Leece is a village on the
Furness
Furness ( ) is a peninsula and region of Cumbria, England. Together with the Cartmel Peninsula it forms North Lonsdale, Historic counties of England, historically an exclave of Lancashire. On 1 April 2023 it became part of the new unitary author ...
peninsula in
Cumbria
Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...
, England, between the towns of
Ulverston
Ulverston is a market town and civil parish in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Lancashire, it lies a few miles south of the Lake District Lake District National Park, National Park and j ...
and
Barrow-in-Furness
Barrow-in-Furness is a port town and civil parish (as just "Barrow") in the Westmorland and Furness district of Cumbria, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in the county of Lancashire, it was incorporated as a municipal borou ...
.
Amenities
The village
[.] is built around a
tarn and a
village green
A village green is a commons, common open area within a village or other settlement. Historically, a village green was common pasture, grassland with a pond for watering cattle and other stock, often at the edge of a rural settlement, used for ...
,
and Henry Armer & Son, a
smithy established in 1914 that has since become an agricultural engineering business.
For
parish council purposes, Leece belongs to Aldingham Parish Council.
History
Historically
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...
part of
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...
, the name Leece is probably from the
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
''leah'', which means 'woodland clearing', and the plural of which is ''Leas''. It was recorded in the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...
as ''Lies'', in the
Manor of Hougun
The Manor of Hougun is the historic name for an area which now forms part of the county of Cumbria in North West England. Only the southern band of land in the south of Cumbria was surveyed in the Domesday Book. The westernmost entries for Cumbria ...
held by
Earl Tostig
Tostig Godwinson ( 102925 September 1066) was an Anglo-Saxon Earl of Northumbria and brother of King Harold Godwinson. After being exiled by his brother, Tostig supported the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada's invasion of England, and was killed ...
. It appears later in 1269 as ''Lees''.
Leece used to contain the
United Methodist Free Church United Methodist Free Churches, sometimes called Free Methodists, was an English Nonconformist (Protestantism), Nonconformist denomination in the last half of the 19th century. It was formed in 1857 by the amalgamation of the Wesleyan Association (w ...
. It was founded in 1881, but closed in 1912. The building, which was taken down in the late 1920s, can still be seen on some photographs from the period. The church did not have a cemetery. St. Matthew's Church, in the village of
Dendron, built in 1642, also served the village, as both a church and a school. It was funded by Robert Dickinson, a citizen of
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, who had formerly lived in Leece.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Leece played a part in the
Lady in the Lake murder trial. Gordon Park, a resident of Leece, bludgeoned his 30-year-old wife Carol to death with an ice axe, then dumped her body in
Coniston Water
Coniston Water is a lake in the Lake District in North West England. It is the third largest by volume, after Windermere and Ullswater, and the fifth-largest by area. The lake has a length of , a maximum width of , and a maximum depth of . Its ou ...
, telling police investigating her disappearance that she had left their home for another man.
Gallery
File:Leece postcard 1904.jpg, A postcard showing Leece, dated 1904. The tarn can be seen in the foreground, and the old Methodist
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...
church on the far right.
File:LeeceDuckPond.jpg, The Leece tarn in 2008.
See also
*
Listed buildings in Aldingham
Sources
External links
Cumbria County History Trust: Aldingham(nb: provisional research only – see Talk page)
*
{{authority control
Villages in Cumbria
Aldingham
Furness