Lancashire
| Lancashire | |
|---|---|
 | |
 | |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Country | England |
| Borders | Cheshire Cumberland Westmorland Yorkshire |
| Population | 4,942,364 |
Lancashire, officially the County Palatine of Lancaster, is a county in north-western England. It is the second most populous county in England, with a population of just under 5 million. Its southern border with Cheshire is marked by the River Mersey, with its eastern border with Yorkshire being marked by the Pennines. It borders Westmorland to the north at Morecambe Bay, while "Lancashire-over-Sands" in the north west is detached from the rest of the county by the shallow Kent estuary, contains part of the Lake District and borders Westmorland partially along Lake Windermere to the east and Cumberland along the River Duddon to the west. Western Lancashire has a coastline on the Irish Sea.
The traditional county town of Lancashire is Lancaster in the north of the county, whilst the largest city entirely within the county is Liverpool, which has a population of over 500,000 and is located on the Mersey estuary in the south-west of the county. Manchester (whose southernmost suburbs are located in Cheshire) is similar in size. Other major settlements include Barrow-in-Furness, Blackburn, Blackpool, Bolton, Preston, Rochdale, Salford, St. Helens, Warrington (again, partially in Cheshire) and Wigan.
Lancashire is the newest county in England, with its name being recorded first in the 12th century.
For the purposes of local government, 21 different council areas cover (either partially or wholly) areas of Lancashire, of which one is named after the county (but covers part of Yorkshire too). Most of the council areas that cover the county Lancashire form part of the statistical region North West England. However, a small rural part of Lancashire is under Calderdale Borough Council, which is part of Yorkshire and the Humber.
Contents
Geography
Lancashire stretches from the Irish Sea in the west to the Pennine Hills in the east and the fells of the southern Lake District in the north. The southernmost point in Lancashire is Hale Head Lighthouse on the River Mersey. The northernmost point is Elter Water; 77 miles to the north of Hale. It is bound to the north-west by Cumberland, to the north by Westmorland, to the east by Yorkshire, with which it shares far its longest land border, formed by the Pennines, and the border with Cheshire to the south is demarcated by the Mersey. A large area of the county is highland, such as the moorland of the Pennines, bisected by valleys in which historic mill towns such as Burnley, Blackburn, Bury and Rochdale are located. Flatter lands are found in the south-west of the county in the West Derby hundred around Liverpool and the Mersey estuary.
Hundreds
The county Lancashire consists of six hundreds; Lonsdale in the north, Blackburn in the west, Amounderness and Leyland together occupying central Lancashire, Salford (or Salfordshire) in the south-east and West Derby (or West Derbyshire) in the south-west.
Lancashire North of the Sands
Lancashire North of the Sands, or Lancashire over the Sands, is an exclave of the county Lancashire which lies to the north and west of the Kent estuary, separated from the main body of the county by a small spur of south-western Westmorland. Cumberland lies to the north and west. Lancashire North of the Sands is occasionally referred to as Furness, although that more properly is one of its constituent areas, the other being the Cartmel peninsula immediately to its east. By road, Lancashire North of the Sands would typically be accessed from the main body of Lancashire by travelling north on the M6 motorway into Westmorland before joining the A590 at junction 36 (Crooklands Interchange) and heading west, re-entering the County Palatine between Meathop and Lindale by crossing the River Winster. By far the largest settlement in this part of Lancashire is Barrow in Furness. Other notable settlements include Askham, Broughton, Coniston, Grange-over-Sands and Ulverston All of Lancashire North of the Sands is in the Lonsdale hundred, and it is sometimes called North Lonsdale for this reason. Since the south-western Lake District lies within this part of Lancashire, it contains some of the county's most mountainous scenery; indeed, the county top the Old Man of Coniston (2,632.6 ft) is found this part of Lancashire. The biggest lake entirely within this part of Lancashire is Coniston Water, the 3rd largest lake in the Lake District. Windermere, the largest natural lake in England, straddles the boundary with Westmorland.
History
Ptolemy (c. 150 AD) recorded modern-day Lancashire as being within the territory of the British Celtic tribe the Brigantes. The Roman occupation of Britain lasted from 43 AD to c. 410 AD and evidence for a Roman presence in what is now Lancashire is strong; indeed, following the post-Roman introduction of Old English to Britain (spoken 5th-11th centuries), many Lancashire place-names were suffixed with the Old English -ceaster (now -caster, -chester), denoting a Roman fort, with the Roman-era Latin forms sometimes appearing on record. Such names include Lancaster, Manchester and Ribchester. In addition, the Roman settlement Coccium may have become Wigan (whose name may indicate Latin vicus).
Old English-speaking Germanic tribes arrived in Britain in the early-mid 5th century. Present-day Lancashire and Cheshire may have been among the last areas of England to be settled by Germanic speakers. By c. 700 AD, the lands that now make up Lancashire formed a part of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, with the River Mersey (now the southern border of Lancashire) forming part of the southern border of that kingdom; indeed the name Mersey is from Old English mæres-ēa, which means "border river". However, some time in the 8th century, the part of Lancashire between the Ribble and Mersey appears to have become a part of Mercia, the Anglian kingdom broadly co-extensive with the English Midlands.[1]
Lancashire's oldest known Christian church was founded in the 8th century at Heysham. The site is currently occupied by St Peter's Church, the oldest standing parts of which were constructed in the 11th century. Unconfirmed local legend has it that in the 5th century, Saint Patrick was shipwrecked off Morecambe Bay and built a chapel at the site.
In the early 1070s, a few years after the Norman conquest in 1066, the land between the Ribble and Mersey, with the addition of Amounderness, was granted by William the Conqueror to Roger of Poitou. On the order of Roger of Poitou, motte-and-bailey castle was built at Penwortham (immediately south of the River Ribble from Preston), to guard the Ribble estuary and a ford crossing the river.
At the time the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086 on the order of William the Conqueror, Lancashire was one of only two counties to not yet exist in its own right; the other was Rutland, which was then an detached part of Nottinghamshire. The part of Lancashire between the Rivers Ribble and Mersey was known as Inter Ripam et Mersam (Latin: "between the Ribble and the Mersey") in the Domesday Book and was included in the returns of Cheshire; some interpretations state that this shows southern Lancashire to have been a part of Cheshire at the time (as were parts of north Wales), but this view is far from universal. The largest recorded settlement in Inter Ripam et Mersam in 1086 were West Derby (now a suburb of Liverpool), with 128 households, and Salford, with 63 households (both namesakes of hundreds). Present-day Lancashire north of the Ribble (including Lancaster, Preston and the Furness peninsula) may have formed part of Yorkshire (West Riding) in the 11th century.
The name Lancashire first appears on record in the late 12th century; in 1182, during the reign of Henry II, where it appears in the pipe rolls (the main record of administrative transactions in Medieval England).[2]
The House of Lancaster was one of the two competing factions in the Wars of the Roses.
In 1612, the famous trial of the Pendle Witches, who had held their sabbats on Pendle Hill in the county, resulted in multiple executions.
Although coal had been mined in Lancashire since at least the 13th century (possibly as early as the Roman era) the onset of the Industrial Revolution in 1760 saw considerable growth in the production of coal in the south part of the county. The abundance of coal was indebted to the local geology, as around 300 MYA, during the Carboniferous period, modern-day Lancashire was covered by a swampy tropical rainforest. The Lancashire Coalfield was at its most productive in the early 20th century; in 1907, over 26 million tons of coal was produced.
1889 saw significant changes to local government in Lancashire. An administrative county called "Lancashire" was established, which had similar boundaries to the county proper but excluded the county boroughs such as Barrow-in-Furness, Blackburn, Bolton, Bootle, Burnley, Bury, Liverpool, Manchester, Oldham, Preston, Rochdale, St Helens, Salford and Wigan, which all effectively formed their own administrative counties. The local government changes did not affect the historic boundaries of Lancashire, however.
The Local Government Act 1972 abolished pre-existing units of local government in England and Wales. They were replaced by non-metropolitan county councils and metropolitan county councils. Parts of southern Lancashire came under control of the metropolitan Merseyside and Greater Manchester County Councils and the metropolitan borough councils within those areas. Much of the county's heartlands came under control of Lancashire County Council (which also covered the Forest of Bowland in Yorkshire), a non-metropolitan council, whilst Lancashire-over-Sands in the north came under control of the non-metropolitan Cumbria County Council. The traditional county, however, remained unchanged.
Coal mining in Lancashire ended in 1993, with the closure of Parkside Colliery at Newton-le-Willows.
Churches in the area were instructed to not share hymn books to as a precaution against the 2020 spread of coronavirus.[3]
Another change to local government in the far north of Lancashire came in 2023, when Cumbria County Council was abolished. The parts of Lancashire under that council came under the control of the unitary authority Westmorland and Furness Council. The changes did not affect the boundaries of the traditional county.
Administration
Local government in Lancashire is the responsibility of 21 different council areas, or 'administrative counties', which cover different areas of the historic county and, in some cases, parts of other counties too. A geographically large area of the county is served by Lancashire County Council, although this serves the Forest of Bowland in Yorkshire as well and excludes more than half of the county's population. The council areas covering areas of Lancashire alone are Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, Blackpool Council, Bolton Council, Bury Council, Knowsley Council, Liverpool City Council, Rochdale Borough Council, Sefton Council, St Helens Council and Wigan Council, all of which, bar Sefton Council, are named after and run from their largest settlement. Furness and the Cartmel peninsula in the county's far north are administered by Westmorland and Furness Council, which also covers the county Westmorland and parts of Cumberland and Yorkshire. Calderdale Council mainly covers part of Yorkshire, but also a small area of eastern Lancashire. Oldham Council also covers parts of both Yorkshire and Lancashire. Manchester, whose southern suburbs are part of Cheshire, are the responsibility of Manchester City Council; other council areas that cover parts of both Lancashire and Cheshire are Halton Borough Council, Salford City Council, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, which includes a small part of north-west Derbyshire, Trafford Council, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, which additionally covers a small area of Yorkshire, and Warrington Borough Council.
The vast majority of the councils responsible for local government in Lancashire make up a part of the statistical region North West England. However, those under Calderdale Council are part of Yorkshire and the Humber.
Transportation
The principal airport within Lancashire itself is Liverpool John Lennon Airport (7.5 miles south-east of Liverpool city centre), through which over 4 million passengers passed through in 2023. The considerably busier Manchester Airport is in Cheshire but serves the south Lancashire city and indeed much of North West England.
Lancashire was the site of the first motorway in Great Britain, the Preston bypass, which now makes up a part of the M6 motorway. As part of its 230-mile course from the M1 to the Scottish border, the M6 has a 60 mile section in Lancashire, passing (north-south) Lancaster, Preston, Chorley and Warrington. Just north of Warrington, it meets the M62, which links Liverpool with the Humber area via the Manchester built-up area and the major Yorkshire cities Leeds and Bradford.
Demographics
As of the 2021 census, Lancashire was one of the most Christian areas in England and Wales. The local authority area Knowsley (located in the south of the county) was the most Christian in England, with over 66.6% of Knowsley residents identifying as Christian (compared to the UK national average of 46%). The second most Christian was Ribble Valley (located mainly in Lancashire, partially in Yorkshire), with 66.4% identifying as Christian.[4][5]
Settlements by population
Over 200,000
- Liverpool (552,267)
- Manchester (510,746) - partially in Cheshire
Over 100,000
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Over 80,000
Over 60,000
- Bury (77,211)
Over 40,000
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Over 20,000
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Sport
The predominant team sports are soccer with Liverpool FC and Manchester United. Rugby league also has a large presence, with teams such as Wigan Warriors and St Helens RFC.
Influence on popular culture
Lancastrians have had an everlasting influence on popular culture worldwide since at least the mid-20th century. In the 1960s, The Beatles from Liverpool were one of the first British acts to have long-term success in the United States. Lancashire-born Rick Astley has been an internationally famous pop singer since the 1980s.
The world of comedy owes much to the work of Lancastrians. Early comedians from the county include Jimmy Clitheroe, Les Dawson and Tommy Trafford. Stan Laurel of the American comedy duo Laurel and Hardy was born in Ulverston in the Furness area of the county. In the 1990s and early 21st century, a new generation of Lancashire comedians emerged; Bolton alone produced Peter Kay, Paddy McGuinness and Diane Morgan (known for the characters Mandy Carter and Philomena Cunk); other names include Lee Mack and Johnny Vegas.
Transport
The M6 motorway, England's oldest and longest motorway (232 miles), runs north-to-south through Lancashire, linking the county with the Lake District, Carlisle and Scotland to the north, and Cheshire, the Midlands and the South of England to the south. The first length of motorway to open in the UK was the section of M6 that bypasses Preston to the east, opening in 1958. Throughout its 60-mile section through the county, the M6 also passes Lancaster, Wigan and Warrington. Other motorways in the county include the the M55 (which links Preston to Blackpool), M61 (which joins the M6 at Preston to the Manchester built-up area to the south-east, via Bolton) and M62 (which links Liverpool and Manchester to the major Yorkshire cities of Bradford, Leeds and Hull).
Trivia
The Lancashire Terrier and Lancashire Heeler dog breeds originated in the county.
References
- ↑ Journal - Lancashire Dialect Society, page 6 (1960)
- ↑ Friends of Real Lancashire - A Brief History of Lancashire
- ↑ Churches stop sharing hymn books over coronavirus. Christian Today (March 6, 2020). Retrieved on March 9, 2020.
- ↑ How religious are YOUR neighbours? Use this interactive map to find out
- ↑ Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021
