Bill Myers - Memories

Bill called his talk, illustrated by slides, Having Fun In Barrow.

He started with Food and Drink, showing a picture of a Thompson's Finest Ales beer mat from the mid-1950s. He said by the late 60s-early 70s brewing had stopped in the area, displaying another beer mat produced by Case's Ales before they closed in 1973.

The food section was illustrated by adverts for De Ganis ice cream sold in Ulverston and Barrow's Brucciani and Franchi's shops.

A 1961 advert for the Sunlight Chinese Restaurant in Barrow offered a three course meal for 3shillings and 6 pence (17 and  a half pence in today's currency).

Then Bill moved on to The Circus Coming to Town with a picture of Buffalo Bill Cody who visited Barrow in 1904, arriving in three special trains, including 500 horses, to put on a show watched by 12,000 people.

He moved on to Let's Go to the Fair with slides of  a fair in Barrow Park and Emerson's fairground equipment on the Town Hall car park.

Pictures were then shown of Abbey Baths (pool opened 1915, site cleared 1992) and the popularity of the Walney Outdoor Pool which would attracted as many as 2,000 people at a weekend.

Next came a Night at the Pictures featuring the Ritz cinema which opened with 2,000 plush tip-up seats in 1936 and a slide from 1989 when the queue of customers to see the first Batman film went right round the block.

Other featured cinemas that brought back memories were the Electric Theatre (opened 1920 with its two-seats-in-one in the back row one of the first in the country), The Coliseum (opened 1914 with its own orchestra to accompany silent films) and Walney Cinema (1915). 

The live stage was not forgotten with Her Majesty's Theatre (closed 1967) and the Royal Music Hall and Theatre, in Forshaw Street, which later became the Regal cinema.

Oh, such wonderful memories.