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 with an interest 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 in operation since around 1870. It originally met in the Municipal Buildings on Lawson Street and later in Cornwallis Street. Later, it acquired premises (now disused) in Abbey Road. The new singing group was originally called the Barrow Working Men's Club & Institute Male Voice Choir; it adopted its present name in 1997. (The abbreviation BWMC continued to appear on the choir's blazer badges right up to September 2011.)
Mr Herbert H Thomas from Millom, a local schoolmaster and later a school's music organiser, was selected as effectively the first regular conductor (the initial appointee having resigned after only a fortnight). At the opening rehearsal on 9 July 1931 in the Abbey Road Club, twenty-five choristers presented themselves. The choir had immediate success, gaining first place only twelve weeks later at a revived Barrow-in-Furness Musical Festival. This win was soon repeated at the Workington Musical Festival. In addition to competing in singing festivals (which were featured regularly until the early 1980s and less frequently in subsequent years), the choir assisted local and national charitable organisations by performing in concerts without payment.
Disputes with the parent institute regarding membership requirements led to the choir moving out in 1936 to the Thwaite Street School. Here they operated for some years as an independent unit under the name Barrow & District Male Voice Choir. However, from April 1941, their operations had to be suspended due to the Second World War. In 1945, the choir was able to resume its previous activities and also to accept an invitation to move back to the Working Men's Institute under its original name.
Above are the Barrow Working Men's Club and Institute Male Voice Choir outside the Club on Abbey Road in December 1953. This choir later renamed itself The Barrow Male Voice Choir.
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". Then 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.
And here is the choir in the 1970s
Here is the choir in 1980 at a plush but unknown venue,
And here at Furness Abbey in 2001,
And here in 2010.
Here is the choir at the South Cumbria Musical Festival in 2018.
At the Manchester Annual Choral Competition in March 2025.
And, finally, at Hawkshead in July 2025.
This history is a work in progress and will soon be complete
