Lonsdale (hundred)

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Lonsdale
Geography
Status	Hundred
1831 area	1,237,970 acres
HQ	Lancaster
History
Created	?
Abolished	?
Succeeded by	North Lonsdale Rural District, Lancaster Rural District

Lonsdale was a hundred of Lancashire, England.^[1] For many decades, it covered most of the northwestern part of Lancashire around Morecambe Bay, including the detached part around Furness, and the city of Lancaster.

The name Lonsdale refers to the River Lune which flowed through the southern part of the hundred.

Places in the Lonsdale hundred included Lancaster, Bolton-le-Sands, Barrow-in-Furness, Dalton-in-Furness, Cockerham, Ulverston, and Morecambe. The Furness Peninsula was known as Lonsdale North of the Sands, the major part of which later constituted (from 1894 to 1974) the North Lonsdale Rural District.

In 1831, the population of males over twenty years old was given as 10,707,^[2] meaning the total population would likely be over 20,000 during that year.

Kirkby Lonsdale despite its name was not in the hundred as it lay in the Lonsdale Ward of Westmorland instead; and the villages of Burton-in-Lonsdale and Thornton-in-Lonsdale were within the North Riding of Yorkshire. These anomalies stem from the fact that the hundred once covered a larger area and is in fact more ancient than the county of Lancashire, being documented as part of Yorkshire in the Domesday Book.