Westmorland, until 1974 was one of England’s ancient counties
when it became part of Cumbria. Celia Fiennes’s view in 1698 of
‘…Rich land in the bottoms, as one may call them considering the
vast hills above them on all sides…’ was more positive than that
of Daniel Defoe who, in 1724, considered Westmorland ‘A country
eminent only for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of
any that I have passed over in England, or even Wales it self. ’
It was a county of stark topographical contrasts, fringed by
long and deep waters of the Lake District, bisected by mountains
with high and wild fells. Compared to the surveys of 1674-5, the
Michaelmas 1670 return for Westmorland is most useful for the
information it gives on exemption from the hearth tax. The later
surveys contain more households, and more households with
multiple hearths, and therefore give the more accurate picture
of Westmorland in the 1670s.