Shap is a village and civil parish located among and isolated Valley in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England. The village is in the historic county of Westmorland. The parish had a population of 1,221 in 2001,
Location
The village lies along the A6 road and the West Coast Main Line, and is near to the M6 motorway. It is situated from Penrith and about from
Kendal.
Shap is on the route of the Coast to Coast Walk.
Toponymy
Early (12th and 13th century) forms such as
Hep and
Yheppe point to an
Old Norse rendering
Hjáp of an Old English original
Hēap = "heap" (of stones), probably referring to an ancient
stone circle,
cairn or to the Shap Stone Avenue just to the west of the village.
History
Although Shap is geographically a small village, it is legally a
market town with a charter dating from the 17th century. The parish was, between 1905 and 1935, administered by an urban district council. At one time, the granite works (which are situated about a mile outside the village) was in itself a separate community, with its own
Co-op UK store. Shap polished pink granite can be found in many buildings in the UK, including outside St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Climate
Shap today
The village has three
pubs, a small supermarket, a fish and chip shop, a primary school, a newsagent's, a coffee shop, a
charity shop named "Second Chance", a
fire station, an
Anglican church and 3 B&B/ Hostels. There is also a small library, which is in the process of being relinquished from local council control and being adopted by the community as part of a budget cutting measure.
Major employers in the area are Hanson plc, Tebay Services and Tata Steel.
Some of the scenes in the feature film Withnail and I were filmed around Shap. Sleddale Hall, the filming location for Uncle Monty's cottage Crow Crag, is located near Sleddale Hall.
On 22 October 1999, a BAE Hawk from RAF Leeming crashed into an empty barn in the village before disintegrating across the A6 and West Coast railway line, killing its two-man crew.
Attractions
Shap Summit is located on the motorway at and the railway at .
Shap Fell used to be notorious for the difficult and dangerous stretch of A6 for drivers, and it includes a well-known section of the West Coast Main Line. It has a 1:75 gradient for trains heading north, and in the days of steam locomotives banking engines from Tebay were often used to assist trains. It has been popular with railway photographers and there have been many pictures published taken in the area, most notably at
Scout Green which lies on the southern approach to the hill.
Shap Fell is known for Shap granite,
Shap Abbey is nearby in the secluded valley of the river Lowther. Now impressive ruins dating from 1199, the Abbey was one of the last abbeys to be dissolved by Henry VIII in 1540.
Shap Wells has a mineral spa located in the grounds of the Shap Wells hotel which was used in World War II as a prisoner of war camp.
In literature
A scene in Robert Neill's historical novel
Crown and Mitre is laid in Shap. In 1659 the book's protagonist Hal Burnaby, a young Royalist, rides through the village on a clandestine mission connected with the restoration of King Charles II.
Shap also appears in
Anthony Trollope's novel
Can You Forgive Her? as the nearest village to Vavasor Hall, the ancestral home of the heroine Alice Vavasor.
In M. W. Craven's novels, Shap Wells hotel is often used as a hub for the stories since one of the main characters, Washington Poe, lives nearby.
Governance
The
civil parish of Shap (formerly Shap Urban Parish) includes the hamlet of Keld and parts of the granite works and limestone works, and has a population of 1,221,
[ Office for National Statistics : Census 2001 : Parish Headcounts : Eden Retrieved 21 November 2009] increasing to 1,264 at the 2011 Census. The parish shares a joint parish council with
Shap Rural. The total population of the since abolished Shap electoral ward taken at the 2011 census was 1,394.
Shap is in the parliamentary constituency of Westmorland and Lonsdale.
For local government purposes the village is in Westmorland and Furness. Until 2023 it was in the Shap Ward of Eden District and the Eden Lakes Division of Cumbria County Council.
Transport
The Lancaster and Carlisle Railway (now part of the West Coast Main Line), opened on 17 December 1846, and runs along the eastern edge of the village. Shap railway station was closed in 1968, though there have been calls for its re-opening.
Penrith is the closest railway station and is situated on the West Coast Main Line.
Dialect
Though the majority of the village's inhabitants speak standard English, some of the people of Shap and the surrounding area speak a variant of the
Penrithian dialect, which is itself a variant of the
Cumbrian dialect spoken around the Penrith and
Eden District area. These dialectal varieties stem from Northern Middle English and in turn Northumbrian Old English.
Notable people
-
Sir Charles Richardson (1769-1850), Royal Navy officer was born in the village
See also
External links
