Friendly, fixed-fee will writing, lasting powers of attorney and estate planning across Carlisle and the wider Cumbria area. Home visits at no extra cost.
Will Guard's Carlisle consultants visit homes across the entire CA1 to CA28 postcode area, covering every neighbourhood in the city and the surrounding Cumbria towns and villages. We sit with you at your kitchen table, work to a fixed fee agreed in writing, and never charge for the first consultation. Home visits are available Monday to Friday up to 7pm and on Saturdays from 10am to 4pm at no extra cost.
We are members of the Society of Will Writers and carry full professional indemnity insurance. Every will we draft is plain-English, properly signed and witnessed under section 9 of the Wills Act 1837, and (if you wish) registered with the National Will Register and stored in our bonded fireproof storage. Our fixed-fee service starts at £95 for a single will and £165 for mirror wills for a couple — with no hourly rates, no surprise bills and no pressure to add services you do not need.
Carlisle has been a frontier town for very nearly two thousand years. The Romans first arrived in around AD 73 and built the fort of Luguvalium on the site that is now the city centre, garrisoned to defend the western end of the line that would become Hadrian's Wall a few decades later. For most of the next millennium and a half Carlisle was the place where England ended and something else — first the Picts, then the Scots, then the wild Border Reiver country of the sixteenth century — began. The castle, founded in 1092 by William II and rebuilt in red sandstone over the following centuries, is one of the most besieged buildings in England: it changed hands repeatedly during the Wars of the Roses, the Civil War, and the Jacobite rising of 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlie's army briefly held it.
The Carlisle of the modern era was built by the railways. The opening of the Carlisle Citadel station in 1847 made the city the most important rail junction in the North West, with seven different railway companies meeting at one point. The textile mills, the engineering works at Cowans Sheldon, and the great biscuit factory of Carr's of Carlisle — still going today — all grew from that nineteenth-century boom. The city was granted city status in 1158 (one of the earliest in the country) but the modern boundaries were extended in 1974 and again, more dramatically, in 2023, when local government reorganisation created the new Cumberland unitary authority covering most of the historic county.
Today's Carlisle is home to about 75,000 people and serves as the natural commercial and administrative centre for a vast rural hinterland of around 250,000 across northern Cumbria, the Solway Plain, the Eden Valley and on into the Lakes. We cover the entire CA postcode area — from the city itself out to Penrith, Workington, Whitehaven, Wigton, Brampton and the villages of the western fells — and our consultants are well used to the longer journeys that rural Cumbria sometimes requires. The estates we look at are extremely varied: city centre flats, hill farms in the Eden Valley with land going back through the family for generations, holiday lets in the Lakes, second homes belonging to clients who actually live in the cities, and modest bungalows along the Solway coast.
From £95. A simple, plain-English will for one person, drafted at your home in Carlisle.
From £165. Matching wills for couples — efficient and cost-effective for partners with shared wishes.
From £165. Allows a trusted person to manage your finances if you ever lose capacity.
From £165. Lets a chosen person make medical and care decisions on your behalf.
Ringfence your share of the family home from care fees and remarriage. Suitable for many Carlisle couples.
Fixed-fee probate handling for Carlisle estates. Newcastle District Probate Registry serves the Cumbria area, with applications processed through the central Probate Service.
Cumbrian estates often involve land — working farms, smallholdings, fields let on grazing licences, and sometimes parcels of fell or woodland. Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief can shelter much of this from inheritance tax, but only if the structure is right. We work carefully with farming clients and will refer to a specialist tax adviser where the situation calls for it.
Holiday lets are another distinctive feature of estate planning in Cumbria. Whether your cottage qualifies as a Furnished Holiday Letting for tax purposes affects whether Business Property Relief applies, and the rules are strict. We will explain what we can and recommend a specialist where the matter is borderline.
Will Guard does not operate a high-street office — we come to you. The map above shows central Carlisle; we cover the whole of Cumbria and travel is included in every fixed fee.
Probate for Carlisle and the wider Cumbria area is processed centrally by HMCTS through the online Probate Service. Newcastle District Probate Registry handles in-person interview appointments for the region. Most straightforward Cumbrian estates are processed within eight to sixteen weeks. We can manage the whole process for a fixed fee if you would prefer.
Yes, gladly. Our Cumbria consultants regularly travel out to Penrith, Wigton, Brampton, Longtown, Aspatria, the Eden Valley villages, the Solway Plain, the western Lake District towns of Cockermouth, Keswick and Workington, and as far south as Kendal, Windermere and Ulverston. Travel is always included in the fixed fee regardless of how remote your address is.
Farming wills need particular care. Agricultural Property Relief can in many cases reduce or eliminate inheritance tax on the agricultural value of the land and farmhouse, and Business Property Relief can extend that to live and dead stock and to any farming business. We will draft a will that takes full advantage of both and will refer to a specialist tax adviser for any cross-border or unusually complex elements.
Yes. Whether the cottage qualifies as a Furnished Holiday Letting for inheritance tax purposes depends on how heavily it is let and what services you provide — the rules are strict and HMRC's interpretation has tightened in recent years. We will explain the position and, where appropriate, refer you to a tax specialist before drafting your will.
Yes. Our consultants cover every CA, LA and northern parts of the LA postcodes from Carlisle in the north right down to Barrow-in-Furness in the south. Evening and Saturday appointments are available throughout, and travel is always included in our fixed fee.
A selection of recent reviews from clients across the Carlisle area. All reviews are from real, verified clients and are reproduced with their permission.
"We farm just outside Penrith and have been worried for years about how to leave the farm fairly to three children when only one wants to take it on. Will Guard sat with us for two hours over a pot of tea and came up with a sensible plan. Honest, patient, country folk themselves by the sound of it."
"I'm a widow living alone and was nervous about having anyone in the house. The consultant phoned ahead, brought identification, was patient and kind, and explained everything in language I understood. Will, LPAs and storage all sorted for a very fair fixed fee."
"Excellent service. Took the time to understand our situation properly — we have a holiday let in the Lakes as well as our main home — and gave honest advice about what they could and couldn't help with. Where they couldn't, they pointed us to someone who could. Refreshing."
"Will Guard travelled all the way out to us from Carlisle on a Saturday morning, made the whole thing painless, and the signed wills came back within ten days. Far easier and far cheaper than the local solicitors had quoted. Would absolutely recommend."
The first conversation is always free, in your home, and entirely without obligation. Call 0330 223 7844, email info@willguard.co.uk, or use our contact form and a Carlisle consultant will be in touch within one working day to arrange a visit at a time that suits you.
