ABSTRACT
This series of regional histories was planned before the destruction of many old administrative boundaries under the Local Government Act of 1972. The region described here reflects an older pattern and includes the four pre-1972 counties of Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland and Westmor land. Despite their antiquity, these units were never entirely self-contained, and there were many links with adjacent areas. Southern Westmorland had much in common with northern Lancashire, north Northumberland shared many features with south-east Scotland. For our purposes the Furness dis trict, which was part of Lancashire before being included in 1974 in the new administrative county of Cumbria, has been annexed to the study area involved here. Its leading historian has recently told us that ‘Furness had . . . closer affinities with Cumberland and Westmorland than it had with central and southern Lancashire.’ (Marshall 1996, 42) We have also included refer ences to the northern Cleveland district of the North Riding of Yorkshire, where that has seemed sensible in relation to developments on Teesside.
