Civil parishes in Cumbria

At the 2001 census, there were 359,692 people living in those 284 parishes, accounting for 73.8 per cent of the county's population.

The extent of modern civil parishes are largely geographically based on historic Church of England parish boundaries, which were ecclesiastical divisions that had acquired civil administration powers managed by the Vestry committee.

Every adult inhabitant of the parish was obliged to work four days a year on the roads, providing their own tools, carts and horses; the work was overseen by an unpaid local appointee, the Surveyor of Highways.

[7] Urban civil parishes continued to exist, and were generally coterminous with the Urban District, Municipal Borough or County Borough in which they were situated; many large towns contained a number of parishes, and these were usually merged into one.

[9] Recent governments have encouraged the formation of town and parish councils in unparished areas, and the Local Government and Rating Act 1997 gave local residents the right to demand the creation of a new civil parish.