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The 'counties of England' are territorial divisions of England for the purposes of administrative, political and geographical demarcation. Most current counties have foundations in older divisions such as the Anglo-Saxon shires, and duchies.
The names, boundaries and functions of these divisions have changed considerably over their history. 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.

Contents

Historic counties

Registration counties

1889 to 1974

Changes in 1974

Post-1996 ceremonial counties

Postal counties

See also

References

External references

Historic counties

Main articles: Historic counties of England


Known variously as the 39 historic, ancient or traditional counties, they arose from the 12th to the 16th centuries, though many of the specific areas are much older. 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.^[1]

Registration counties

Main articles: Registration county

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 county boundaries they caused the registration counties to differ from the historic counties.

1889 to 1974

Main articles: Administrative counties of England, County borough

Elected county councils were set up 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.^[2] The counties were divided into administrative counties (the area controlled by a county council) and independent county boroughs.^[3] Some counties were covered by several administrative counties; they were Suffolk, Sussex, Northamptonshire, Hampshire, Cambridgeshire, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.
Under the Local Government Act 1888, the areas used for purposes other than local government, such as Lieutenancy, also changed, with the addition of the County of London, and the requirement that every borough and urban district should form part of one county or another. This set of counties was already different from the historic counties identified above as there were two counties corporate, the City of London and Bristol, included. These counties have later been dubbed 'ceremonial counties', and were shown on Ordnance Survey maps of the time as 'counties' or later 'geographic counties'.
In 1931 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.
1965 saw a minor change as the original County of London became instead the 'administrative area' of Greater London, in the process absorbing most of the remaining part of Middlesex; Huntingdonshire merged with the Soke of Peterborough to form Huntingdon and Peterborough, and the original Cambridgeshire administrative county merged with the Isle of Ely (historically the north of Cambridgeshire, around Ely) to form Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely.

Changes in 1974

Main articles: Metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties of England

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

Main articles: Ceremonial counties of England


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 acknowledge 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

★ Home Counties

★ Shire counties

References

1. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, ''Aspects of Britain: Local Government'' (1996)
2. Thomson, D., ''England in the Nineteenth Century'' (1815-1914) (1978)
3. Bryne, T., ''Local Government in Britain'', (1994)

External references

★ Counties of England, Wales and Scotland prior to the 1974 Boundary Changes

★ Administrative Areas of England - gives details of the 1974 changes