A Guide to English Counties and Parishes, etc.

Urban and Rural District Councils:

In 1894 county areas outside boroughs were divided into urban and rural districts, normally following the boundaries of the Sanitary districts. Each such district had an elected council, and its functions and structure were almost identical to those of the boroughs, but they did not have aldermen or mayors. The rural districts were further subject to division into parishes, now with elected parish councils (except very small places which had a parish meeting instead).

Definitions of types of settlement:

There is often confusion as to the correct terminology to use for a settlement. What is the distinction between a hamlet and a village, or between a village and a town? What constitutes a city? This section is an attempt to clear up the confusion, so far as that is possible. I should perhaps establish that when I say a settlement I mean a group of dwellings (i.e. more than one), possibly with other buildings.

First it should be made clear that for most purposes the only one of those terms with a definite fixed meaning is the city. A settlement is a city if it holds a charter from the monarch to say so, and not otherwise. There is no other reliable indicator of city status, which is applied to large and small places alike, although I am not aware of any particularly small city which is not the location of a cathedral (but there are small places with cathedrals which are not cities).

At the smallest end of the range, a settlement would normally be called a hamlet if it did not possess the simplest trappings of community life, such as a church or an inn or public house or a school or a post office or other shop.

A village would normally possess all of those things, but there are obviously intermediate cases which have some but not others. The loss of some such facilities from a village which once had them all would certainly not lead to people changing the way they speak of it.

The distinction between a village and a town is probably even more vague. Population is certainly an element. A place with fewer than about 1,500 residents is unlikely to be called a town by anyone, while one with over 5,000 will rarely be called a village (but there are exceptions). If a place has an ancient regular market or fair it will almost certainly be called a town (if it is not a city), even if it is quite small by modern standards. A small town is much more likely than a village to have a definite commercial area at its centre, with a variety of shops, some of which may be quite specialised, whereas in a village shops will be few and tend to be general stores selling a mixture of groceries, hardware, newspapers and other items, often combined with a post office. If a village is at the larger end of the population range, then it will usually consist of a small older core with a considerable recent expansion, often inhabited by commuters who live in the village but work in a nearby larger town.

Despite all that has been said, there are certainly some places which are ambiguous in this respect. Lynton, in north Devon, for example, together with its neighbour Lynmouth and a few outlying areas is for administrative purposes a parish. However, it has a most imposing town hall, a definite commercial centre in each of the two main constituents, and a mayor to chair the council's deliberations, but the inhabitants nevertheless refer to it as a village. The population varies from about 1,500 in winter to ten times as many or more in the summer tourist season.

Here's an example of another, very different ambiguous area. Stopsley was once a typical hill-top village a few miles outside the town of Luton, but was long ago (1933) absorbed by the town. Nevertheless the inhabitants of this part of Luton still refer to the old village centre as "the village", and a book on the history of Stopsley, published on 21st October 1998, refers in the blurb on the cover to "The hamlet of Stopsley"!

Other names for particular areas:

In addition to the general names for specific types of place or local government unit as described above, other terms are used to name particular areas of the country. This section lists a few of them.

The Black Country is the industrial area of south east Staffordshire, north east Worcestershire, north west Warwickshire, and south Shropshire. It is centred on the town of Dudley, and gained its name from the results of the massive atmospheric pollution produced by local metal-working industries, especially in the 19th century. Buildings and trees (where any survived) were black with soot, the stars were never visible in the sky, any washing hung outside was black with freshly deposited soot long before it was dry, and life expectancy was unsurprisingly short. County boundaries in the area always have been complex and subject to many changes.

Forest of Bowland is an area of wild moorland bounded in the east and south by the River Ribble (which separates it from the Yorkshire Dales), in the north by the River Lune and in the west by The Fylde. It is (on pre-1974 boundaries) partly in Lancashire and partly Yorkshire.

Craven is an area of the Yorkshire Dales subsequently adopted as a district council's official name.

The Dales is the name given to most of the more northerly section of the Pennine Hills. It consists of high moorland interspersed with a series of fast rivers flowing east to the North Sea. Each river valley is a dale, named after its river (e.g. the River Swale runs through Swaledale). The Yorkshire section is a National Park, called the Yorkshire Dales National Park, but further north the Dales continue into County Durham, Westmorland and Northumberland to Hadrian's Wall, built by the Romans to keep out the barbarians across the border in Scotland.

East Anglia is usually thought of today as being the round bulge on the east side of England, extending from the Thames estuary northwards to the large rectangular shallow inlet called The Wash. On this definition it consists of the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, with Cambridgeshire sometimes also included. However, a more strict definition based on the boundaries of the ancient kingdom would restrict it to the counties of Norfok and Suffolk, plus the eastern part only of Cambridgeshire and the north-east corner of Essex.

East Midlands is a largely but by no means exclusively industrial area, as one might expect located to the east of the West Midlands. It includes the counties of Derbyshire (although the northern, moorland, part is sometimes excluded), Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire.

Fenland is a term applied to an area of low-lying, very flat land (some of it below sea-level) in eastern England. Although nearly all of it is now drained and is a very fertile agricultural area, historically it was a place of marshes extending as far as the eye could see and well beyond. The counties parts of which comprise it are Cambridgeshire (almost all of it), Huntingdonshire (all of it), parts of west Norfolk, south Lincolnshire and part of north Bedfordshire. Drainage has resulted in shrinking of the soil, to the extent that some rivers, notably much of the Norfolk part of the Great Ouse, flow well above the surrounding land and are contained only by massive earthen embankments. The Isle of Ely, miles from the sea, is so-named because it was an island in the surrounding miles of fens. Incidentally, a fen is an alkaline marsh, distinguishing it from a bog which is always acidic.

The Fylde is a short broad peninsula in Lancashire, bounded in the south by the estuary of the River Ribble, in the east by the Pennines, in the west by the almost entirely urban coastline of Lytham St. Annes, Blackpool, Cleveleys and Fleetwood, and in the north by a stretch of north-facing Irish Sea coast known (I am told by a kind correspondent) as Over Wyre. The area is very flat, corresponding with its name, derived from filde, meaning plain.

Hallamshire is the area around and including the city of Sheffield, in south Yorkshire. So far as I know, there has never been a county of this name, but this large industrial city set in a river valley in the midst of wild moorland is a very distinctive place.

The Home Counties are those counties surrounding London. These are Essex (note the overlap with East Anglia), Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Surrey and Kent (that sequence is going anti-clockwise from the Thames estuary). Sussex is also sometimes included. The origin of the name is obscure.

The Lake District is an area of lakes and mountains in north-west England. It includes England's longest (Lake Windermere) and deepest (Wastwater) natural lakes and highest mountains (Scafell Pike, Scafell, Helvellyn and others). It includes the whole of Westmorland, a great part of Cumberland and a small piece of north Lancashire (pre-1974 boundaries - using post-1974 boundaries it is entirely in Cumbria).

The Peak District is the southern part of the Pennine Hills. It is an area of high moorland, with deep, often very picturesque valleys and occasional gorges, mostly situated in north and central Derbyshire but also extending into Staffordshire, Yorkshire and just a little into Lancashire (using pre-1974 boundaries). It was the first National Park to be defined in Britain.

Vale of York is a roughly rectangular piece of fertile lowland running north-south between the North Yorkshire Moors and the Dales.

The Weald is the name given to the area between the North Downs and the South Downs in south east England. The downs mentioned are two ridges of chalk hills, running very roughly east to west across (mainly) Sussex and Kent, but meeting at the chalk hill plateau of north Hampshire and Salisbury Plain. They meet the sea at Dover (North Downs, forming the famous White Cliffs) and near Eastbourne (South Downs, forming the high cliffs of Beachy Head). The Weald itself was once heavily forested (the word weald is an Old English word meaning "woodland") and a centre for making charcoal for use in smelting iron.

Welsh Marches are the counties making up the border area of England adjacent to Wales. Normally included are Cheshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, with Monmouthshire (in Wales since 1974) normally also included. This was an area of great strategic significance in the early mediæval period, before Wales was conquered and pacified. The name comes from the old word "march" meaning border.

West Country is a term applied to the counties of south west England as a group. The counties normally included are Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, and very often Hampshire and/or Gloucestershire are also included. It corresponds very roughly with the ancient kingdom of Wessex, and is sometimes given that name.

West Midlands is the name given to the larger industrial area including the Black Country and surrounding towns and cities such as Birmingham, Coventry and many others. In 1974 a "metropolitan county" of this name was created to administer the area.

Wirral is the roughly rectangular peninsula in north Cheshire (until 1974) lying between the estuaries of the rivers Dee and Mersey. The 1974 changes to local government boundaries transferred the northern half to the new Metropolitan County of Merseyside with the status of a Metropolitan Borough named Wirral, with the southern half retained in Cheshire with the title of Ellesmere Port & Neston District (but usually known as South Wirral).

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Acknowledgements:

I am indebted to Jim Fisher, who has generously allowed me to reproduce some of the text from his original, excellent article, entitled "English Counties, Parishes, etc. for Genealogists". The copyright of the owner is ackowledged.