Bringing the VCH to Westmorland: Launching Lonsdale Ward, the First Red Book for Cumbria

In this blogpost, Dr Sarah Rose, Assistant Editor of the Victoria County History (VCH) project in Cumbria, describes the milestone achievement of producing Westmorland volume I, Lonsdale Ward. This is Westmorland’s first VCH publication and the 250th volume in the ‘Big Red Book’ series, produced in partnership with volunteers and the local community. This blog was originally posted on the website of the British Association for Local Historians, on October 29, 2025.

It is a mild and sunny evening on Tuesday 23rd September 2025 and I am slowly working my way around the room at Lunesdale Hall (formerly The Institute) in Kirkby Lonsdale, talking to the many well-wishers who are attending the launch of Westmorland volume I, Lonsdale Ward. While I know many of the people in the room, some I am meeting in person for the first time. This includes the family of my co-author, Emmeline Garnett. Sadly, Emmeline never lived to see her final publication, having died in 2022. Yet I hope she would have been as proud of this moment as the rest of us who have been involved in producing the book are. The launch is a delightful occasion, and as the wine and congratulations flowed, part of me still can’t quite believe we are here.

This is the first Red Book for the VCH Cumbria project – and the first VCH publication of any kind for the historic county of Westmorland. Not that there hasn’t been an attempt to bring the VCH to Cumbria before. The Victoria County History was established in 1899, and Cumberland had two introductory volumes produced in 1901 and 1905. That part of the modern (and now former) county that formerly lay in Lancashire, namely Furness and Cartmel, were covered by VCH Lancashire volume VIII, published in 1914. Essays were commissioned for Westmorland, including a now lost account of the religious houses of the county, but no material was ever published.

It was not until the Cumbria County History Trust (CCHT) was established in 2010 that the VCH in Cumbria was revived in earnest. Formed in order to gather funds and provide a community focus, CCHT partnered with Lancaster University’s Regional Heritage Centre to run the project. From the outset, VCH Cumbria was to be rooted in the community. While some academic guidance is necessary, the bulk of the research and writing is done by volunteers, some of whom may never have undertaken historical research before.

I joined VCH Cumbria in its early days, initially to recruit, train and co-ordinate the volunteer researchers, before starting to edit their work and undertake some research and writing myself. One of our first tasks was to produce our Volunteer Handbook, which took the national VCH guidelines and made them more specific to Cumbria. The Handbook has grown over the years and our 4th edition likely needs another update!

Since the early days of the project, our core of VCH ‘drafters’ have been producing interim articles about their chosen place, which we then post to the CCHT website. We launched the website in 2011 and it has become an essential part of the project. Over 100 enthusiastic volunteers came forward with key facts and images to help populate the pages created for each of the 348 places for which a VCH article would need to be written.

A seminal moment came in 2019 when we produced our first official VCH publication in the form of a paperback, one of a series known as ‘VCH Shorts’. Authored by one of our first volunteers and founding Secretary of CCHT, Richard Brockington, Kirkoswald and Renwick covered the histories of three contiguous townships on the edge of the North Pennines. The book was well-received, both by reviewers in academic journals and by the local community alike, proving that volunteers could write for the VCH.

The publication of Kirkoswald and Renwick buoyed our ambition to produce a ‘Big Red Book.’ We immediately fell on the idea of focusing on the area around Kirkby Lonsdale owing to the body of work already produced by one of our most prolific volunteers, Emmeline Garnett. A published author and local historian, with strong family ties to the area, Emmeline was among the first volunteers to join VCH Cumbria and had been steadily producing draft articles, beginning with Kirkby Lonsdale itself. The market town stood at the heart of an ancient parish that comprised nine townships. These, together with three townships in the neighbouring ancient parish of Burton-in-Kendal, and the small rural township of Dillicar, comprised the administrative unit of Lonsdale Ward, which would make a natural focus for the book. We were also aware that the book should have wide appeal, as this scenic area has been attracting visitors since the 18th century, including John Ruskin and J. M. Turner.

Emmeline withdrew from the project in 2017 but subsequently gave her full support to our plans for the Red Book. My work began with obtaining additional archival material, not only from the collections managed by Cumbria Archive Service, but also from repositories outside of Cumbria, such as the National Archives at Kew. The Covid-19 pandemic soon halted these archival visits, but it amazed me how much source material had been digitised and placed online since I started working on the VCH project. It also gave me the opportunity to go through the hundreds of images which had been taken of material held at Trinity College, Cambridge and York Minster by my colleague Dr James Bowen during the scoping phase of the project (2017–18), for which I will forever be grateful.

The research for this book also benefited from the time and generosity of experts and residents in the local community. Emmeline had already spoken to many people about their experiences of local life, whether it be through their involvement on the parish council, or running local interest groups. There was, therefore, already some awareness of the VCH Cumbria project and a willingness to help when I took over the reins. I was fortunate to have contact with several local history groups, whose own archives proved essential to completing the research and yielded some great historic images that we were able to incorporate into the book.

With one Red Book now under our belt, we have moved on to the next phase of the project, which looks at not one, but two Red Book volumes. The first of these will be a revision of VCH Lancashire volume VIII, covering Furness and Cartmel. While retaining the excellent work of the Lancashire editors William Farrer and John Brownbill, the revised version will bring each entry up to date and incorporate material to bring it in line with the modern VCH template, particularly the sections on Social and Economic History. The other Red Book will focus on Eskdale Ward in the far north of the county, on the border with Scotland, and will be the first topographical volume for the historic county of Cumberland. I have begun work with volunteers on both volumes, but we are always happy to hear from more people who would like to be involved with the research in some way.

The Victoria County History is active in over 20 counties and two Ridings of Yorkshire. For more about the project, nationally, visit the VCH pages on the IHR website. VCH Westmorland I, Lonsdale Ward, is available from Boydell and Brewer. For more on the VCH Cumbria project, including details of how to support the Cumbria County History Trust, please visit the Trust’s website: https://www.cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk/

For the history of the VCH in Cumberland and Westmorland see John Beckett’s article in CWAAS Transactions.

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