It is pleasantly situated at the junction of several small streams forming the river Lune, in a deep valley surrounded by high-lying moors.
His request was immediately granted, and thus it came about that Hansen's famous Tables de la Lune were dedicated to La Haute Amiraute de sa Majeste la Reine de la Grande Bretagne et d'Mande.
To the north, west and south, a flat coastal belt, bordering the Irish Sea, with its inlets Morecambe Bay and Solway Firth, and broadest in the north, marks off the Lake District, while to the east the valleys of the Eden and the Lune divide it from the Pennine mountain system.
The principal tributaries on the right are the Aller, Wi mme, Drepte, Lune and Geeste, and on the left the Diemel, Nethe, Emmer, Werra, Aue and Hunte.
Hippocrates of Chios (c. 430 B.C.), the discoverer of the square of a lune, showed that the problem reduced to the determination of two mean proportionals between two given lines, one of them being twice the length of the other.