Ulverston

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ULVERSTON - popularly Ooston - a town, a township, a parish, a sub-district, and a district, in Lancashire. The town stands on the Furness railway, near the influx of the river Leven to Morecambe bay, 5 miles NE of Dalton-in-Furness; belonged to the Saxon magnate Ulph or Ulpha; was given, by King Stephen, to Furness abbey; superseded Dalton, after the dissolution of monasteries, as practically the capital of Furness; is now a seat of petty sessions and county courts, and a polling place; publishes two weekly newspapers; carries on brewing, iron-founding, the manufacture of linens, checks, ginghams, and wood-hoops, and a considerable coasting trade; presents a modern, well built, cleanly appearance, with streets branching from a market place; and has a head post-office, a r. station with telegraph, two banking offices, two hotels, a court-house, a police station, a concert-hall built in 1850, a temperance hall, an iron market-cross of 1821, a parochial church restored in 1864, another church built in 1832, three dissenting chapels, a Roman Catholic chapel, a subscription library, a people's library, an endowed school with £31 a year, two proprietary schools, a national school, a workhouse, charities £56, a weekly market on Thursday, five annual fairs, and races or flan-sports in Aug. Pop. in 1851, 6,433; in 1861, 6,630. Houses, 1,348. more ...

John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72)