UK Travel Guide - Cumbria, UK Interesting Information

26th December 2008 - by Frederick Williams

Cumbria, UK Interesting Information

Cumbria is an administrative county in the far North West of Britain. It came into existence only after the passing of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria was born as a county in 1974. This county has six districts and has a population of 498,800.

Cumbria shares its boundaries to the west by the Irish Sea, to the east by County Durham, to the south by Lancashire, to the southeast by North Yorkshire and Northumberland. Scotland lies directly to its north.

A mostly rural county, Cumbria is home to the Lake District National Park, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful and picturesque areas of the United Kingdom. The area is always providing inspiration to different generations of British and foreign artists, musicians and writers. Much of the county is mountainous geographically and with the tallest point of this county and of Britain too being Scafell Pike which stands tall at 3210 ft (978 m). Any territory that in Britain is over 3,000 feet above sea level lies in Cumbria.

Hadrian s Walls parts can be found in the northern most reaches in the county, near and inside Carlisle. Its boundaries lie along the Irish Sea to Morecambe Bay in the west and right next to the Pennines in the east. Cumbria s boundary in the north stretches from the Solway Firth to the Solway Plain that goes eastward carrying along with the border from Scotland to Northumberland.

It contains six districts called Allerdale, Barrow in Furness, Carlisle, Copeland, Eden and South Lakeland. Due to many administrative reasons Cumbria has been divided into 3 areas of equal importance East, West and South. East contains the districts of Carlisle and Eden, in the West there are Allerdale and Copeland and the South has Lakeland and Barrow that makes South Cumbria.

In January 2007, Cumbria County Council supported an official bid to cancel the present two tier system that prevailed in the county and district councils supported a new governed Cumbria Council, to give submission for consideration to the Department for Communities and Local Government and eventually this was rejected.

Through this county six Members of Parliament are presented to the House of Commons, representing the six different constituencies of Carlisle, Penrith and The Border, Barrow and Furness, Copeland, Workington and Westmorland and Lonsdale.

The County of Cumbria does not have much of history as it was created in 1974 from some of the areas of the earlier administrative counties of Cumberland and Westmorland. The name Cumbria has been used for this territory for centuries. Cumberland county borough of Carlisle, with it the North Lonsdale or Furness portion of Lancashire which included the county borough of Barrow in Furness and from the West Riding of Yorkshire, the Sedbergh Rural District.

Some people, especially those who are born or brought up in the area, continue to prefer calling some parts of Cumbria in terms of the very old county boundaries in spite of it is a non metropolitan county, thus the Furness area is often referred as a part or portion of Lancashire and Kendal and the area surrounding it as Westmorland.