RESTORERS are to be drafted in to the historic Furness mansion, the Abbey House Hotel, after a fire ripped through a staircase.

Four fire crews from Barrow, Ulverston, Dalton and Broughton were called to the Grade-II listed hotel on the outskirts of Barrow-in-Furness, after an electrical fault ignited sheets in a storage cupboard on a stairwell.

It took 31 firefighters two hours to deal with the fire as smouldering linen and wood choked the central area of the hotel with smoke and scorched the stairs.

Hotel manager Andrew Thompson said luckily the fire had not damaged key historical features of the 1914 mansion designed by Edwin Lutyens.

"It's mainly wallpaper and carpets we have brought in that have been damaged, none of the original features have been destroyed which is fortunate. There are ten bedrooms blocked off at the moment and a stairwell."

But despite the disruption, the hotel was back in action immediately after the fire, as guests and functions were moved to different parts of the huge 58-bedroom hotel. A wedding scheduled for the grand hall on Saturday went ahead but in the more modern extension at the back of the building.