n.
Administrative (pop. 2001: 1,134,976), historic, and geographic county, northwestern England.
The administrative county comprises 12 districts. In the early Middle Ages it was a province of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria . The region included the ancestral lands of the house of Lancaster . In the Industrial Revolution it became an important manufacturing region and a centre of the textile industry. Lancaster and Preston are its major market and industrial cities; it also has resort towns, including Blackpool, on the Irish Sea.