The county with the hole in the middle

This article examines the representation of Cumbria in northern England, and how the county has been portrayed as a northern space through pictorial and literary landscape imagery. It proposes that the predominance of imagery showing the Lake District as an idyllic landscape of tourist consumption has led to the eclipse of other parts of the county and confusion over Cumbria as a specifically northern space. It examines how the idea of northernness remains important nevertheless to how both Lakeland and other Cumbrian spaces are envisaged, both in the national imagination and by local inhabitants.