County town: Carlisle
Cumberland was not included in the Domesday survey of 1086, being border territory disputed between England and Scotland. It developed as a county in the 12th century, with Carlisle as its administrative centre.
Cumberland occupies the north-western corner of England, encompassing the western Lake District — Skiddaw, Scafell Pike, the Borrowdale fells — and the coastal plain running north to Carlisle and the Scottish border. The county was a frontier zone throughout the medieval period, exposed to Scottish raiding and the turbulence of border life. Its pele towers — fortified farmhouses designed to resist raids — are a distinctive architectural legacy of this insecurity. Carlisle, a Roman fortress town (Luguvallium), remained the county's military and administrative heart through the Norman and medieval periods. The Lake District's dramatic scenery attracted Romantic poets and artists from the late 18th century.
Cumberland was not surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086. The survey covered most of England south of the Tees, but the northern border counties — including Cumberland — lay outside the effective reach of the Norman administration at the time of the survey.
England's 39 historic counties, established between the 9th and 12th centuries, are the framework through which English local history, legal records, and landscape have been organised for a thousand years. Most survive today as ceremonial counties, their boundaries deeply embedded in place identity.
This page introduces the historic county of Cumberland. A full Aubrey report for a location within it pulls together everything the record actually holds about that ground, from the geology beneath it to the last coin dropped in a field:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Read in-depth research reports on notable historical places across the UK — explore →
Cumberland contains 509 scheduled monuments — sites of national importance protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.
Browse scheduled monuments in EnglandAn Aubrey report for a specific location in Cumberland draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.