Resources
Here you will find research tools and links to resources provided by the project and by external sites. The index below covers all material in the sections shown on this page.
This page is always being edited and updated, our intention being to build it into a major library of links for anyone interested in researching their local area.
For guidance and source material specific to Cumbria see the VCH Cumbria Volunteers' Handbook.
Many LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETIES also have useful information and resources on their websites. You can find a list of them here.
The recently-launched 'Cumbria Lives' website provides detailed full-length biographies of 136 Cumbrians - but the site also contains brief biographies of many hundreds more. New biographies are being added all the time as the site moves towards its ambition of providing a comprehensive 'Dictionary of Cumbrian Biography'.
Research Guides and Bibliographies
VCH Cumbria Volunteers' Handbook (pdf)
National VCH Parish Template (pdf).
Locating Your Sources (pdf).
Working Together (Advice for working as a group; pdf).
A Guide to Researching the Clergy since the 18th century by Dr Jane Platt (pdf)
Researching the Poor Law by Dr Mike Winstanley (pdf)
Researching Education before 1944 by Dr Mike Winstanley (pdf)
Cumbria Archives Online Catalogue [CASCAT]
Lancashire Archives Online Catalogue [LANCAT]
The National Archives Online Catalogue [Discovery]
The National Archives [TNA] Research Guides
Resources for the study of Westmorland by Sarah Roberts (pdf)
Tools and Tutorials
Practical help for anyone who wishes to dig deeper for themselves into the history of their local area, or other aspects of the history of Cumbria. This section contains links to a number of websites (including those below) and pdf documents.
Palaeography
TNA Palaeography Tutorial. The National Archives offers an online tutorial to help you learn to read the handwriting found in documents written in English between 1500 and 1800.
English Handwriting 1500-1700: an online course [Cambridge English Renaissance Electronic Service]
Calendar matters
Change to Gregorian calendar 1752 (11 lost days)
Old Currency
Maps
Links to websites or pdfs giving access to old maps. Note that we also have lots of scans of old maps on our Gallery page.
National Library of Scotland (which has old OS maps for all of England and Wales too)
Old OS 6" maps of Cumbria (for more information about the NLS website)
The Greenwood map of Cumberland 1822
Old Lancashire maps from Lancaster University
Archive Newspapers of Cumbria
The British Library Newspaper Archive Website gives access to over 26 million fully searchable pages, featuring more than 700 newspaper titles from every part of the UK and Ireland.
The BNA currently contains 22 papers which cover present-day Cumbria. Each paper has a link to the required entry in the BNA database, which then makes all pages available. From here a detailed search facility is offered to allow searching for specific material.
Click here to see the range of papers involved, and to access them
If you are a member of Cumbria Libraries, you can access these newspapers free of charge on-line at any Cumbria Library with computer access, or at any of the Cumbria Archive Centres
Talks and Presentations
We aim to post here links to talks on Cumbrian history or archaeology, posted to YouTube or other sites.
These recordings of live talks, are provided free-of-charge, for educational purposes, for visitors to our website. They may involve the non-commercial fair use of copyright or other privately-owned material. Viewers must not make any recordings of the talk, nor take screen shots/photos or other reproductions of any of the images used. If you are the owner of any of the material used, or its copyright, and wish us to take down this video link, please contact us and we will do so immediately.
YouTube Presentations
About Morecambe Bay (from Morecambe Bay Partnership) by Dr.Bill Shannon
The Name 'Morecambe' [YouTube video 57 min]
Crossing the Sands [YouTube video 67 min]
Powerpoint Presentations
Guide to Superior Lordship in Cumbria
Navigating the CCHT Website
Index of Sources and Resources
Here you will find links to various pages and pdfs, and to other websites providing a wide range of sources and resources relevant to the history of Cumbria. This area of the website is used to primarily to locate and 'store' new items posted to the site, and nearly all of these pages will appear elsewhere on the site. They are in no particular order. As there are over 1300 entries here use the Index to Resources to locate your item which is then linked to it.
Link to the INDEX for computers, laptops or tablets
Link to the INDEX for mobile phones
Advice When Links Do Not Work
Some PDF readers have been found with problems seemingly involving the PDF filename of the item, when the item may not open.
If this occurs you should try a different PDF reader - Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader (which claims to be faster and is possibly more user-friendly) are options.
Both are available to download for free from the internet and both have versions available for portable devices.
And do please let us know using the “About Us” page
