Westmorland Gazette

The Westmorland Gazette is a weekly newspaper published in Kendal, England. It covers "South Lakeland and surrounding areas", including Barrow and North Lancs, and derives its name from the historic county of Westmorland.

The paper is now owned by the Newsquest group, within which it forms part of Westmorland Gazette Newspapers, which includes the weekly freesheet South Lakes Citizen and other titles. It has an office in Ulverston, in addition to its Kendal base. Its circulation is about 30,000. It changed from broadsheet to compact format in August 2009.

The editor is Kevin Young who is also the editor of the local tabloid newspaper, The Lancashire Telegraph. The newspapers are owned by Newsquest, a division of the US firm Gannett.

The newspaper was founded in 1818, and among its early editors was Thomas de Quincey best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. His editorship lasted from July 1818 to November 1819, when he resigned. It has been suggested that his interests were too esoteric for the readership, but the main reason for his leaving seems to have been concern regarding his reliability: the proprietors had complained in July 1819 of "their dissatisfaction with the lack of ‘regular communication between the Editor and the Printer’".

William Wordsworth wrote many letters for publication in the paper, and had been invited to be its editor; other notable letter-writers included John Ruskin and Beatrix Potter.

The newspaper was the first publisher of Alfred Wainwright's Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, until the books were taken over by Michael Joseph.

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