Farming in Cumbria - Farming Present and Past

Farming in Cumbria

Cumbria is the largest English county, thanks to 20th century changes to county boundaries.

Visitors tend to think of the Lake District as a wet and chilly place, particularly if they come in the school summer holiday. The best months are often May and October, with the bonus of wonderful autumn colour in the trees and the fells.

Mind, the farmers say that in the Lakes there are "nine months of winter, and three of bad weather!"

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Climate

The counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, as Cumbria used to be known, have a wide variety of climate: there is the dryer area of the Eden Valley in the east, the early growing Solway plain to the north, the wet dales around the harsh central mountain "hub", and the milder coastal areas. There is also the Gulf-stream-warmed Furness peninsula to the south which Lancastrians still think of as part of "their" county.

Summers are cool and wet, and winters are windy and wet! They have not been as frosty or snowy as they were in the past. In the 1990s the snowfall has been less than it was in the 1980s and there has been no winter to rival 1963 or 1947.

2000 was notable for its heavy and persistent rainfall, and in 2001 Cumbria suffered a late spring and, sadly, Foot and Mouth disease. Summer 2002 was also extremely wet but made up for it with a fine dry warm September.

Robbie Hudson feeding Swaledale sheep on the fell, 1969/70

Many hill farms have "fell rights" on which to pasture sheep, cattle and occasionally ponies.

This use goes back centuries, to well before the Enclosures Act. Andrew Pringle describes the use of the "common" land of Westmorland in 1794:

"No person shall send to graze on any common more flock than he can winter upon his estate or farm, in right of which he has a title to pasturage on that common ... the commons are almost always overstocked to such an extent that many persons do not think it worthwhile to avail themselves of their right of commonage."