People can now go and see Barrow's most treasured archive of old photos, and the art it had inspired, in an exhibition running this month. 

A part of local charity Signal Film and Media’s heritage project, Sankey:Lives Through the Lens Project contains a display of Sankey Photographs currently on display at Cooke's Studios, Barrow.

The Sankeys were a father-son trio of photographers who documented life in Barrow and Cumbria over 70 years.

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Starting around 1900, they captured the landscape, cultural changes,  everyday lives and work lives of local people right up until the 1970s.

Thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, a special selection of photographs from the Sankey Photography Archive is currently open to the public for free, Wednesday to Saturday, 11am-5pm, until Saturday, August 31.

(Image: Signal Film and Media) Alongside the wonderfully nostalgic 'Sankey Room' , there is also a contemporary art exhibition, 'Field Notes' by local youth participants and artist Niki Colclough.

Created by the youths, viewers can experience Sankey-inspired works through sculpture, sound, projection and collage.

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As part of a quote provided in the exhibition, Nikki said: "Our shared heritage can help us connect - to each other and the world around us, it can provide us with values ~ we are hard workers ~ whilst also being a lens through which to dream about the future.

"The starting point for this exhibition was the Sankey Photography Archive and a conversation with local young people in which they said they wanted to see Barrow represented more positively, drawing upon its national significance for engineering, energy production and ecological protection."

(Image: Signal Film and Media) The collection is believed to be the largest of its kind and was generously donated by the Sankey family in the hope it will be accessible to future generations.

The full digitised collection was published online for the first time in September 2023 and has amassed many thousands of views from all over the world.

Workshops and masterclasses at the exhibition are now allowing people to interact with the vast archive of pictures taken between 1890 and 1970.

The Sankey Photography Archive website is a Signal Film and Media project funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund. All images copyright The Sankey Family Photography Collection, courtesy of Cumbria Archives.