View source for Lancashire

{{Infobox county
|name=Lancashire
|map image=Lancashire Brit Isles Sect 3.svg
|flag=Lancashire.svg
|picture=Liverpool skyline, closeup.jpg
|picture caption=Liverpool from the Mersey
|county town=[[Lancaster]]
|biggest town=[[Manchester]]
}}
The '''County Palatine of Lancaster''' is a [[Counties of the United Kingdom|shire]] along the Irish Sea coast, stretching from the [[River Mersey]] in the south to the [[Furness]] Fells in the north.

Lancashire is a large and heavily populated county, in population second only to [[Yorkshire]]. It runs up the west coast from the Mersey north to Morecambe Bay with a further part north of the sands at Furness.

==History==
The County of Lancaster was first recorded in 1168 under King Henry II. In 1267 Edmund Crouchback was created 1st Earl of Lancaster. On 6 March 1351 Henry, Earl of Lancaster, was made a Duke and was also granted Palatinate powers - the royal powers, or the powers belonging to the palace.

Lancashire was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, its cotton mills supplying the Empire and the World. Although competition and changed technology have swept many of the great mills away nevertheless Lancashire is still home to industrial might, and the great towns and cities which grew up in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries still thrive.

==Geography==
===Hundreds===
*[[Amounderness]]
*[[Blackburnshire]]
*[[Leyland Hundred|Leyland]]
*[[Lonsdale Hundred|Lonsdale]]
*[[Salfordshire]]
*[[West Derby Hundred|West Derby]]

{{Hundreds of Lancashire map}}
===Cities===
*[[Lancaster]]
*[[Liverpool]]
*[[Manchester]]
*[[Preston]]
*[[Salford]]

===Towns===
:''See [[:Category:Towns and villages in Lancashire]]''
The largest towns of Lancashire include:
{{parishliststart}}
*[[Accrington]]
*[[Ashton-under-Lyne]]
*[[Barrow-in-Furness]]
*[[Blackburn]]
*[[Blackpool]]
*[[Bootle]]
*[[Bolton]]
*[[Burnley]]
*[[Bury]]
*[[Chorley]]
*[[Clitheroe]]
*[[Colne, Lancashire|Colne]]
*[[Fleetwood]]
*[[Formby]]
*[[Leigh, Lancashire|Leigh]]
*[[Leyland]]
*[[Lytham St Annes]]
*[[Nelson, Lancashire|Nelson]]
*[[Morecambe]]
*[[Oldham]]
*[[Ormskirk]]
*[[Rochdale]]
*[[Skelmersdale]]
*[[Southport]]
*[[St Helens]]
*[[Thornton-Cleveleys]]
*[[Warrington]]
*[[Widnes]]
*[[Wigan]]
{{parishlistend}}

Away from the industrial and urban areas, Lancashire contains scenery of much beauty and jarring contrasts. The Furness district in the north sits on the sea at [[Barrow-in-Furness]], a shipyard and industrial town. Behind Barrow though is a land of lakeland fells, forested and mountainous, forming part of the [[Lake District]]. [[Coniston Water]], the west bank of [[Windermere]] lie in this part of Lancashire.

In the northern part of Lancashire's main body lies [[Lancaster]] itself, a modest county town tumbling charmingly down its hill from the Castle to the [[River Lune]]. Here the county is fairly narrow, the Pennine Mountains approaching the sea, and the Yorkshire boundary with them.

Between Morecambe Bay and the [[River Ribble|Ribble]] Valley, [[Fylde]] reaches westward, a broad, flat peninsula whose inland parts are farmland but whose coast is a string of holiday resorts centred on the best known of them all; [[Blackpool]].

Lancashire broadens further south. The coast from the Ribble towards the conurbations of the south has more modest coastal resorts. Inland farmland begins to jostle with industrial towns, the latter becoming bigger and closer together until the great industrial conurbations of south Lancashire. In the southernmost part of the county are [[Liverpool]] and [[Manchester]], two of the greatest cities in Britain, whose suburbs spread across not just Lancashire but into [[Cheshire]] too.

[[Liverpool]], founded in 1207, was built around its vast docks from the Irish trade then the Atlantic and African trade routes. King John founded his new port at a marshy spot on the Mersey, at the point where the great gulf of the Mersey narrows again into a pinch before entering the Irish Sea. Now though great buildings stand on the waterside, the "Three Graces", and the city has spread all along the Mersey gulf and up the Irish Sea coast.

[[Manchester]], now Britain's most populous city after London, is an older and a younger city; it was a town in Roman days and a fortress borough in Anglo-Saxon times, but it only became a town of national and indeed world significance in the Victorian period, as the heart of the manufacturing revolution. An inland city, its civic arms show a ship and the crest shows the world covered in bees; Manchester's industry reaching the world. The [[Manchester Ship Canal]] does indeed link Manchester to the oceans, by way of the Mersey.

===Geology, landscape and ecology===
The highest point of the county is [[Coniston Old Man]] in the [[Lake District]] at 2,634 ft.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.hill-bagging.co.uk/CountyTopsHistoric.php |title=Historic County Tops |publisher=Hill-bagging.co.uk |date= |accessdate=25 September 2010}}</ref>

Lancashire rivers drain westwards from the [[Pennines]] into the [[Irish Sea]]. Rivers in Lancashire include the [[River Mersey|Mersey]] (which forms the border with [[Cheshire]]); the Ribble; the [[River Wyre|Wyre]]; and the [[River Lune|Lune]]. Their tributaries are the  [[River Irwell|Irwell]]; the [[River Calder, Lancashire|Calder]]; the [[River Darwen|Darwen]]; the [[River Douglas, Lancashire|Douglas]]; the [[River Hodder|Hodder]]; and the [[River Yarrow, Lancashire|Yarrow]].

To the west of the county are the West Lancashire Coastal Plain and [[the Fylde]] coastal plain north of the Ribble Estuary. Further north is [[Morecambe Bay]]. Apart from the coastal resorts, these areas are largely rural with the land devoted to vegetable crops. To the north-west is the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, characterised by its limestone pavements and home to the [[Leighton Moss]] nature reserve.

{{extremes
|H=[[Old Man of Coniston]] (2,634 ft)
|H grid ref=SD27249783
|N=Nab Island, Elter Water
|N grid ref=NY335041
|S=[[Hale, Lancashire|Hale Head]]
|S grid ref=SJ473809
|E=White Hill
|E grid ref=SD995130
|W=Shope Tree Scar, [[Walney Island]]
|W grid ref=SD167724
}}

==Outside links==
*[http://www.forl.co.uk/ Friends of Real Lancashire]

{{British county}}