Global view of Lakeland : Cumbria County Council

Thousands of images of the Lake District from Cumbria County Council archives are being made available for the first time to anyone browsing the Internet. Many of the images have not been easily accessible in the past, but can now be viewed on a county council website, English Lake District: A Living Landscape.

The website, which has already received hits from all over the world, is being officially launched on Wednesday, April 2, at The Theatre By The Lake, Keswick. The opening ceremony is to be performed at 2pm by the chairman of Cumbria County Council, Councillor Ralph Aldersey.

Councillor Peter Jackson, Cumbria County Council Cabinet member with responsibility for libraries and culture, said:

“This project serves the county council’s aim of enabling everyone who lives in the county to understand and celebrate their history. “Digitising images from the county's extensive local studies and archive collections ensures that the material is safeguarded for future generations, and made accessible through different media to all people in the county and far beyond. A valuable historical resource is opened up and presented to people who would not otherwise know it was there.”

The searchable database contains more than 3,000 images. More will be added in the future. Most are taken from photographs, along with a large number of 18th and 19th century engravings and some paintings. The subject matter includes life and work in the Lake District, the early impact of man, the man-made landscape and the first visitors. . A theme of one group of images is archaeology, taking in the Hadrian’s Wall area as well as Lakeland. There are also about 400 images of maps dating from as far back as the 17th century.

The database also includes 15 sound clips in the form of MP3 files, taken from a recent local oral history project. In one a Lorton woman talks about visiting the local blacksmith’s shop as a child. Another woman recalls cycling to Allonby and an Eskdale farmer talks about bringing sheep down off the fells as it snows. The images were put into digital form in a project which has lasted 18 months. Funding of £97,000 was secured from the National Lottery’s New Opportunities Fund towards the cost. Overseeing the project for the county council’s libraries and archives service has been Elizabeth Mullineaux, an archivist with the county council record office at Barrow, who has chosen the images, researched them and dealt with copyright matters. Elizabeth said:

“The images are from the county council’s own collection, but many of them are not easily accessible in their original form, often because of their fragility. We now have them preserved in film and digital format for anyone to access though their own Internet connections or through the People’s Network computers in the county libraries.”