SALKELD (GREAT), a parish in LEATH ward,
county of CUMBERLAND, 3 miles (S. by w.) from Kirk-
Oswald, containing 403 inhabitants. The living is a rectory,
held with the archdeaconry of Carlisle, in the diocese
of Carlisle, rated in the king's books at £22.10.10.,
and endowed with £200 private benefaction, and £600
royal bounty. The church is dedicated to St. Cuthbert:
the tower, which appears to have contained four rooms
above each other, was formerly resorted to as a place
of security; under it is a dungeon, There are places
of worship for Presbyterians and Primitive Methodists.
The parish is intersected by the river Eden, which is
crossed by a bridge of singular construction, having
elliptical, semicircular, and pointed arches; it was
partly built with the materials of an old bridge taken
down about fifty years ago: the remains of a pier
belonging to a still more ancient structure, demolished
by a great flood in 1360, are still visible in the stream
of the Eden. A school-house, erected by subscription
in 1686, is endowed with about £3 per annum. In
the neighbourhood are vestiges of an ancient encampment,
the ramparts of which are twelve feet high; and
on the common is a chalybeate spring. Among the
several eminent natives of this parish were, Dr. George
Benson, a nonconformist divine and biblical critic, born
in 1699; the late Lord Ellenborough, Lord Chief Justice
of the King's Bench; and Rowland Wetheral, the
celebrated mathematician and astronomer, born in the
middle of the last century.