Carlisle, the Capital of Cumbria
If I were going to live in England, it would be here.
HARD on the border with Scotland, Carlisle has a citadel, a castle, and a 900-year-old cathedral as well as the nearby scenic attractions of the Solway Coast and the Lake District.
Carlisle is also the capital of Cumbria, the most north-western historical region or ceremonial county of England.
The name Cumbria has the same origin as Cymru, the indigenous name for Wales. Some Cumbrian place names, such as Penrith, look Welsh. Other local place names are Norse or English. All sorts of people have lived there over the years.
Carlisle was founded by the Romans as the walled city of Luguvalium, a name that was probably adapted from a Celtic name for the locality. The city has been a walled outpost of southern civilisations, first Roman and then English, ever since.
Hadrian’s Wall, the famous Roman rampart against the ancestors of the Scots, begins close to Carlisle, or Luguvalium as then was, and continues eastward to the vicinity of modern-day Newcastle upon Tyne.
As an English outpost, Carlisle is not far from the present-day border with Scotland, which starts just north of a border wilderness called the Solway Coast Area of Natural Beauty (AONB).
