Get set for this month’s historic Lancashire Day, when we will toast the new Duke of Lancaster.
Lancastrians everywhere will raise a glass on November 27th to celebrate the county’s special day, and to honour our new Duke of Lancaster.
The Duke of Lancaster title is one that has been held by the monarch – male or female – for more than 650 years, giving Lancashire a royal connection no other county can claim.
Henry Grosmont became the first Duke of Lancaster title in 1351. He was a nobleman, diplomat, administrator and soldier who took part in many of Edward III’s military campaigns. Edward III gave Henry the dukedom ‘in recognition of astonishing deeds of prowess and feats of arms’ on the battlefields of France.
Henry IV, who was crowned in 1399, merged the Dukedom of Lancaster with the throne and since then the land and property that forms the Duchy of Lancaster has been passed down the royal line from monarch to monarch.
Queen Elizabeth, who died in September, was famously fond of the Red Rose county and had a particular fondness for the landscape around Dunsop Bridge.
King Charles is yet to make an official visit to Lancashire as monarch, but is known to be passionate about many issues affecting the area, particularly agricultural and environmental issues.
November 27 marks the day in 1295 when Lancashire’s first elected representatives were summoned by King Edward I to become members of Parliament at Westminster.
Lancashire Day was the idea of the Friends of Real Lancashire and was first celebrated in 1996. Each year a proclamation to the people of the City and County Palatine of Lancaster is read out in town squares and village halls across the county, and a toast is raised to the Duke of Lancaster at 9pm.
The County Palatine – the area recognised and celebrated by Lancashire Life – is Lancashire's true footprint, not the persistently tinkered with boundary drawn by bureaucrats.
The borders of the County Palatine date back more than 850 years to 1168 and cover the area from the banks of the Mersey to the fells of Furness and from the shores of the Irish Sea to the peaks of the Pennines.
In 1974, the Local Government Act gave birth to new administrative areas called Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cumbria but it did not move our county boundaries. Sadly though, it also created a lot of confusion and there is now a generation of Scousers, Mancunians, Boltonians, Wiganers and people from the north of our county palatine who don’t know they are Lancastrians.
November 27 is the perfect time to let them know. It’s the day when Lancastrian hearts everywhere swell with pride as we celebrate all that’s great about our county. Not that we could fit that all that into one day, of course!
The Lancashire Day proclamation
Know ye that this day, November 27th in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty two, in the first year of the reign of His Majesty King Charles the Third, Duke of Lancaster, is Lancashire Day.
Know ye also, and rejoice, that by virtue of His Majesty’s County Palatine of Lancaster, the citizens of the Hundreds of Lonsdale, North and South of the Sands, Amounderness, Leyland, Blackburn, Salford and West Derby are forever entitled to style themselves Lancastrians.
Throughout the County Palatine, from the Furness fells to the River Mersey, from the Irish Sea coast to the Pennines, this day shall ever mark the peoples’ pleasure in that excellent distinction; true Lancastrians, proud of the red rose and loyal to our Sovereign Duke.
God bless and God save The King, Duke of Lancaster.
