Kinship

Until recent years the physical isolation of Gosforth was very marked. The Turnpike roads, which had such a profound effect on social life in other parts of Cumberland, did not run through Coupland until the Napoleonic Wars had ended. The coastal railway between Maryport and Barrow was not completed until the middle of the nineteenth century. A regular bus service in West Cumberland was not established until the nineteen-twenties. This absence of rapid means of communication, together with a lack of immigration into the area, ¹ have meant that a very high proportion of the inhabitants of the parish and their ancestors were born locally and married into local families. The resulting high degree of physical consanguinity which is characteristic of Gosforth provides a biological basis for a complex and important network of social relationships, some aspects of which will be described in this chapter. ²