Cumbria /´k"mbri•/ county of NW England, created in 1974 from Cumberland, Westmorland and parts of NW Lancashire and NW Yorkshire. The county is 6,810 square km or 2,629 square miles in area. The City of Carlisle is the administrative centre and is the largest city in England in geographical terms. The large "cities" of London, Birmingham etc are in fact connurbations of smaller cities and towns. Carlisle's boundaries were set so widely for control purposes, due to it's position on the English/Scottish border. Carlisle is also the only English city with a purely Celtic name.
Although now English, parts of Cumbria have at times been Scottish or even self-governing. At one point, Carlisle was even the temporary capital of Scotland. One of the possible definitions of Cumbria is "the land of the People" in Cumbric, the old Cumbrian language from the same language tree as Welsh and Cornish. Over the centuries Cumbrians have been a main mix of Pict, Celt and Norse.
The Lake District National Park (area 1,800 sq km/700 sq mi) was created in 1951 and with the boundary changes in 1974 became entirely contained within the new county of Cumbria. It contains the principal English lakes, which are separated by wild uplands rising to many peaks, including Scafell Pike 978 m/3,210 ft, the highest mountain in England; Helvellyn 950 m/3,118 ft; Lake Windermere, the largest lake in England, 17 km/10.5 mi long, 1.6 km/1 mi wide; there are also many other lakes (Derwentwater, Ullswater).
There are also many man made attractions, such as the Grizedale Forest sculpture project and Hadrian's Wall. On the Cumbrian coast about 14 miles south of Whitehaven and just north of Seascale there are two nuclear stations at Calder Hall (the world's first nuclear power station, 1956) and Sellafield (formerly Windscale). The traditional coal, iron, and steel industries of the coast towns have been replaced by newer industries including chemicals, plastics, marine engineering and electronics. In the north and east there is dairying, and West Cumberland Farmers is the country's largest agricultural cooperative. Cockermouth was the birthplace of William Wordsworth and he later lived in Grasmere. Keswick was home to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. John Ruskin's home was Brantwood, on Coniston Water. Beatrix Potter lived in Newlands Valley, west of Keswick.
Rheged was a nation in Early Mediaeval Great Britain. It was situated in what is now north-western England and south-western Scotland. It was founded after the Roman Empire abandoned Britain, which may put the date in the fifth century. Rheged royal genealogies trace later kings back to Coel Hen (Old King Cole), who appears to have ruled in the early 5th century (a matter supported by the word 'rheged' meaning Liberated, free, in free continuance). The victories of its kings Urien Rheged, and his son Owen mab Urien, over the chieftains of Bernicia in the second half of the sixth century, were celebrated by the bard Taliesin. Following Bernicia's union with Deira to become the kingdom of Northumbria, Rheged itself was annexed into Northumbria, at some time before AD 730. There is some evidence that Rheged was incorporated into Northumbria by royal marriage in 633.
The language of the Rheged ruling classes, and quite likely of the majority of the population, was Cumbric (a Brythonic language similar to Welsh) and was spoken from lowland Scotland south to Derbyshire until about the 11th century. Cumbric was once referred to as North Welsh and Cornish as South Welsh. The distinction of the Old Brittonic dialects into separate languages begins in about the 5th century, and Cumbric was most likely dead by the 11th century (though extinction dates as late as the 13th century have been suggested). However, in this time, it is possible that it was moving further away from Welsh grammatically, and developing as a distinct, non-intelligible tongue. It is possible that at its height, Cumbric was spoken by around 30,000 people.
The biggest problems with modern-day knowledge of the language lies with the fact that the language may have been merely a dialect of Welsh, not distinct at all. The old northern British kingdoms of Rheged, Strathclyde, Elmet and Gododdin spoke Old Welsh, but given time, many linguists consider that this tongue was distinguishable from Old Welsh at the time of its demise.
Place-name evidence and Taliesin's poems suggest that Rheged included all of what is now Dumfries and Galloway and Cumbria, plus Lancashire at least as far south as Oldham, and the Dales including Wensleydale and Catterick. It may well also have included Northumberland and Durham prior to the conquest of these lands by Bernicia and later Northumbria. The royal family apparently had two principal caers (castles / capital cities), one at Caer Llewelyd (identified with Carlisle), and one at Catraeth (Catterick).
There is considerable evidence for an Irish presence as well. It is known that Irish Christian missionaries were active in Rheged (although the region was at least nominally Christian even in Roman times) and there were likely Irish traders, pirates and settlers unconnected with the church as well.
One of the more accessible sources for Rheged history (and early Mediaeval British history generally) is the works of the Venerable Bede.
The name Rheged has been adopted by the Rheged Discovery Centre close to Penrith, Cumbria. The centre, apart from having a number of retail outlets (e.g. Taste!), boasts the largest turf roof in Europe and a giant cinema screen which shows films including one about the history of Rheged.
Some of the material here has been taken from http://experts.about.com
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