Pipe rolls
The Pipe rolls, sometimes called the Great rolls, or the Great Rolls of the Pipe, are a collection of financial records maintained by the English Exchequer, or Treasury, its successors. The earliest date from the 12th century, the series extends complete, from until 1833, they form the oldest continuous series of records concerning English governance kept by the English and United Kingdom governments, covering a span of about 700 years. The early medieval ones are useful for historical study, as they are some of the earliest financial records available from the Middle Ages. A similar set of records was developed for Normandy, ruled by the English kings from 1066 to 1205, but the Norman Pipe rolls have not survived in a continuous series like the English, they were the records of the yearly audits performed by the Exchequer of the accounts and payments presented to the Treasury by the sheriffs and other royal officials. They record not only payments made to the government, but debts owed to the crown and disbursements made by royal officials.
Although they recorded much of the royal income, they did not record all types of income, nor did they record all expenditures, so they are not speaking a budget. The Pipe Roll Society, formed in 1883, has published the Pipe rolls up until 1224; the Pipe rolls are named after the "pipe" shape formed by the rolled up parchments on which the records were written. There is no evidence to support the theory that they were named pipes for the fact that they "piped" the money into the Treasury, nor for the claim that they got their name from resembling a wine cask, or pipe of wine, they were referred to as the roll of the treasury, or the great roll of accounts, the great roll of the pipe. The Pipe rolls are the records of the audits of the sheriffs' accounts conducted at Michaelmas by the Exchequer, or English treasury; until the chancery records began in the reign of King John of England, they were the only continuous set of records kept by the English government. They are not a complete record of government and royal finances, however, as they do not record all sources of income, only the accounts of the sheriffs and a few other sources of income.
Some of the payments that did not fall under the Exchequer were recorded in a Pipe roll. Neither do the Pipe rolls record all payments made by the exchequer, they were not created as a budget, nor were they speaking records of receipts, but rather they are records of the audit of the accounts rendered. Although the rolls use an accounting system, it is not one that would be familiar to modern accountants. In their early form, they record all debts owed to the Crown, whether from feudal dues or from other sources; because many debts to the king were allowed to be paid off in installments, it is necessary to search more than one set of rolls for a complete history of a debt. If a debt was not paid off in one year, the remainder of the amount owed was transferred to the next year, they did not record the full amount of debts incurred in previous years, only what was paid that year and what was still owed. Besides the sheriffs, others who submitted accounts for the audit included some bailiffs of various honours, town officials, the custodians of ecclesiastical and feudal estates.
The earliest surviving Pipe roll in a mature form, dates from 1129–30, the continuous series begins in 1155–56, continued for seven hundred years. Combined with the Domesday Survey, the Pipe rolls contributed to the centralisation of financial records by the Norman kings of England, ahead of contemporary Western European monarchies; the exact form of the records, kept in a roll instead of a book, was unique to England, although why England kept some of its administrative records in this form is unclear. A set of Norman rolls, drafted differently, are extant in a few years for the reigns of Kings Henry II and Richard I, who ruled the Duchy of Normandy in France, it is believed that the Norman rolls were started about the same time as the English, but due to lack of survival of the earlier Norman rolls, it is unclear when they did start. An Irish Exchequer produced Irish Pipe rolls, much like the English Pipe rolls, the earliest surviving Irish Pipe roll, that of 1212, does not appear to be the first produced.
The Dialogus de Scaccario or Dialogue concerning the Exchequer, written in about 1178, details the workings of the Exchequer and gives an early account of how the Pipe rolls were created. The Dialogue was written by Richard FitzNeal, the son of Nigel of Ely, Treasurer for both Henry I and Henry II of England. According to the Dialogue, the Pipe rolls were the responsibility of the clerk of the Treasurer, called the Clerk of the Pipe and the clerk of the pells. FitzNeal wrote his work to explain the inner workings of the Exchequer, in it he lists a number of different types of rolls used by the Treasury, he describes the creation of the Pipe rolls and how they are used. The Dialogue states that the Pipe rolls, along with Domesday Book and other records, were kept in the treasury, because they were required for daily use by the Exchequer clerks; the main source of income recorded on the Pipe rolls was the county farm, or income derived from lands held by the king. Occasional sources
Whitsun
Whitsun is the name used in Britain and Ireland, throughout the world among Anglicans and Methodists, for the Christian festival of Pentecost, the seventh Sunday after Easter, which commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ's disciples. In England it took on some characteristics of Beltane, which originated from the pagan celebration of Summer's Day, the beginning of the summer half-year, in Europe. Whitsuntide, the week following Whitsunday, was one of three vacation weeks for the medieval villein. Whit Monday, the day after Whitsun, remained a holiday in Britain until 1971 when, with effect from 1972, the movable holiday was replaced with the fixed Spring Bank Holiday on the last Monday in May. Whit was the occasion for varied forms of celebration. In the North West of England and chapel parades called whit walks still take place at this time; the parades include brass bands and choirs. Traditionally, Whit fairs took place. Other customs, such as Morris dancing, were associated with Whitsun, although in most cases they have been transferred to the Spring bank holiday.
Whaddon, Cambridgeshire has its own Whitsun tradition of singing a unique song around the village before and on Whit Sunday itself. The name is a contraction of "White Sunday", attested in "the Holy Ghost, whom thou didst send on Whit-sunday" in the Old English homilies, parallel to the mention of hwitmonedei in the early 13th-century Ancrene Riwle. Walter William Skeat noted that the Anglo-Saxon word appears in Icelandic hvitasunnu-dagr, but that in English the feast was called Pentecoste until after the Norman Conquest, when white began to be confused with wit or understanding. According to one interpretation, the name derives from the white garments worn by catechumens, those expecting to be baptised on that Sunday. Moreover, in England white vestments, rather than the more usual red, were traditional for the day and its octave. A different tradition is that of the young women of the parish all coming to church or chapel in new white dresses on that day. However, Augustinian canon John Mirk, of Lilleshall Abbey, had another interpretation: Goode men and woymen, as ȝe knowen wele all, þys day ys called Whitsonday, for bycause þat þe Holy Gost as þys day broȝt wyt and wysdome ynto all Cristes dyscyples.
Thus, he thought the root of the word was "wit" and Pentecost was so-called to signify the outpouring of the wisdom of the Holy Ghost on Christ's disciples. The following day is Whit Monday, a name coined to supersede the form Monday in Whitsun-week used by John Wycliffe and others; the week following Whit Sunday is known as "Whitsuntide" or "Whit week". As the first holiday of the summer, Whitsun was one of the favourite times in the traditional calendar, Whit Sunday, or the following week, was a time for celebration; this took the form of fêtes, fairs and parades, with Whitsun ales and Morris dancing in the south of England and Whit walks and wakes in the north. A poster advertising the Whitsun festivities at Sunbury, Middlesex in 1778 listed the following attractions: On Whit Monday, in the morning, will be a punting match... The first boat that comes in to receive a guinea... In the afternoon a gold-laced hat, worth 30s. To be cudgell'd for... On Whit Tuesday, in the morning, a fine Holland smock and ribbons, to be run for by girls and young women.
And in the afternoon six pairs of buckskin gloves to be wrestled for. In Manchester during the 17th century the nearby Kersal Moor Whit races were the great event of the year when large numbers of people turned the area into a giant fairground for several days. With the coming of industrialisation it became convenient to close down whole towns for a week in order to clean and maintain the machinery in the mills and factories; the week of closure, or wakes week, was held at Whitsuntide. A report in John Harlan and T. T. Wilkinson's Lancashire Folk lore reads: It is customary for the cotton mills etc. to close for Whitsuntide week to give the hands a holiday. Whit Monday was recognised as a bank holiday in the UK in 1871, but lost this status in 1972 when the fixed Spring Bank Holiday was created. 1485: Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur has the Knights of the Round Table witness a divine vision of the Holy Grail on a Whitsunday, prompting their quest to find its true location. 1607: Thomas Middleton refers to "the Whitsun holy-days" in Michaelmas Term.
1611: In Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale Perdita imagines that she plays "as I have seen them do / In Whitsun pastorals". 1617: James I's Declaration of Sports encouraged "Whitsun ales", among other things, as soon as church was over on a Sunday. 1633: George Herbert wrote a poem called "Whitsunday", first published in The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. 1759-67: Laurence Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman contains several allusions to Whitsuntide. 1785: Samuel Johnson records in his Prayers and Meditations that "Between Easter and Whitsun-tide attempted to learn the Low Dutch language." James Boswell reproduces the remark in his Life of Samuel Johnson. 1787: The Whitsun Donative was an anonymous satirical pamphlet inspired by Sterne's Tristr
North West England
North West England, one of nine official regions of England, consists of the five counties of Cheshire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside. The North West had a population of 7,052,000 in 2011, it is the third-most populated region in the United Kingdom after the South Greater London. The largest settlements are Manchester, Warrington and Blackpool. North West England is bounded to the west by the Irish Sea; the region extends from the Scottish Borders in the north to the West Midlands region in the south. To its southwest is North Wales. Amongst the better known of the North West's physiographical features are the Lake District and the Cheshire Plain; the highest point in North West England is Cumbria, at a height of 3,209 feet. Windermere is the largest natural lake in England. Broad Crag Tarn on Broad Crag is England's highest lake. Wast Water is England's deepest lake, being 74m deep. A mix of rural and urban landscape, two large conurbations, centred on Liverpool and Manchester, occupy much of the south of the region.
The north of the region, comprising Cumbria and northern Lancashire, is rural, as is the far south which encompasses parts of the Cheshire Plain and Peak District. The region includes parts of three National parks and three areas of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty; the official region consists of the following subdivisions: *metropolitan county After abolition of the Greater Manchester and Merseyside County Councils in 1986, power was transferred to the Metropolitan Boroughs making them Unitary Authorities. In April 2011, Greater Manchester gained a top-tier administrative body in the form of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which means the 10 Greater Manchester Boroughs are once again second-tier authorities. Source: Office for National Statistics Mid Year Population Estimates North West England's population accounts for just over 13% of England's overall population. 37.86% of the North West's population resides in Greater Manchester, 21.39% in Lancashire, 20.30% in Merseyside, 14.76% in Cheshire and 7.41% live in the largest county by area, Cumbria.
According to 2009 Office for National Statistics estimates, 91.6% of people in the region describe themselves as'White': 88.4% White British, 1.0% White Irish and 2.2% White Other. During the Industrial Revolution hundreds of thousands of Welsh people migrated to the North West of England to work in the coal mines. Parts with notably high populations with Welsh ancestry as a result of this include Liverpool, Widnes, Wallasey, Ashton-in-Makerfield and Birkenhead; the Mixed Race population makes up 1.3% of the region's population. There are 323,800 South Asians, making up 4.7% of the population, 1.1% Black Britons. 0.6% of the population are Chinese and 0.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. North West England is a diverse region, with Manchester and Liverpool amongst the most diverse cities in Europe. 19.4% of Blackburn with Darwen's population are Muslim, the third-highest among all local authorities in the United Kingdom and the highest outside London. Areas such as Moss Side in Greater Manchester are home to a 30%+ Black British population.
In contrast, the town of St. Helens in Merseyside, unusually for a city area, has a low percentage of ethnic minorities with 98% identifying as White British; the City of Liverpool, over 800 years old, is one of the few places in Britain where ethnic minority populations can be traced back over dozens of generations: being the closest major city in England to Ireland, it is home to a significant ethnic Irish population, with the city being home to one of the first Afro-Caribbean communities in the UK, as well as the oldest Chinatown in Europe. Summarised There are around 400,000 people living in the North West of any Asian ethnicity Around 125,000 people from the North West are of full or partial Sub-African and/or Caribbean descent The single largest non-white ethnic group in the North West are Pakistanis, numbering at least 144,400 The list below is not how many people belong to each ethnic group; the fifteen most common countries of birth in 2001 for North West citizens were as follows England – 6,169,753 Scotland – 109,163 Wales – 73,850 Ireland – 56,887 Pakistan – 46,529 Northern Ireland – 34,879 India – 34,600 Germany – 19,931 China and Hong Kong – 15,491 Bangladesh – 13,746 South Africa – 7,740 United States – 7,037 Jamaica – 6,661 Italy – 6,325 Australia – 5,880 Poland – The table below is based on the 2011 UK Census.
One in five of the population in the North West is Catholic, a result of large-scale Irish emigration in the nineteenth century as well as the high number of English recusants in Lancashire. For top-tier authorities, Manchester has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the region. For council districts, Burnley has the highest rate followed by Hyndburn, both in Lancashire. Of the nine regions of the England, the North West has the fourth-highest GVA per capita—the highest outside southern England. Despite this the region has above average multiple deprivation with wealth concentrated on affluent areas like rural Cheshire, rural Lancashire, south Cumbria; as measured by the Indices of deprivation 2007, the
Manchester School of Painters
The Manchester School of Painters was formed by a number of disgruntled young vanguard painters in the 1870s. They were influenced by the artist Joseph Knight, a successful painter and photographer, he was the founder member of the Manchester School of Painters. Knight painted how he desired and refused to conform to traditional Art School rules and this appealed to his young admirers. Twice weekly they would all meet up at Knight’s studio in York Place behind the Union Chapel in Oxford Road, Manchester to discuss new ways to develop their techniques; the group were discontented with the old school of teaching and working. They decided they would work in a different way, experimenting with different tones and colours after a number of them spent four months working in the open air in Pont-Aven, Brittany; the place was vibrant and full to the brim with an eminent and cosmopolitan crowd of painters known as the Pont-Aven School and the group became influenced by all their different ways of working.
They were disillusioned with Manchester Art School’s method of teaching, i.e. the South Kensington system of art education Partington was so outraged he opened his own school in Stockport based on the same lines as the Académie Julian, Paris where masters and students worked together with a life model. The more they experimented the more criticism they received from the Manchester art critics and the old school of painters, it took them over ten years to establish The Manchester School and for them to be accepted by the critics. Knight was a member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, joining in January 1868, he withdrew in 1879 and was re-elected in 1883. He was elected a member of the Dudley Gallery, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Royal Etchers, the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art, the Limners Club and Art-Min-Afon, Betws-y-Coed. In 1874 he was a Royal Manchester Institution prize-winner and in 1891 he won a bronze medal at the Paris Exhibition. At the Royal Academy his works were hung on the line.
His work is in their permanent collection as well as at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Gallery London, Manchester Art Gallery, Walker Art Gallery and other provincial galleries. Joshua Anderson Hague - 1850–1916 John Houghton Hague - 1842–1934 James Hey Davies - 1844–1930 Frederick William Jackson - 1859–1918 William Meredith - 1851–1916 John Herbert Evelyn Partington - 1843–1899 Richard Gay Somerset - 1848–1928 Joshua Anderson Hague was born in Rusholme, his first school was Birch, Withington. At sixteen he studied under its head, Mr. Buckley. Around 1872 -- 73 he moved near Southport, he married Sara Henshall of Heaton Norris in 1875 and they had four sons and two daughters. One of his sons Anderson Hague exhibited at Liverpool. In 1877 they moved to Tywyn near Conwy in North Wales. Here he founded, with Edward Norbury, at Plas Mawr, the Royal Cambrian Academy in 1881 and became its Vice President. In 1889 he moved to Deganwy, he exhibited at the Royal Manchester Institution. In 1873 he became a full member of the Manchester Academy in which he played an active business role for forty-three years.
In 1889 he had a one-man exhibition at the Brasenose Club and in 1908 forty-five of his paintings were in a retrospective show at the Manchester City Art Gallery. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and was awarded the silver medal at the International Exhibition in Paris. In 1899 the art critic Maxwell Enoch wrote the following about Hague's work: "He now paints with a delightful and delicate greyness, has become stronger in colour and more dexterous in handling, he paints in a manner, his own. There is no landscape painter at present working in England who shows so much individuality in his work; the most simple subjects he is able to invest with a beauty and tone, delightful." John Houghton Hague was born at Newton Heath on 29 October 1842 and died at his home, Glencairn Queens Road Oldham in April 1934. His father, Samuel Hague, founded the cotton spinning business at Hawthorn and Newlands Mills known as Messrs. Samuel Hague & Co. Limited. Houghton retained an interest in this business, he was educated at a boarding school near Altrincham and at the Manchester School of Art.
He studied art in France during 1872 and stayed four months at Pont-Aven, Brittany. On his return he became a master at the Oldham School of Art and was associated with Charles Poller, R O Bottomley and Tom Heywood. Amongst his pupils were Fred Jackson, William Stott, George Wimpenny, he married in 1885 and had a daughter, Nellie, on 19 March 1888. For many years he was an active member of the Antiquarian Society and was interested in the work of the Oldham Microscopical Society, he had an unbroken membership of the Oldham Lyceum extending over sixty-two years, having joined in 1872. He painted in Belgium and Sweden and was a member of the Belgium Academy of Fine Arts"In an age prior to the mass use of photography Houghton Hague's works are now invaluable as documentary sources. Taken with his collection of transcribed songs and poems they form a chronicle of life in and around Chadderton during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.". A number of his paintings can be seen in Gallery Oldham, including the depiction on the right showing Oldham's cobbled Market Place being swept clean by a gang of street sweepers.
"In company with his friend, R O Bottomley, he did much work in and around Chadderton Fold, which in the seventies was a rural hamlet. He was to be seen there between 1870 and 1880
Barrow-in-Furness
Barrow-in-Furness known as Barrow, is a town and borough in Cumbria, England. Part of Lancashire, it was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867 and merged with Dalton-in-Furness Urban District in 1974 to form the Borough of Barrow-in-Furness. At the tip of the Furness peninsula, close to the Lake District, it is bordered by Morecambe Bay, the Duddon Estuary and the Irish Sea. In 2011, Barrow's population was 57,000, making it the second largest urban area in Cumbria after Carlisle, although it is geographically closer to the whole of Lancashire and most of Merseyside. Natives of Barrow, as well as the local dialect, are known as Barrovian. In the Middle Ages, Barrow was a small hamlet within the Parish of Dalton-in-Furness with Furness Abbey, now on the outskirts of the modern-day town, controlling the local economy before its dissolution in 1537; the iron prospector Henry Schneider arrived in Furness in 1839 and, with other investors, opened the Furness Railway in 1846 to transport iron ore and slate from local mines to the coast.
Further hematite deposits were discovered, of sufficient size to develop factories for smelting and exporting steel. For a period of the late 19th century, the Barrow Hematite Steel Company-owned steelworks was the world's largest. Barrow's location and the availability of steel allowed the town to develop into a significant producer of naval vessels, a shift, accelerated during World War I and the local yard's specialisation in submarines; the original iron- and steel-making enterprises closed down after World War II, leaving Vickers shipyard as Barrow's main industry and employer. Several Royal Navy flagships, the vast majority of its nuclear submarines as well as numerous other naval vessels, ocean liners and oil tankers have been manufactured at the facility; the end of the Cold War and subsequent decrease in military spending saw high unemployment in the town through lack of contracts. Today Barrow is a hub for energy handling. Offshore wind farms form one of the highest concentrations of turbines in the world, including the single largest with multiple operating bases in Barrow.
The name was that of an island, which can be traced back to 1190. This was renamed Old Barrow, recorded as Oldebarrey in 1537, Old Barrow Insula and Barrohead in 1577; the island was joined to the mainland and the town took its name. The name itself seems to mean "island with promontory", combining British barro- and Old Norse ey, but it is more that Scandinavian settlers accepted barro- as a meaningless name, so added an explanatory Old Norse second element. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Barrow was nicknamed "the English Chicago" because of the sudden and rapid growth in its industry, economic stature and overall size. More the town has been dubbed the "capital of blue-collar Britain" by the Daily Telegraph, reflecting its strong working class identity. Barrow is often jokingly referred to as being at the end of the longest cul-de-sac in the country because of its isolated location at the tip of the Furness peninsula. Barrow and the surrounding area has been settled non-continuously for several millennia with evidence of Neolithic inhabitants on Walney Island.
Despite a rich history of Roman settlement across Cumbria and the discovery of related artefacts in the Barrow area, no buildings or structures have been found to support the idea of a functioning Roman community on the Furness peninsula. The Furness Hoard discovery of Viking silver coins and other artefacts in 2011 provided significant archaeological evidence of Norse settlement in the early 9th century. Several areas of Barrow including Yarlside and Ormsgill, as well as "Barrow" and "Furness", have names of Old Norse origin; the Domesday Book of 1086 recorded the settlements of Hietun and Hougenai, which are now the districts of Hawcoat and Walney respectively. In the Middle Ages the Furness peninsula was controlled by the Cistercian monks of the Abbey of St Mary of Furness, known as Furness Abbey; this was located in the "Vale of Nightshade", now on the outskirts of the town. Founded for the Savigniac order, it was built on the orders of King Stephen in 1123. Soon after the abbey's foundation the monks discovered iron ore deposits to provide the basis for the Furness economy.
These thin strata, close to the surface, were extracted through open cut workings, which were smelted by the monks. The proceeds from mining, along with agriculture and fisheries, meant that by the 15th century the abbey had become the second richest and most powerful Cistercian abbey in England, after Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire; the monks of Furness Abbey constructed a wooden tower on nearby Piel Island in 1212 which acted as their main trading point. In 1327 King Edward III gave Furness Abbey a licence to crenellate the tower, a motte-and-bailey castle was built; however Barrow itself was just a hamlet in the parish of Dalton-in-Furness, reliant on the land and sea for survival. Small quantities of iron and ore were exported from jetties on the channel separating the village from Walney Island. Amongst the oldest buildings in Barrow are several cottages and farmhouses in Newbarns which date back to the early 17th century; as late as 1843 there were still only 32 dwellings, including two pubs.
In 1839 Henry Schneider arrived as a young speculator and dealer in iron, he discovered large deposits of haematite in 1850. H
National parks of England and Wales
The national parks of England and Wales are areas of undeveloped and scenic landscape that are designated under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Despite their similar name, national parks in England and Wales are quite different from national parks in many other countries, which are owned and managed by the government as a protected community resource, which do not include permanent human communities. In England and Wales, designation as a national park may include substantial settlements and human land uses which are integral parts of the landscape, land within a national park remains in private ownership. There are thirteen national parks in England and Wales; each park is operated by its own national park authority, with two "statutory purposes": to conserve and enhance the natural beauty and cultural heritage of the area, to promote opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the park's special qualities by the public. When national parks carry out these purposes they have the duty to: seek to foster the economic and social well-being of local communities within the national parks.
An estimated 110 million people visit the national parks of Wales each year. Recreation and tourism bring visitors and funds into the parks, to sustain their conservation efforts and support the local population through jobs and businesses; these visitors bring problems, such as erosion and traffic congestion, conflicts over the use of the parks' resources. Access to cultivated land is restricted to bridleways, public footpaths, permissive paths, with most uncultivated areas in England and Wales having right of access for walking under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. Archaeological evidence from prehistoric Britain shows that the areas now designated as national parks have been occupied by humans since the Stone Age, at least 5,000 years ago and in some cases much earlier. Before the 19th century wild, remote areas were seen as uncivilised and dangerous. In 1725 Daniel Defoe described the High Peak as "the most desolate and abandoned country in all England". However, by the early 19th century, romantic poets such as Byron and Wordsworth wrote about the inspirational beauty of the "untamed" countryside.
Wordsworth described the English Lake District as a "sort of national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy" in 1810. This early vision, based in the Picturesque movement, took over a century, much controversy, to take legal form in the UK with the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949; the idea for a form of national parks was first proposed in the United States in the 1860s, where national parks were established to protect wilderness areas such as Yosemite. This model has been used in many other countries since, but not in the United Kingdom. After thousands of years of human integration into the landscape, Britain lacks any substantial areas of wilderness. Furthermore, those areas of natural beauty so cherished by the romantic poets were only maintained and managed in their existing state by human activity agriculture. By the early 1930s, increasing public interest in the countryside, coupled with the growing and newly mobile urban population, was generating increasing friction between those seeking access to the countryside and landowners.
Alongside of direct action trespasses, such as the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, several voluntary bodies took up the cause of public access in the political arena. In 1931, Christopher Addison chaired a government committee that proposed a'National Park Authority' to choose areas for designation as national parks. A system of national reserves and nature sanctuaries was proposed: " to safeguard areas of exceptional natural interest against disorderly development and spoliation; the voluntary Standing Committee on National Parks first met on 26 May 1936 to put the case to the government for national parks in the UK. After World War II, the Labour Party proposed the establishment of national parks as part of the post-war reconstruction of the UK. A report by John Dower, secretary of the Standing Committee on National Parks, to the Minister of Town and Country Planning in 1945 was followed in 1947 by a Government committee, this time chaired by Sir Arthur Hobhouse, which prepared legislation for national parks, proposed twelve national parks.
Sir Arthur had this to say on the criteria for designating suitable areas: The essential requirements of a National Park are that it should have great natural beauty, a high value for open-air recreation and substantial continuous extent. Further, the distribution of selected areas should as far as practicable be such that at least one of them is accessible from each of the main centres of population in England and Wales. Lastly there is merit in variety and with the wide diversity of landscape, available in England and Wales, it would be wrong to confine the selection of National Parks to the more rugged areas of mountain and moorland, to exclude other districts which, though of less outstanding grandeur and wildness, have their own distinctive beauty and a high recreational value; the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 was passed with all party support. The first ten national parks were designated as such in the 1950s under the Act in poor-quality agricultural upland. Much of the land was
Furness line
The Furness line is a British railway between Barrow-in-Furness and Lancaster, joining the West Coast Main Line at Carnforth. A predominantly passenger line, it serves various towns along the Furness coast, including Barrow-in-Furness and Grange over Sands, it runs through Lancashire. Regional services on the line start from Manchester Airport and Preston, while local services start from Preston and Lancaster; the majority of services along the line terminate at Barrow-in-Furness, however some services continue along the Cumbrian Coast Line to Millom and Carlisle. The line was constructed by the Ulverston and Lancaster Railway and the Furness Railway between 1846 and 1857, today has services operated by Northern. Along with the Cumbrian Coast Line, the route is considered one of the most scenic in England; the line was designated a community rail partnership by the Department for Transport in 2012. The line is electrified between Lancaster and Carnforth where the route leaves the West Coast Main Line, which allowing for sleeper services between Barrow and London Euston.
The line was opened in stages between 1857 to link the mineral industries in the area. The area was isolated before the railway opened, with the only road crossing to reach the area over Morecambe Bay; the Furness Railway was first proposed in November 1843, linking the slate quarries of Kirkby in Furness and iron ore in the Lindal in Furness area to a deep water berth at Roa Island. It was intended to be used as a mineral railway, however provisions were made for a branch to Barrow and a link to Ulverston, the largest local town at the time; the line expanded to link up with what is today the Cumbrian Coast Line, in addition to an extension to Ulverston in 1854. In 1857, the Ulverston and Lancaster Railway completed its route, linking to the Carlisle and Lancaster Railway; the line began to expand, purchasing the Whitehaven and Furness Junction Railway. The railway company refused to purchase the Whitehaven Junction railway, leading to a situation where the Furness Railway was influenced by the London and North Western Railway.
The line continued to develop in the 1880s in the Barrow area. A through station was constructed, removing the need to reverse as was the case at the Strand terminus. A passenger station had been opened at Ramsden Dock a year before to connect with the new Isle of Man and Belfast steamer services. In the early 20th century, passenger numbers had continued to decline; as a result, an effort was made to modernise the line as a tourist railway, linking the country to the Lake District. This began a new era for the area, bringing thousands of tourists to Windermere. Under the Big Four, the line was brought under the control of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway on 31 December 1922; the Roa Island branch was closed in 1936, however the rest of the network remained open until the formation of British Railways. The Coniston branch closed in 1962 and the Lakeside branch in 1965, with part of the route being preserved as the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway. Sleeper services to London Euston ceased in 1990.
Following the privatisation of British Rail in the 1990s, services were transferred to First North Western. First TransPennine Express took over the operation of regional express services to Manchester and Preston in 2004, while local services were transferred to Northern Rail. Class 37 locomotives hauling Mark 2 carriages were used on the line between May 2015 and May 2018, operating through services along the Cumbrian Coast line due to a shortage in rolling stock following the move of Class 170'Turbostar' units to Chiltern Railways; the change was controversial locally as the trains were old, unreliable. Class 68 locomotives were introduced onto services temporarily in January 2018, until through running of loco-hauled stock ended in May 2018. Today, all services on the line are operated by Northern who operate a variety of regional express and local services to Lancaster and Manchester using a variety of Sprinter diesel multiple units and Class 185'Desiro' units subleased from TransPennine Express.
Following a recasting of rail franchises in the North of England by the Department for Transport, all services on the line are now operated by Northern. Regional services to Manchester and Preston were operated by First TransPennine Express until 31 March 2016, TransPennine Express Class 185s used by the previous franchise were used on some services to Manchester Airport by Northern; the line received a modernised timetable in May 2018, with additional services to Manchester Airport to be introduced in December 2018. The service is unusual amongst those on the West Coast Main Line as it does not yet have a clockface timetable; this means that there are several gaps in varying between 30 and 90 minutes. The new timetable was criticised by local schools due to the introduction of earlier services between Barrow and Ulverston. Following a recasting of rail franchises in the North of England by the Department for Transport, all services on the line were transferred to Northern in April 2015. Services operated by First TransPennine Express will be operated by new'Northern Connect' services from December 2019, enhancing the previous service with at least eight trains per day to Manchester Airport.
The enhanced service will use new, air-conditioned Class 195'Civity' units and offer free onboard WiFi and faster journey times. In addition to the introduction of Northern Connect services, an enhanced local service will be introduced with 21tpd in both directions, compared to between 18-20tpd today. Additional services are to be extended from Lancaster to Preston to allow better links to Manche
