A SHORT HISTORY OF THE CHOIR

The choir was founded on 2 July 1931.  J R Green, Tom Johnson and H H Thomas who were members of Barrow Working Men's Club & Institute approached other members of the club who were interested in singing and they were successful in forming the nucleus of a Male Voice Choir.  The institute itself was one of the town's oldest social clubs, having been proposed in 1868 and being fully operational from around 1870.  It had met originally in the Municipal Buildings in Lawson Street and later in Cornwallis Street, before the currently disused premises in Abbey Road were ready for occupation.   The new choir was originally called Barrow Working Men's Choir before its present name was adopted in 1997.  (BWMC continued to appear on the blazer badges right up to September 2011.)

Herbert H Thomas from Millom, a local schoolmaster and later a schools music organiser, was selected as effectively the first regular conductor (the initial appointee having resigned after only a fortnight).  At the first rehearsal on 9 July 1931 in the Abbey Road Club, twenty-five choristers presented themselves.  The choir had immediate successes gaining first place awards at Barrow in Furness and Workington Musical Festivals.  In addition to competitive singing at festivals (which featured very regularly until the early 1980s and rather less frequently in subsequent years) the choir assisted local and national charitable organisations by performing in concerts without payment.

Due to the Second World War, the activities of the choir were suspended from April 1941 to January 1945 when operations were once more resumed on similar lines as before.

In 1946 the choir was invited to broadcast on BBC radio in conjunction with Vickers-Armstrong Shipyard Band in the feature "Sounding Brass and Voices".  In 1951 it appeared along with several well known national choirs and brass bands at the Royal Albert Hall London, in the inaugural presentation and broadcast of "The Rainbow", a tone poem by Christopher Hassle set to music by composer Dr Thomas Wood - by chance a boyhood resident of Settle Street in Barrow.

The choir usually took part in one or two competitive festivals every year with many successes, winning the prestigious Blackpool Festival in 1969, under the baton of Gilbert Uren.  In the late 1970s the choir was invited to take part in a BBC television programme called A Grand Sing and in January 1980 they emerged from many entrants as winners of the Male Voice class.

At present the choir performs around 15 concerts a year, and in 2000 took part in 2 mass male voice concerts for the new millennium, one at one at Whitehaven with 300 voices and one at Manchester with 2000 voices.

2001 was our 70th birthday and we made it a special year by staging a bumper concert at Barrow's theatre venue Forum 28 and holding extra social events.

During the next few years the choir was also represented amongst those attending the Festival of Sound and Brass, held in London's Royal Albert Hall (2006 & 2009).  In October 2010 there was another memorable concert in Forum 28 in conjunction with the touring Wagga City Rugby Male Choir from Australia.  The visiting singers included the former Barrow and Great Britain Rugby League star Phil Jackson, making a nostalgic return to the town. 

Today the choir's membership fluctuates around the forty to fifty mark (although the aim remains to grow still further). It still regularly enters for competition in the South Cumbria Music Festival in Ulverston.

The original conductor H H Thomas [photo centre front] retired in 1951 due to ill-health.  He was succeeded by Gilbert Uren, who like his predecessor worked in civilian life as a teacher and the local schools music advisor.  Subsequent conductors following Mr Uren's retirement in 1975 can be traced via the covers of various programmes for the choir's annual concerts: E (Ted) Wilson 1976-1977, a bass singer and a former conductor of the Vickers Male Voice Choir; Reginald Lanworn 1978-1982 [photo centre front] ; William Crawford 1983-1984; Michael Petty 1985-2003, Les Stewart in 2004, and Anthony Milledge from 2005 onwards.  Local solicitor Martyn Tongue gave the choir more than forty years of voluntary service as a piano accompanist up to the 1996 annual concert, when he was succeeded by Rita Matthews and Sue Quarmby. 

For many years the choir held two rehearsals each week on Mondays and Thursdays, but this was eventually reduced to one per week.  A new code of rules had been approved in 1935, and members failing to attend three successive rehearsals (without sufficient reason) were liable to be excluded from the choir under rule 6.  Rehearsals were held in an upstairs room at the Working Men's Club's premises in Abbey Road. The building also housed the choir's music library and this arrangement lasted until 1996.  Subsequently the venue was changed to the nearby Salvation Army citadel, although the agreement ended a year or two later.  Rehearsals then moved permanently to the Holy Family Catholic Church Hall in Newbarns, which had already been used briefly during the  transitional arrangements after vacating the Working Men's Club. 

Annual concerts have been held fairly regularly since 1952 and the same year saw the first of a series of annual dinners - eventually discontinued. Before the 1980s there had been no official uniform, although members appearing at concerts would generally wear a dark suit or evening dress together with a bow tie.  Light blue shirts were acquired for the choir's television appearance in 1980 - these were supplemented just before the 1983 annual concert with navy blue blazers.  New maroon blazers and ties were purchased in 1992, with financial support being raised from raffles and various sponsors.  This remained the colour until 2011, when the choir reverted to a new set of dark blue blazers and ties on the occasion of their annual concert on 15 October.

In 1996 revenue problems caused the closure of the Barrow Working Men's Club and Institute, thus depriving the choir of its main sponsor.  As a consequence it was decided to adopt the simpler name Barrow Male Voice Choir.  This also reflected the fact that it had become the sole survivor of several similar non-church choirs which had previously operated in the area of south-west Cumbria.  The Vickers Male Voice Choir, representing the town's main employer, had faced recruitment difficulties in 1965 when an amalgamation had been unsuccessfully proposed. Vickers Choir eventually folded in March 1975, donating all its remaining music to the Working Men's Choir.  At one time there had also been a quite separate Vickers Gun Shop Male Voice Choir - when shipbuilding and naval armaments manufacture had provided employment for many thousands of residents.  From the local government sector the Barrow-in-Furness NALGO Male Voice Choir had still been active in the 1940s, and there had also at one time been a separate Barrow Co-operative Society Male Voice Choir.  Just outside the town the Ulverston Male Voice Choir had functioned at least into the 1950s, whilst the Millom Male Voice Choir - which in 1939 had performed alongside the celebrated contralto Kathleen Ferrier in her first-ever radio broadcast - survived certainly into the 1960s. 
 

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