Professor Claire Nance, lead researcher from Lancaster University, said: "The archive recordings allow us to look back in time at the Victorian origins of contemporary dialects. Researchers drew on the voices preserved in the Elizabeth Roberts Working Class Oral History Archive, housed at Lancaster University Regional Heritage Centre and Lancashire Archives. This once-defining trait of the Lancashire accent now survives mainly in east Lancashire. The findings confirm what locals have long suspected: Barrow’s accent is markedly different from the rest of Lancashire and Cumbria. The project received funding from Lancaster University and an Erasmus+ Internship grant from the European Union.