We pass through the room containing the top of the giant Jefferson rum barrel, the bottom section of which we saw previously in the Jefferson Family Exhibition downstairs. We then enter the cooperage, a workshop for the making of barrels.
Barrel manufacture was a complicated, skilled business and to become a cooper required the completion of a seven-year apprenticeship.
This exhibition shows how barrels were made, from the selection of the correct wood (always oaks for rum barrels) to the sizing, shaping and jointing of the wood staves to create a strong barrel which would not leak under pressure.
But now it is time to turn from the honourable craft of barrel-making to the smugglers who plied their trade on the rocky Cumbrian coast.
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