From 1885 to the 1970s, Edward Sankey and his sons, Raymond and Eric Sankey, photographed the north-west of England. Based at their studio on Duke Street, in Barrow-in-Furness, they captured everyday and extraordinary events. Their archive of more than 10,000 photographs is now free to browse at the Sankey Photography Archive.
A walker looks south-west from the side of Great Gable down Wasdale
A well-stocked butcher’s window at Nelson’s shop on Anson St, Barrow-in-Furness
Edward Sankey (b.1874, d.1965) became one of the north-west of England’s best known photographers. A native of Barrow-in-Furness, a town on the Irish Sea known for its shipbuilding, it was where the first Britain’s submarine was built in 1886 and seaplane in 1911. The town boomed with the arrival of the Furness Railway in 1846, changing from a farming village of 30 houses into a bustling industrial town.
An engineer and innovator, in 1923, Sankey patented his Photographic Printing Machine, which enabled the family to print postcards quickly to sell to the burgeoning population.
The Sankeys’ Shop
The Hindenburg airship flies over Duke St, Barrow-in-Furness, May 1936
Lines of washing hang between tenements on Sloop St in Barrow-in-Furness
The Oronsay was launched on 30 June 1950 but caught fire during its fitting out at Buccleuch dock in Barrow-in-Furness. It burned for three days
People attend the opening of the free public library in Ramsden Square in Barrow-in-Furness, 1922
A shop window display for a restorative called Vitafer
A crowded beach scene at Blackpool
The Mayfly airship after it split in half over Barrow-in-Furness, 1911
Winston Churchill, first lord of the Admiralty, at Vickers shipbuilders in Barrow-in-Furness, 1915
The launch of HMS Vanguard, 1909
A march of unemployed men in Duke St, Barrow, sets off for London, 1922
A man sits at the wheel of belt-driven, single-seater sports car
A group sit on top of the Bowder Stone in Borrowdale, Cumbria
A worker stands by a pile of wood chippings at Pulp Works papermill in Barrow in 1920
Crowds skating on the ice at Thwaite Flat, Dalton-in-Furness, 1908
King George V visits Vickers in 1917
Bathers on Cleveleys beach, with Blackpool and its tower in the background
Women enrol at the labour exchange on Nelson St in Barrow-in-Furness during the first world war
Skating on Ormsgill reservoir, Barrow-in-Furness. P Hodgson & Co’s soap and candle works is visible in the background
The launch of the Japanese battlecruiser Kongo at Vickers in 1912
People cram into the stern of the steam yacht Britannia on Windermere
A silhouetted walker on the rocks of Coniston Old Man
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