Clifton, Cumbria

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clifton is a small linear village and civil parish 3 miles outside of Penrith, Cumbria, England with a primary school, a pub and a hotel. The local shop and post office is now closed. There were 2 railway stations here once Clifton or Clifton Moor on the Eden Valley Railway and Clifton & Lowther on the West Coast Main Line. Confusingly Clifton & Lowther Station was at a hamlet known as Clifton Moor and Clifton Moor station had a private waiting room for the local landowners the Lowther family.

Clifton Moor was the site, in 1745, of the final battle in England (and the last battle ever on English soil) between Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Duke of Cumberland. The local church, St Cuthbert's, contains the graves of 10 men killed in that fight. Some of the remains of St Cuthbert are also said to be languishing in the church. The story of a local family, the Wybergs, whose property was forcibly sold by Oliver Cromwell in 1652, is told in Sir Walter Scott's novel, Waverley, which also features the battle on Clifton Moor.

St Cuthbert's church contains a monument to a local benefactress, Eleanor Engayne, who died about the year 1395. According to the Topography and Directory of Westmorland, 1851,[1] the manor of Clifton was given in the reign of Henry II, by Hugh de Morville, one of Thomas à Becket's murderers, to Gilbert de Engayne, with whose descendants it continued till their heiress, Eleanor, in 1364, carried it in marriage to William de Wyberg.

John "Iron-Mad" Wilkinson, the industrialist, was born in Clifton in 1728.

Within the parish are also: