The Jubilee Digests

Jubilee Digests

In celebration of the Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the Queen has re-dedicated the VCH. To mark this occasion, the VCH Cumbria project aims has produced a set of historical data for every community in Cumbria. The core data presented in the Digests is as follows:

Name of place: status (i.e. whether ancient parish, township or chapelry); parish, ward and historic county in which it lay; modern local government boundary changes

Acreage of administrative unit and extent of common moor or fell, with date of enclosure

Population: overview of number of inhabitants from 1801 to 2001

Landownership: summary of manorial descent (if known); other major estates (if known)

Economic activity other than farming (i.e. mines, quarries, manufacturing, markets etc)

Places of worship both Established Church and nonconformist

Schools and other institutions, such as libraries, almshouses, village halls

So that the information is standardised, the same set of sources have been used for all digests.

1. Ordnance Survey 6" maps (1:10,560) County Series maps, First and Second Editions

2. Census data

3. Trade Directories: Parson & White’s History, Gazetteer and Directory of Cumberland and Westmorland (1829); Mannix & Whellan’s Directory of Cumberland (1847) OR Mannex & Co’s Directory of Westmorland with Lonsdale and Amounderness (1851); Bulmer’s History and Directory of Cumberland (1901) OR Directory of Westmorland (1906); Kelly’s Directory of Cumberland & Westmorland (1938)

4. 1851 Religious Census

5. Handlist of enclosure awards

6. Thomas Denton: a Perambulation of Cumberland 1687-1688, Surtees Society Vol. 207 (2003).

7. 1818 returns of schools

8. M. Hyde and N. Pevsner, Cumbria (Buildings of England series, Yale UP, 2010)

9. Local directories, guides etc for information on economic activity since 1939.

Digests for places formerly in Lancashire north of the sands have also drawn on VCH Lancs., Vol 8 (1914) and William Yates’s, Map of Lancashire, 1786.

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THESE DIGESTS ARE CONCEIVED AS A QUICK COUNTY-WIDE SURVEY: THEY ARE NOT COMPREHENSIVE HISTORIES AND WILL BE SUPERSEDED IN DUE COURSE BY FULL VCH PARISH OR TOWNSHIP HISTORIES.

Cary's Map 1816

Unless otherwise indicated, the Jubilee Digests are illustrated by extracts from Cary's New Map of England and Wales, with Part of Scotland, Second Edition 1816.  This map was printed at the scale of one inch to five miles, and was based on the surveys of Westmorland by Thomas Jefferys (surveyed 1768, published 1770) and Cumberland by Thomas Donald (surveyed 1770/1, published 1774), carried out at the scale of one inch to the mile.  Privately produced maps such as these, and Christopher Greenwood's one inch to the mile resurvey of  Cumberland (published 1823) and Westmorland (1824), were eventually superseded by those of the Ordnance Survey, which reached Westmorland in 1856.