THE DIOCESE OF CARLISLE,
1814-1855
Chancellor Walter Fletcher’s ‘Diocesan Book’ with additional material from Bishop Percy’s parish notebooks by Jane Platt

This volume presents three nineteenth-century manuscripts: Walter Fletcher’s ‘Diocesan Book’, written 1814-45, and Bishop Hugh Percy’s two parish notebooks, compiled 1828-55.

In 1814 the newly installed chancellor, Walter Fletcher, set about recording his primary visitation of all 130 churches and chapels in the diocese, updating his notes frequently until the year before his death in 1846. In 1828 the newly consecrated
bishop, Hugh Percy, created his own diocesan record, using Fletcher’s material and adding material of his own. Their notebooks provide details of each living, the church fabric and furnishings, parsonage houses, parochial charities and schools, the
clergy and patterns of worship, parish by parish.

Supported by footnotes, appendices and an accompanying biographical index of clergy, the manuscripts not only provide a unique record of livings in Carlisle diocese, but also illuminate many important aspects of Cumbrian society and religious life during the four decades immediately prior to the expansion of the diocese in 1856.

The volume is an important addition to the growing body of knowledge relating to the condition of the Anglican Church in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Dr Jane Platt is an independent scholar specialising in nineteenth-century church history.

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