*All Dalton Heritage Trail artworks** including the logo, leaflet, map, signage art, films and photographs are copyrighted to the artist Rachel Capovila and Barrowfull. Permissions are granted for the use of the Dalton Heritage Trail and educational resources relating to the trail ONLY under the administration of DACH. Any other use or reproduction must have permissions from the artist.

**Except where stated and the copyright remains with the named eg photographer or writer.

At the bottom of Market Street is Tudor Square,  a recent place name and one difficult to understand. That the site presently known as Tudor Square is very ancient cannot be denied, being shown as Town Endon a 1577 map drawn by Hogenberg. At this time, it could well have been a small village with cottages and farms surrounding the village green. According to W.G. Hoskins,² many medieval villages developed around an enclosed space, the village green, in which the livestock could be confined at night-time for safety. This is quite possibly what happened here; the word ‘green’ seems to have persisted throughout the years, even as recently as 1948, when a triangular plot of land behind the row of houses Nos. 1-4, was always referred to as ‘the green’ by locals. Hoskins also mentions that many of these villages had a back lane enclosing part of the site. Many older Daltonians will confirm that Beckside Road, in local parlance, was often referred to as the back lane. All this evidence, although tenuous to say the least, does at least point to the possibility that what today is a busy bus terminus, centuries ago was a rustic village green.

There was also a tumbril or ducking stool, situated according to one source¹ where Tudor Square is today; or, according to Mr. Stanley Fisher, former town clerk of Dalton, in that area close to where Station Road joins Market Street, and currently occupied by a doctor’s surgery and the Mason’s Arms. Once a farmhouse existed on the site where the surgery now stands, and in the property deeds it was referred to as Cuckstool Farm. Because this land is very low-lying, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that at one time there must have been a pond here; and, if this was the case, coupled with the fact that it is considerably closer to the old town, then this must be the preferred site for the location of the ducking stool.

It was at this time that the local iron ore mines were working at full capacity, and before 1846 when the railway arrived on the scene, the ore from the local mines was transported in horse-drawn wagons to Barrow docks. From all the surroundings pits these heavy, cumbersome wagons, loaded with iron ore trundled into Dalton along Ulverston Road and Broughton Road and the two routed converged at Tudor Square. At this time of course, it was not known as Tudor Square, but probably as The Green. With this constant heavy traffic in leaky wooden carts, all that would be required to churn the ground into a red, muddy mess would be a spell of wet weather, and there must have been plenty of that. Then, it is not impossible that someone, sadly regarding the churned-up earth, could have commented something like ‘…..it’s barely green now’.  Possibly this survived as a nickname, and if so it would then be but a small step from that to Bally Green.  This is all very hypothetical, and it may be that nothing like this ever happened; but it is at least a vague sort of possibility. It may just be that this possibility becomes slightly more believable when we consider that it was not long before another name appeared –  Never Green Square. So now we have progressed from barely green to bally green and then to never green. In those days the Black Bull Hotel was a favourite stopping place for the drivers of the horse-drawn carts which moved the iron ore down to the docks in Barrow from inland. With all those horses standing about and the seepage from the ore carts, it was small wonder that the area got its name!

There may appear to be a certain amount of logic in this, but there is no supporting documentary evidence so all we have is pure conjecture. All that can be said with certainty, however, is that the name was changed sometime between 1842 and 1886, when it first appears as Tudor Square in a local directory⁴.

1. ^{C & W.} Proceedings, New Series, vol. 10
2. The Makings of an English Landscape
3. Barrow News, 25 November 1977
4. Roberts, Directory of Barrow-in-Furness

A History of Dalton-in-Furness, James E. Walton, 1984.

Published by Phillimore & Co. Ltd, Chichester, Sussex

Printed by The Camelot Press Ltd, Southampton

Dalton-in-Furness from A-Z, Compiled by James Walton.