Cumbria County

Cumbria, Englands second largest county and including the Lake District with Scafell Pike, Englands highest mountain, is located in the North West of England and is surrounded by Scotland to the north, Northumberland and Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south east and Lancashire to the south. The western border is the Irish Sea. View the [interactive map] From the Pictures of England site.

You can download the Map of Cumbria that used to feature on the back of the newsletter, this is a large PDF file which can take a while to download. But for a more detailed map check the Parish map available in the Research area of this website.

Cumbria was actually created in 1974 from the old counties of Cumberland and Westmorland plus small parts of Lancashire and North Yorkshire. The boundaries were further played with in 1989 which resulted in Cumbria gaining a further 9 people from Northumberland but losing a small amount of land to North Yorkshire.

The traditional counties of England are historic subdivisions of the country into around 40 regions. They are also known as the vice counties or historic counties, or archaically as the ancient or geographical counties. Visit Traditional counties of England for further information on how and when they were formed

The population from the 2001 census was 487,607 and futher modern day statistics are available at the Cumbria County Council Site, note though that these are just summaries and do not include any personal data. This compares with an approximate populations of Cumberland and Westmorland of 90,000 in 1700 and 130,000 in 1800, note however that boundry changes do not make the figures directly comparable due to the inclusion of parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire in Cumbria.