This book contains short, pithy summaries of historical information about every community in Cumbria, large and small. Arranged alphabetically, it provides a digest of facts about population, landownership, local economic history, places of worship, schools and other community institutions across the centuries.
The groundwork for the Gazetteer was carried out for the Victoria County History of Cumbria project by a large team of volunteer local historians, who compiled brief historical cameos for the project website, drawn from a checklist of key sources. This was a large undertaking, since the project divides Cumbria into 348 separate places (defined as the Civil Parishes as they existed in the 1890s). The material prepared for the website has now been substantially re-written for this Gazetteer, in an attempt to ensure accuracy and consistency.