User:Laplacemat/draft article on Cumbria County History Trust

Cumbria County History Trust

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Acording to its website, the "Cumbria County History Trust (CCHT) was launched in May 2010 to coordinate and gather resources for the Victoria County History of Cumbria project, a collaborative community project created to research and write the histories of all parts of Cumbria, and to make historical information generally available, within the framework and standards of the Victoria County History of England."

The CCHT is a registered charity.

(In 1974, the county of Cumbria was created, consisisting of the former counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, plus the County Borough of Carlisle, The Furness district of Lancashire and Sedbergh Rural District (part of the West Riding of Yorkshire).

Aims

The CCHT's broad "aim is to initiate a step-change in the awareness and understanding of Cumbria’s local historical heritage, by harnessing the enthusiasm for local history which exists widely across Cumbria, and pooling expertise with a view to eventually producing histories of every parish and township in Cumbria."

In addition, the CCHT aims:

"1. to further the education of the public in the history and heritage of the County of Cumbria and its communities and to promote and foster public knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the history of the area in general.

2. to undertake research into the history and heritage of the County of Cumbria and its communities and to disseminate the useful results of such research for the public benefit."

The VCH project

The Victoria County History (or "The Victoria History of the Counties of England") is a work of reference, published in book (the so-called "red books") and online format across many years. It aims to create an encyclopedic history of each of the historic counties of England.

According to the CCHT, "no VCH town or village histories had been published for the historic counties of Cumberland and Westmorland before the VCH Cumbria project was launched in 2010; the only parts of Cumbria previously to have been researched in detail by the VCH were the Furness and Cartmel areas, which were formerly in Lancashire and are covered in VCH Lancashire, Volume VIII (published in 1910)." Otherwise, only two elderly volumes (in 1901 and 1905) had been published on Cumberland as a whole (early history and political history, sport, forestry).

Methodology

"The VCH Cumbria project is a long-term collaborative project, whereby volunteers from the Cumbrian community will collect the basic historical material, write the histories and create the topographical database."The volunteers are advised that they should be members of the CCHT, but they may have a range of skill levels - from relative newcomers (with some experience of local or family history) to former and current academic staff.

Outcomes

"- a team of over 100 volunteers from across Cumbria has compiled brief historical digests for each of the 344 parishes/townships in the county, forming a springboard for future work

- a smaller core of volunteers has embarked on researching and writing full parish/township histories to the VCH template, which will eventually form part of the national work of local historical reference."