Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership


The Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership Scheme finished in early 2024 with projects successfully delivered by a wide range of project partners, community groups and individuals. Over the coming months, we’ll be updating this site to highlight what’s been achieved, so please keep checking back.

Welcome …

… to the Westmorland Dales website.

The Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership Scheme aimed to unlock and reveal the hidden heritage of the Westmorland Dales, enabling more people to connect with, enjoy and benefit from this inspirational landscape. Specifically, its objectives were to:

  • Reveal the area’s hidden heritage.
  • Conserve what makes the area special.
  • Engage people in enjoying and benefitting from their heritage.
  • Sustain the benefits of the scheme in the long-term.

This was achieved through a programme of projects developed and delivered through the Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership, led by Friends of the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, and mainly funded through the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It ran over a five-year period from March 2019 to February 2024.

Here you can discover what makes the area so special, find out about the scheme’s projects, and view and download resources produced.

The Westmorland Dales

The Westmorland Dales is a beautiful area of Cumbria lying  north of the Howgill Fells and within the north-west corner of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. It stretches from Tebay in the south-west to Kirkby Stephen in the east and to Maulds Meaburn in the north-west. At its heart are the limestone fells above Orton and Asby, rich in natural and cultural heritage, and with magnificent views to the Pennines, the Howgills and the Lakeland fells. It drains into the Lune river catchment to the south and the Eden river catchment to the north. Relatively overlooked compared with its better-known neighbours, our projects have aimed to reveal its heritage for more to enjoy without detracting from its unique qualities. (Click on map for larger image)

Contact information

Friends of the Lake District
Murley Moss, Oxenholme Road, Kendal, Cumbria LA9 7SS
Main Telephone:  01539 720788
 Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority
Yoredale, Bainbridge, Leyburn, North Yorkshire DL8 3EL
Main Telephone:  01969 652300

What's in a Name? The Language of Landscape in Asby Parish

This online recording created by Keith Cooper together with Geoff Johnson, focuses on a wide range of names of fields and landscape features in Asby Parish. It draws on historic documents, maps, local folk-memory, as well as studies of language and dialect, to shed new light on some familiar and some ‘lost’ landscape names in Asby Parish.

Keith Cooper lives in Great Asby and a keen volunteer on many of the Westmorland Dales Scheme projects including traditional farm building and dry stone wall surveys, and the excavations on Little Asby Common. Keith is also an active member of the Asby Tree Group - who we have grant-aided- and a local historian and author.

The inspiration for Keith's latest publication, 'A Year in the Life of Halligill', came from his research into the history of Dial House in the village of Great Asby, leading to the chance discovery of a diary, kept in the year of 1875, by an occupant of that house, John Brunskill. 

Diary entries were simple and spare but the book adds depth to the entries by using material from local newspapers and from contemporary farming manuals, together with the recollections of a local farmer, the late Harry Saul. Keith combines these sources to breathe life into John Brunskill’s daily round on a small, mixed, upland hill farm in Asby parish in 1875.

More information is available via the Books Cumbria website>

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