Lamplugh () is a scattered community and
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...
located in West
Cumbria
Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. C ...
on the edge of the English
Lake District and
historically
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
part of
Cumberland. It had a population of 763 in 2001, increasing to 805 at the 2011 Census.
The main A5086 road from
Cockermouth
Cockermouth is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Allerdale in Cumbria, England, so named because it is at the confluence of the River Cocker as it flows into the River Derwent. The mid-2010 census estimates state that Cocke ...
to
Egremont runs roughly north–south through the community. The
Whitehaven Cleator and Egremont Railway
The Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway was an English railway company which built and operated a standard gauge railway in Cumberland
Cumberland ( ) is a historic counties of England, historic county in the far North West England. It ...
, later LMS, also ran through the parish, with a
station in Wright Green. North of Rowrah this lost its passenger service in 1931 and was closed to all traffic in 1954.
Unusually, the village has no obvious centre. While
St. Michael's church is built on the highest point in the village, the local pub, the Lamplugh Tip Inn, is over a mile away on the A5086. (The inn is currently closed and has been undergoing renovation for a few years.) Lamplugh School (the local primary school) is at the hamlet of Kirkland. Because Lamplugh Civil Parish is very large, it includes Kirkland as well as Eskett and also, until recent boundary changes, parts of both Ennerdale Bridge and Rowrah.
The village is on the edge of the
Lake District National Park. The roads from St. Michael's Church towards
Loweswater and from the church towards
Ennerdale form part of the national park boundary, with the national park lying to the east of the roads. While parts of the village lie within the national park, almost all dwellings are outside the national park and so are cheaper than in
Loweswater.
The boundary of this large parish is shown on 1:25,000 O.S. sheet OL4 "English Lakes NW". Much more information about Lamplugh is available in "The Parish of Lamplugh" published by the parish council in 1993 , and "Lamplugh Church" published by Lamplugh and District Heritage Society in 2004.
Lamplugh is the starting point for a number of walks, and is also on the
Sea to Sea / C2C / Coast to Coast Cycle Route, which runs along the roads forming the national park boundary described above.
Lamplugh, renamed "Crossbridge", features in two of
Melvyn Bragg's novels - "The Hired Man" and "Without a City Wall"
On 2 June 2010, Lamplugh was the scene of the first murder during the
killing spree
A spree killer is someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders or homicides in a short time, in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations ...
known as the
Cumbria shootings
The Cumbria shootings was a shooting spree which occurred on 2 June 2010 when a lone gunman, taxi driver Derrick Bird, killed twelve people and injured eleven others in Cumbria, England, United Kingdom. Along with the 1987 Hungerford massacre ...
, when Derrick Bird, of Rowrah, shot his twin brother, David, who was a resident of Lamplugh.
See also
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Listed buildings in Lamplugh
Lamplugh is a civil parish in the Borough of Copeland, Cumbria, England. It contains twelve listed buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England
The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official datab ...
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Llan place name element
Llan () and its variants ( br, lan; kw, lann; xpi, lhan; Irish and gd, lann) are a common element of Celtic placenames in the British Isles and Brittany, especially of Welsh toponymy. In Welsh an (often mutated) name of a local saint or a ...
References
External links
Cumbria County History Trust: Lamplugh(nb: provisional research only – see Talk page)
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{{Authority control
Villages in Cumbria
Civil parishes in Cumbria
Borough of Copeland