Cumbria today consists of the historic counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, together with the north Lancashire districts of Furness and Cartmel, an area of some one and a half million acres in all. It is a natural region, although this has only been recognized for administrative purposes since the 1974 local government reorganization. At its heart is the central mass of the Lakeland hills, while its limits are defined by the Scottish border to the north, the western slopes of the Pennines to the east, Morecambe Bay to the south and the Irish sea to the west. The Eden valley, running south-east from Carlisle, and the Solway and west Cumberland plains are the most fertile areas, while the lowland part of the Furness peninsula is suitable for stock-rearing. Various minerals have been found in the region: lead and copper in the Pennine hills, copper around Keswick and the Langdales, iron in the south-west of the region, and coal along the west coast.

Before the hills and lakes of Cumbria became a tourist attraction at the end of the eighteenth century, the region had always been isolated from the rest of the country. Traditionally Scottish travellers took the eastern route through England, to avoid both the terrain and the people. Celia Fiennes shuddered in 1698 at ‘those inaccessible high rocky barren hills which hangs [sic] over ones head in some places and appear very terrible’. Defoe considered Westmorland ‘eminent only for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even in Wales itself’.