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Counties of England
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The counties of England are territorial divisions of England for the purposes of administrative, political and geographical demarcation. Many current counties have foundations in older divisions such as the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The name county originates in the area formerly or nominally administered by a Count, although in Britain the situation is complicated by the fact that the title Count has been replaced in normal usage by the older Saxon title of Earl.
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The counties of England are territorial divisions of England for the purposes of administrative, political and geographical demarcation. Many current counties have foundations in older divisions such as the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The name county originates in the area formerly or nominally administered by a Count, although in Britain the situation is complicated by the fact that the title Count has been replaced in normal usage by the older Saxon title of Earl. An Earl's wife, however, bears the title of Countess.
The names, boundaries and functions of these divisions have changed considerably in modern times. Indeed, a series of local government reforms from the 19th century onwards has left the exact definition of the term 'county' ambiguous. The term "counties of England" does not, therefore, refer to a unique canonical set of names or boundaries; in formal use, the type of county relevant to the specific task and period is explicitly stated e.g. ceremonial county, registration county, historic county or former postal county.
Historic counties
Known variously as the 39 historic, ancient or traditional counties. The system of counties, originally called shires, first emerged within the kingdom of Wessex, probably in the 7th century, and was extended across the rest of the country during the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries. They became established as a geographic reference frame over time. They ceased to be used for census reporting in 1841. Most of the historic counties continue to form part of the local government structure, often with reformed boundaries.
Registration counties
Registration counties existed from 1851 to 1930 and were used for census reporting from 1851 to 1911. They were formed from the combined areas of smaller registration districts; originally based on municipal boroughs, the poor law unions and later sanitary districts. Where these districts crossed historic borders of the United Kingdom boundaries they caused the registration counties to differ from the historic counties.
1889 to 1974
By the late nineteenth century there was increasing pressure to reform the government and areas of the counties. A boundary commission was appointed in 1887 to review all English and Welsh counties, and a Local Government Bill was introduced to parliament in the following year.
The resulting Local Government Act 1888 established elected county councils in England in 1889, taking over many of the administrative functions of the Quarter Sessions courts, as well as being given other powers over the years. A County of London was created from parts of Kent, Middlesex and Surrey. The counties were divided into administrative counties (the area controlled by a county council) and independent county boroughs. Each county borough was technically an administrative county of itself, while a number of counties were divided into more than one administrative county; they were Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Suffolk, Sussex and Yorkshire.
The counties used for purposes other than local government, such as lieutenancy, also changed, being either a single administrative county or a grouping of administrative counties and "associated" county boroughs. The one exception was the City of London, which alone among counties corporate retained a separate lieutenancy. In legislation after 1888 the unqualified use of the term "county" refers to these entities, although the informal term "geographical county" was also used to distinguish them from administrative counties. They were shown on Ordnance Survey maps of the time under both titles, and are equivalent to the modern "ceremonial counties".
There were considerable boundary changes between the counties over the period, with areas being exchanged and suburban areas in one county being annexed by county boroughs in another. A major realignment came in 1931, when the boundaries between Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire were adjusted by the Provisional Order Confirmation (Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire) Act which transferred 26 parishes between the three counties, largely to eliminate exclaves.
A Local Government Boundary Commission was set up in 1945 with the power to merge, create or divide all existing administrative counties and county boroughs. If the commission's recommendations had been carried out the county map of England would have been completely redrawn. The review process was instead abandoned after the 1950 general election.
A Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London was established in 1957 and a Local Government Commission for England in 1958 to recommend new local government structures. The major outcomes of the work of the commissions came in 1965: The original County of London was abolished and was replaced by the "administrative area" of Greater London, which also includes most of the remaining part of Middlesex and parts of Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire; Huntingdonshire was merged with the Soke of Peterborough to form Huntingdon and Peterborough, and the original Cambridgeshire administrative county was merged with the Isle of Ely (historically the north of Cambridgeshire, around Ely) to form Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely.
Changes in 1974
On 1 April 1974 the Local Government Act 1972 came into force. This abolished the existing local government structure in England and Wales (except in Greater London), replacing it with a new entirely two-tier system. It abolished the previously existing administrative counties and county boroughs (but not the previous non-administrative 'counties') and created a new set of 46 'counties' in England, 6 of which were metropolitan and 40 of which were non-metropolitan.
Some of the counties established by the Act were entirely new, such as Avon, Cleveland, Cumbria, Hereford and Worcester, and Humberside, along with the new metropolitan counties of Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands, and West Yorkshire. The counties of Cumberland, Herefordshire, Rutland, Westmorland and Worcestershire vanished from the administrative map, as did the county boroughs.
The abolition of county boroughs resulted in the distinction made between the Lieutenancy counties and the administrative ones becoming unnecessary. Section 216 of the Act adopted the new counties for ceremonial and judicial purposes.
A further local government reform in the 1990s grouped the counties into regions, created many small unitary authorities possessing county level status (re-establishing in effect if not in name the old county boroughs), and restored Herefordshire, Rutland and Worcestershire as administrative entities.
There are now 81 county level entities outside Greater London. Of these, 34 are so-called 'shire counties' with both county councils and district councils, and 40 are unitary authorities. Six are metropolitan counties. The remaining one is Berkshire, whose county council has been abolished and its districts have become unitary authorities.
Post-1996 ceremonial counties
Because of the local government reforms in the 1990s, the distinction between the counties used for local government and those used for Lieutenancy, abolished in 1974, was revived, and a new term, 'ceremonial county', coined. Most unitary authorities remained associated with the same county for Lieutenancy, and in a few areas the old ceremonial counties were restored (Bristol, East Riding of Yorkshire, Herefordshire, Rutland, Worcestershire).
These are also known as the geographic counties and are generally used to describe a place's location in England. They are also taken into consideration by the boundary commission when they draw up boundaries for constituencies, for example.
Postal counties
The former postal counties as used by the Post Office are no longer required on addresses. They included most of the 1974 changes, but did not use Greater Manchester or Greater London as postal counties. They went out of official use in 1996. However they are still widely used by many individuals and in areas where they do not coincide with administrative boundaries, particularly in Greater London, they have contributed to popular confusion as to which "county" an area is in.
See also
External references
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