100 Interesting Facts
We have now achieved our target of posting 100 Interesting Facts! We began posting these back in 2017, with the Facts being submitted by our volunteers and friends. Click on a 'Fact' for more Background information.
You can access a full list of all the Facts here, so you can browse looking for anything that takes your fancy. Click on the title to take you to the 'Background' page. Next to the title is a brief explanation as to what the story is about. The date is the date the Fact was first posted to the site. Please note that when we first started on this series, these Background entries were short and sweet- but over time we have tended to put more and more information into our new postings - along with references so you can follow up on more about the story at your leisure.
If YOU have a Fact you'd like to share, please Contact Us , giving us references so we can check - as before posting anything, our team of historians have to be sure it REALLY IS a fact, not a myth!
Reveal Facts by:
Kirkby Stephen Church contains a 10th century carved stone block depicting the Norse God Loki, often referred to as The Bound Devil.
Dunmail Raise is the supposed burial site of Dyfnwal ab Owain, 10th century King of Stratchclyde; may mark the kingdom's southern boundary
Cumbria contains both the highest mountain in England (Scafell Pike, 3209 feet) and also the deepest lake (Wastwater, 243 feet)
The only part of Cumbria to be included in Domesday was the part around Ulverston and Dalton. The rest was not considered part of England.
St Bees is named after St Bega, reputed to have been an Irish princess who fled from the Vikings in 850AD - but who may not have existed
When St Cuthbert visited Carlisle in the 7th century, he was shown the city walls - and a Roman fountain, still working after 300 years
England's highest market town is Alston and St John the Evangelist, Nenthead is the highest parish church.
Reverend Theodore Bayley Hardy from Hutton Roof near Kirkby Lonsdale won the VC, DSO and MC in nine months and did not carry a gun.
The Bewcastle Cross is one of the finest examples of Anglo-Saxon sculpture and features Old English runic inscriptions.
In August 1974 Carlisle United were top of the English Football League!
Did Sir Richard Musgrave kill the last wild boar in England on Wild Boar Fell, Mallerstang?
Each night the town clock bell at Kirkby Stephen Parish Church rings eight times for the time and once for every day of the month.
Kendal Parish Church has five aisles and is the second largest parish church in England.
Did you know there was a Royal Mint in Carlisle in the 12th Century.
The 1660 Post Office Act ordered for the first time '...that a Letter ... Post shall ... once a week [come] to Kendal by way of Lancaster'
Did you know that the oldest "railway" in the world has been discovered in a mine near Caldbeck and dates back to the 14th Century.
The William Pit Disaster (Whitehaven) occured on 15th August 1947. 104 men died - but only 14 were killed by the blast itself.
Siegfried Herford performed the first ascent of the Central Buttress of Scafell in 1914 - a great jump forward in British Rock Climbing
The monks of Cartmel resisted Henry VIII's reformation, and joined the Pilgrimage of Grace - which led to their executions.
Eleven million tons of iron ore were extracted from a pit called Nigel, Roanhead, near Barrow, between the 1850s and 1942 when it closed
