Home » Resources » Volunteer Resources

Volunteer Resources

Townships and Parishes

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 written for each ancient ecclesiastical parish in other counties.

In Cumbria the ancient ecclesiastical parishes often covered vast areas, embracing numerous ‘townships’ or ‘constablewicks’, the civil administrative divisions (please view the map showing the relationship between parishes and townships in part of Cumbria). Civil Parishes are often reincarnations of former townships, rather than ancient parishes. We are using them because it was often the township, rather than the parish, which functioned as the basic local administrative entity and many townships formed separate manors or estates. Some of the largest ancient parishes were notional, even for ecclesiastical purposes, as they were divided into chapelries, each of which functioned as a separate parish.

So, the Civil Parishes, set up under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1866, will provide the basic structure. We are using the Civil Parishes as they existed at the end of the 19th century, as later amalgamations and boundary changes, particularly those resulting from the Cumberland Review order of 1934, have disrupted the historic administrative pattern.

List of Articles

These links will take you to the 311 places, 198 in Cumberland and 113 in Westmorland for which separate VCH histories will be written.

 

Jubilee Digests

In celebration of the Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the Queen will re-dedicate the VCH. To mark this occasion, we aim to produce a set of historical data for every community in Cumbria, which we have called ‘Jubilee Digests’. To find out more, please see the Jublilee Digests Page

 

Briefing Papers

This page contains information and resources for those working on parish/township histories. Once draft township histories are finalised, they will be published on the 'History of Individual Places' pages of the website, and also on the national VCH website.

 

Articles in Progress

There are a number of drafters currently working on parish/township articles: Articles being drafted

Mosser: Dr Angus Winchester has completed a draft article on the township of Mosser, as an illustration of the standard format for VCH Cumbria township histories.

Mosser Draft Article (opens as pdf.)

 

Skills Training

CCHT undertakes to provided training tailored to volunteers’ needs. For more information about the training on offer to VCH volunteers, please see our Training page. 

 

Research Notes

Below are links to notes on source material used by VCH volunteers.