This historic county in the NorthWest of England includes the great manufacturing city of Manchester (now probably best known for its football) and the port city of Liverpool (which for hundreds of thousands became the gateway to a new life across the Atlantic) as well as a dozen or more large towns such as Wigan, Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley and Rochdale with industrial economies built on mining, engineering and cotton.
This, however, is only a part description of Lancashire. There is also a coastline with resorts such as Blackpool, Morecambe and Southport to which the inhabitants of the large inland towns flocked for holidays in the decades before jet planes and package tours to the Mediterranean. There are great stretches of open moorland which still attract the more energetic walkers. There are the beautiful river valleys of the Ribble, Hodder and Lune ... and then in the north there is the Lake District!
Since the administrative boundary changes of 1974 the whole of the Lake District and its National Park has been in the county of Cumbria, but before that date no such county existed. The lakes lay in three counties: Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire. I myself was born in that part of northern Lancashire once known as "Lonsdale North of the Sands", now incorporated into Cumbria. So my origins are on the fringes of the lakes region, close to the estuary of the River Duddon, a stream considered by many to flow through the most beautiful river valley in Lakeland.
As a child growing up further south among the blackened millstone grit walls of a cotton town I always felt proud to think that when spending summer weeks with my grandfather and aunts by the Duddon sands I was still in my home county. Then from strategic points above my uncle's farm high on the hillside above the Crake Valley I could catch glimpses of Coniston Water, shining blue among the greenery. Lancashire was not all "dark satanic mills"; it made its own contribution to the "England's green and pleasant land" of our school song. Windermere and Coniston Water, two of the three largest lakes, were both in Lancashire as was the area between them containing Tarn Hows, one of the most visited scenic spots in Britain, and the countryside made famous by Beatrix Potter the author of those splendid animal tales for children.
Why am I writing this? Is it to turn back the years on the calendar and restore the ancient boundaries? No! Alongside a wish to rebalance the reputation of the county of my birth it is also to recommend that visitors to this most beautiful corner of England learn something of its history while here. It will add another dimension to your enjoyment. Let me ask some starter questions. Where is "Lonsdale"? What is the meaning of, "North of the Sands"? Could you identify the five rivers: Duddon, Crake, Leven, Kent and Lune? Which popular South Lakeland watery beauty spot did not exist as a single body of water until the 1860s when it was created in its present form by a local landowner? Where is Thurston Water?
As you travel from Ullswater to Wastwater, from Buttermere to Rydal, and from Coniston to Ambleside; as you visit the castles and the stately homes; as you climb the hills and wade in the streams, learn not only about present-day Cumbria but also about historic Cumberland, about Lancashire, and about Westmorland, this last a county whose name could so easily have disappeared. I'm proud to be a Lancastrian by birth, and also proud now to be Cumbrian - even if this did come about by dictat from London when I was already well past thirty years old. The modern Cumbria (in spite of the undeniable challenges generated by its economic history, social diversity and topography) is an important construct for political and managerial purposes, but like everything modern it has roots in a different history which must not be lost.
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David Murray was born just a few miles outside the boundary of the Lake District National Park. His professional life has taken him to every continent apart from Antarctica but he has found nothing to compare with this most beautiful corner of England. Among his other online interests David is web master of "England's Lakes".