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Carlisle is a city in the extreme northwest of England, some 16 km from the border with Scotland. It is part of the City of Carlisle local government district, and acts as the administrative centre for both the district and Cumbria. It is the traditional county town of Cumberland. The population of the urban area of Carlisle was 71,773 according to the 2001 census, with about 100,000 living in the wider district.
Name The Romans called their settlement on the site of today's city Luguvalium, as evidenced by Roman writing tablets recently excavated in the city and displayed at Tullie House Museum, bearing this name as the address. Lugvalium can be interpreted from Latin as "the place, or wall (stronghold ?) of Lugus" (a local deity). Around the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, surviving documents show the place name spelt Caer (castle) Luel or Llewelyn. Luel and its variants are Welsh ("British language (Celtic)") personal names, and it has been proposed that this was always the basis of the local name, which had been preserved by the continuity of Welsh-speaking peoples in the area, from before the Roman imposition of a latinised version. The fact that Cumbria (from Cymru or similar roots) was briefly held by the Celtic kings of Strathclyde in the 9th century may have stimulated a revival of Welsh speaking and reinstatement of earlier Celtic place-names. History Carlisle has a compact, historic centre, including a castle, museum, cathedral, and semi-intact city walls. The former law courts or citadel towers which now serve as offices for Cumbria County Council are also of architectural interest. Roman Carlisle Around AD 72/73, a Roman timber fort was built at Carlisle. Following its demolition around AD 103 to 105, a second timber fort was built. In AD 165 this fort was replaced by a stone fort. Later history
Geography
Trade and industry Carlisle became an industrial city in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with many textile mills, engineering works and food manufacturers opening up mostly in the Denton Holme, Caldewgate and Wapping areas which lie in the Caldew valley area of the city. In the early nineteenth century a canal was dug connecting Caldewgate with the sea at Port Carlisle. The canal was later filled in and became a railway line. Famous firms that were founded or had factories in Carlisle included Carr's of Carlisle (now part of United Biscuits), Kangol, Metal Box (now part of Crown Cork and Seal). The Carrs and Metal Box factories are still going. The construction firm of John Laing and the hauliers Eddie Stobart Ltd. were also founded in the city. Until 2004, Carlisle's biggest employer was Cavaghan & Gray which operated from two sites in the Harraby area of Carlisle producing chilled foods for major supermarket chains. As of January 2005, the London Road site was closed with the loss of almost 700 jobs as production was transferred to the nearby Eastern Way site or other factories around the UK. Carlisle also became a major railway centre with at one time 7 different companies using Carlisle Citadel Station the city also used to have the largest railway marshalling yard in Europe at Kingmoor, now closed. There are various light industrial estates and business parks located on the fringes of the city and on former industrial sites close to the city centre. On March 28, 2005, Carlisle was granted Fairtrade City status. Sport The City of Carlisle is represented in the English Coca-Cola Football League One by Carlisle United F.C. *, after promotion from the Coca-Cola Football League Two at the end of season 2005/06 as champions of the division, this followed their promotion from the Nationwide Conference at the end of the 2004/05 season. Carlisle United Football Club play at Brunton Park Stadium, in the centre of the city. The team has resided in all four divisions of English football, once going top of Division One (now named The Premier League) back in the 1974/75 season. Carlisle was at one time home to a rugby league team, Carlisle RLFC who would later merge with Barrow and leave Carlisle. Education St Martin's College has a campus in Carlisle on Fusehill Street. It provides a wide range of degree courses in subjects such as Psychology, Business, Teacher Education and Social Work. Carlisle also is host for all three campuses of the Cumbria Institute of the Arts, with the main building in close vicinity to the River Eden. Also based in the city is an outpost of the University of Central Lancashire. Both offer primarily higher education programmes, the former in Art and Media and affected disciplines, the latter in business, computing and law. Plans have now been approved to create a University of Cumbria, due to open in August 2007. This will be created from an amalgamation of St Martin's College and Cumbria Institute of the Arts. Administration Carlisle has been a city since the Middle Ages and has been a borough constituency or parliamentary borough for centuries at one time returning two MPs. In 1835 it became a municipal borough which was promoted to county borough status in 1914. The city's boundaries have changed at various times since 1835 the final time being in 1974 when under the Local Government Act 1972 the city and county borough merged with the Border Rural District to become the new City of Carlisle district. The borough originally had several civil parishes or parts of parishes within it but these were all merged into a single civil parish of Carlisle in 1904. The present day urban area is now classed as an unparished area except for the fringes which are in Stanwix Rural, Kingmoor and St Cuthbert Without parishes. Carlisle unsuccessfully applied to become a Lord Mayoralty in 2002. The city council is based in the almost universally disliked 1960s building known as the Civic Centre in Rickergate. The building is disliked by many of Carlisle's residents as it dominates the skyline of the city (being the largest building in the city), and the architect Mick Randal who designed the Civic Centre once described it as 'shit Curse of Carlisle In 2005, some of the locals of Carlisle began to blame certain misfortunes such as the recent flooding and their football team's bad performance on a 16th century curse. The curse was first invoked by Archbishop Dunbar of Glasgow in 1525 against cross-border families, known as the Border Reivers, who lived by stealing cattle, rape and pillage and was not a curse directly aimed at Carlisle or its people. For the millennium celebrations, the local council commissioned a 14-tonne granite artwork inscribed with all 1,069 words of the curse. In March 2005 Liberal Democrat city councillor Jim Tootle, hoping to break the curse, proposed the stone either be moved outside the city boundaries or destroyed altogether. A council meeting on March 8 rejected Tootle's proposal, a move welcomed by council leader Mike Mitchelson, who had earlier questioned whether moving the stone was a good use of council funds. | ||||||||||||
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