St Bees is situated on the coast of Cumbria, some 40 miles from the English Scottish border. It is a small, very friendly community with a population of about 1,800. It is best known for St Bees School
, a 400 year old co-educational public school, the Priory of St Mary and St Bega which dates back to 1120, and to countless numbers of walkers, as the start (or end) of the Wainwright Cross-England Coast to Coast Walk
.
Of course, there is much more than this to the village and the surrounding area. Although somewhat off the beaten track, this has meant that we enjoy the benefits of the Lake District without the crowds associated with some of the more popular areas. More photos of the area can be found here. And if you are considering a move to the area, you couldn't pick a nicer and friendlier community!
The village web site first saw the light of the internet in 1997. It gradually grew over the years, until it reached the stage where it was an important village resource much used by visitors to the area, and those interested in the history of the village and local area. For this reason I decided to give the web site and domain names to the St Bees Parish Council, to own on behalf of the village. It thus became the "Official" St Bees web site, though I continue to manage it. In the last few years, I have been helped in this by one of the councillors (and village historian) Doug Sim. Just how much he has added was brought home to me when I tackled the job of re-designing all the pages in the web site in 2007!
Doug manages the Parish Council
pages and is responsible for collating, producing and adding most of the historic material to be found in these pages.
I hope you will enjoy browsing through the site, and that you will find it useful. If you plan to visit the village, you should find most of the information you need here. But if you can't, I am only too willing to help and answer your questions if I can. But please note that I only manage the web site and know about the village. I cannot book accommodation or send you tourist leaflets. Contact the hotels and B&Bs directly for the former (Accommodation
) and the Tourist Boards for the latter (Links
).
Enjoy your visit and I hope we have the pleasure of your company in the village at some future date.
NB Throughout this site there are a number of "slide shows." To see these you must allow ActiveX scripts to run. (See warning bar which appears on some browsers above page).
