County town: Appleby
Westmorland was not surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, much of its territory then forming part of the northern borderlands. It emerged as a distinct county in the 12th century, straddling the Pennine watershed.
Westmorland was one of England's smallest and most thinly populated counties, occupying the eastern fells and dales of the Lake District and the limestone country of the Pennines south of the Eden valley. Appleby-in-Westmorland, its county town, is now best known for its famous horse fair. The county's landscape — Shap Fell, the Howgills, the Eden valley — is of exceptional beauty. Kendal, its largest town, was a centre of the woollen cloth trade from the medieval period: Kendal Green was a cloth of international reputation. The county was merged with Cumberland to form Cumbria in 1974, though its identity remains strong.
Westmorland 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 Westmorland — 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.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Westmorland draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
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