shipyards and steelworks were often missed, at the expense of the residential areas. Ultimately, 83 people were killed and 11,000 houses in the area were left damaged. To escape the heaviest bombardments, many people in the central areas left the town to sleep in hedgerows with some being permanently evacuated. Barrow's industry continued to supply the war effort, with Winston Churchill visiting the town on one occasion to launch the aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable. More on Barrow-in-Furness 

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