'Furness Abbey Through The Lens Of The Sankey Photography Archive'

This is a film made with a selection of images of Furness Abbey, Cumbria, taken from the The Sankey Photography Online Archive. The archive holds photographs taken between 1900-1970.
A search for Furness Abbey produces hundreds of results. This is my selection of favourites put together into a film where they can be enjoyed in one sitting. It is not a mad dash but a relaxing 8 minute visit to the abbey ruins to be enjoyed at leisure. It gives time to look a little more closely at the people who appear in the photos and also gives a chance to explain the history of The Furness Abbey Hotel and the Furness Abbey railway station.
The Sankey Photography Online Archive is a collection of over 10,000 historical photographs taken by Edward and Raymond Sankey from their photography business in Barrow-in-Furness.
(The photos are held by The Cumbria Archives under Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC 4.0))
The Sankeys were father and son duo Edward and Raymond who photographed life in Barrow, Cumbria and the wider North West for over 70 years from 1900 onwards. These photographs document huge changes in Cumbria and Lancashire’s history over that period: landscape, cultural changes, individuals, industry and tourism to name just a few.
In 1923 Edward successfully gained a patent for his specially designed Photographic Printing Machine which allowed the Sankeys to print more postcards with increased speed. In 1925 The Sankeys purchased their first car which allowed them much greater access to the Lake District. The output of their work from 1925 became more focused on the Lakes and included their 'Tour of the Lakeland' series, sold to the ever increasing number of Lake District visitors.
These postcards became a successful part of the business and have since been widely collected over many years.
In 2016 the award winning charity ‘Signal Film and Media’ began working with the Sankey family to start the long process of cataloguing and re-housing the archive which was found to be stored in the family’s garage. The Sankey family wished the entire collection to be gifted to the Cumbria Archives and Signal was able to facilitate this. The images were catalogued and digitised by ‘Signal Film and Media’ as part of the ‘Seeing the North with Sankey’ project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage fund with the support of a team of volunteers.
After many years of hard work, the physical archive is now housed at The Cumbria Archives. It is a stunning collection of glass plate negatives and postcards of Barrow and the north-west which is believed to be the largest of its kind. The collection documents all aspects of life in the region between the years 1900 and 1970.
With the launch of the online archive in autumn 2023 the collection is now freely available for people to search and enjoy.
www.sankeyphot...
Cumbria Archives and Copyright.
All images copyright The Sankey Family Photography Collection, courtesy of Cumbria Archives.
For non-commercial, personal use of the Sankey photographs on this website, these are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. To read the full licence visit: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode