About Cumbria
The modern county of Cumbria was formed in 1974 by combining the ancient counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, part of northern Lancashire and part of West Yorkshire. Although Cumbria is a modern creation, these separate parts had often been linked together since the 18th century as the Lakes Counties and they share a lot of history and heritage.
The name Cumbria is much older, first used in the 10th century to refer to a largely Celtic-speaking area that covered part of southern Scotland and the northern part of Cumberland. On this site, Cumbria will always be used to refer to the area covered by the modern county.
Human Geography
Cumbria is a large and thinly populated county with a population of 510,000, almost half of which is concentrated in our 5 largest towns and cities: Carlisle, Barrow, Kendal, Whitehaven and Workington. Before industrialisation the population was far smaller and fluctuated based on economic circumstances and disease. Between 1700 and 1900 the population quadrupled as industry took off, but since then growth has slowed. Since the COVID pandemic, the population has increased by about 10,000.
Because of its geography and distance from London, Cumbria has often been seen as isolated and backward. But it has always been connected to the outside world and it has always received migrants. Romans, Angles, Norse, Gaels, Normans and their allies, German and later Welsh and Cornish miners, as well as modern immigrants from Europe, the Commonwealth and elsewhere have all made their homes here. Today, around 5% of Cumbrians were born outside of the UK and around 2.5% describe themselves as non-white.
Cumbria is best known as the home of the Lake District National Park, which is world famous for fell walking and climbing, Grasmere gingerbread, Herdwick sheep, Lake poets and Beatrix Potter, among other things. But the park makes up little over a third of the county, which also includes a long coastline, large estuaries and peninsulas, the north Cumbrian plain, the broad swathe of the Eden Valley, the North Pennines and their foothills, the Border Moorlands, and the hilly limestone country of the south.
Queer Cumbrians
The 2021 UK census was the first to ask people about the gender and sexual identities. The results show that 2.31% of Cumbrians over 16 (9,700 people) identified as not straight (of which 0.04% (172 people) were asexual) and 0.33% (1,400) identified with a gender other than that assigned at birth. That’s enough queer people to fill a town the size of Ulverston. These figures are lower than the national average and there were significant numbers of non-responses to both questions. The figures may say more about social attitudes and the way the census is taken than about the actual number of queer people in Cumbria today.
See the 2021 Census figures for Cumbria
| Cumbria (%) | England & Wales (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Sexuality | ||
| Straight | 91.15 | 89.37 |
| Gay / Lesbian | 1.17 | 1.54 |
| Bisexual / Pansexual | 1.08 | 1.38 |
| Asexual | 0.04 | 0.06 |
| Queer / Other | 0.02 | 0.18 |
| ALL NON-STRAIGHT | 2.31 | 3.16 |
| No answer | 6.54 | 7.47 |
| Gender Identity | ||
| Gender = Sex at birth | 94.74 | 93.46 |
| Gender ≠ Sex at birth | 0.14 | 0.24 |
| Trans | 0.13 | 0.2 |
| Non-binary / Other | 0.07 | 0.1 |
| All Trans, NB, Other | 0.33 | 0.54 |
| No answer | 4.93 | 6.00 |
A more realistic picture of underlying sexuality may be found in the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, the latest of which (NATSAL-3 from 2010)2 showed that 11% of women and 7% of men interviewed had experienced some level of same-sex attraction, with similar numbers for those who’d had some form of same-sex experience.3 Those who experienced no sexual attraction accounted for 1% of women and less than 1% of men. Mapped onto the Cumbrian population, this would indicate that around 14,000 men and 25,000 women over the age of 16 have known some same-sex attraction or same-sex experience and that around 4,000 Cumbrians have never experienced any attraction.
See the NATSAL figures since 1990
| NATSAL-1 1990 | NATSAL-2 2000 | NATSAL-3 2010 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attraction: Men | |||
| Only Women | 94 | 92 | 93 |
| Some Men | 5 | 6 | 6 |
| Only Men | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| None | 1 | < 1 | < 1 |
| Attraction: Women | |||
| Only Men | 94 | 88 | 88 |
| Some Women | 5 | 11 | 11 |
| Only Women | < 1 | < 1 | < 1 |
| None | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Experience: Men | |||
| Any | 5 | 8 | 8 |
| Genital contact | 4 | 6 | 6 |
| Experience: Women | |||
| Any | 3 | 10 | 11 |
| Genital contact | 2 | 6 | 6 |
See the NATSAL-3 figures against Cumbrian population
| NATSAL-3 2010 | Cumbria Population 2021 | |
|---|---|---|
| Attraction: Men | ||
| Only Women | 93 | 198,500 |
| Some Men | 6 | 12,800 |
| Only Men | 1 | 2,100 |
| None | < 1 | < 2,000 |
| Attraction: Women | ||
| Only Men | 88 | 196,400 |
| Some Women | 11 | 24,500 |
| Only Women | < 1 | < 2,000 |
| None | 1 | 2,200 |
| Experience: Men | ||
| Any | 8 | 17,000 |
| Genital contact | 6 | 12,800 |
| Experience: Women | ||
| Any | 11 | 24,500 |
| Genital contact | 6 | 13,400 |
Notes
- These figures represent a proportion of national estimates, based on the population of Cumbria in 1801 compared with the rest of England. ↩︎
- NATSAL-3 Results. NATSAL-1 and -2 Results. The results of NATSAL-4 are expected to be released in late 2026. ↩︎
- Increases in the levels of same-sex attraction and experience over time, particularly among women, raise questions. Have the social changes of the past 30 years made it easier for people to be honest about their sexuality? Or has a more open society encouraged people to explore new possibilities? What part do social attitudes play in shaping sexual attraction? These aren’t questions that will be answered here, but they are worth bearing in mind. ↩︎