VCH Cumbria Project Continued

Led from the Department of History at Lancaster University and working with volunteer local historians, the project has embarked on an ambitious programme of work to start the process of researching and writing the history of every place in Cumberland and Westmorland.

The support of the Cumbria County History Trust and the organisations it represents has enabled the project to build a wholly new structure for coordinating the work of local historians in Cumbria. It is the hub of a network of collaboration, pioneering new ways of enabling volunteers in the regional community to contribute to a highly respected national work of reference. In doing so, the project is both enhancing skills and generating new knowledge. The project website acts as a training resource to support the work of volunteers and also as a databank, housing the fruits of volunteers’ research.

Townships and Parishes

Such a project must have an overall geographic structure. The VCH Cumbria project is using the Civil Parishes as they existed around 1900 as the basis for dividing the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland into units for the preparation of articles. This is a break with VCH conventions, as separate articles are normally written for each ancient ecclesiastical parish in other counties: READ MORE

There are 344 places in Cumbria for which separate VCH township/parish articles will be written. Follow the links to view a list of these places.

Cumberland (200 places); Westmorland (110); Furness (31); West Riding (Sedbergh, Garsdale & Dent)

In the case of Furness, we are looking to build on the existing articles in VCH Lancashire VIII, which are not structured as modern parish/township histories are and do not include a lot of the content the VCH now covers.  Therefore, researchers will have to rewrite these entries, updating them with further research and correcting any errors, as well as covering the 20th century history from scratch.  However, if this seems too much for a group or individual, simply concentrating on the period since c.1900 and bringing the story up to date could still be a useful contribution.