Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/Counties (historical)

For a more current guideline, see Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about counties.

This guideline was the result of a long and acrimonious discussion on the relevant Wikiprojects on the naming of British (in practice, mostly English) counties.

Use administrative counties

1. We should use the current, administrative, county. E.g. Eton is in Berkshire, not Buckinghamshire. [Berkshire is not an administrative county]

This approach is consistent with most local and national government literature, some private sector literature, will be familiar to most readers and writers, and indeed the approach will apply even if boundaries change again. It is also easy for people to find out where a particular village is, as maps with administrative boundaries are freely available online. While historic county maps do exist, it is hard to find one with maps of modern urban areas and city and borough boundaries along with historic counties' boundaries. It is also consistent with other encyclopedias such as the 1911 Encyclopedia, which specifically calls Cromarty a 'former county'.

2. We should mention historic (or ancient) counties in articles about places and in references to places in a historic context, but only as an afternote. If a place is a unitary authority and not administered by a county council, it is acceptable to use ceremonial counties as geographic references, as this is often more in line with common usage. As has been pointed out, it is not useful to state that "Luton is a town in the county of Luton".

3. In historic references we should make sure to note that the county at the time was not the same as the county now, if relevant.

4. Articles about counties should not be split up and should not be disambiguation pages. They should treat the counties as one entity which has changed its boundaries with time. We should not take the minority position that they still exist with the former boundaries. We should mention that this position exists, especially on pages like Yorkshire and Middlesex.

5. With respect to the areas covered by unitary authorities, we should only call them counties if they (a) are legislatively defined as such, and (b) are significantly larger than the town they are centred upon, or have no such centring. If the formal title is Borough (formerly "County Borough") then that is the form to be used. So we would refer to the Borough of Milton Keynes, the Borough of Swindon, and the County of York, but we would say just Leicester, Derby, Stoke-on-Trent.

6. Metropolitan counties should be treated as counties - the fact that they no longer have councils has no relevance to their legal status.

7. With respect to which version of the historic boundaries we should acknowledge as having historic importance - the versions before the 1847 revisions would probably be best - they include many more anomalies, like Islandshire and other exclaves.

Examples of acceptable things:

• Coventry is in the West Midlands, and within the historic borders of Warwickshire
• Most of the pigeons were found at Abingdon, then part of Berkshire
• Middlesex is a historic county of England, now mostly covered by Greater London*
• Southwark is a village in the London Borough of Southwark in Greater London. It is in the ancient borders of Surrey
• Stoke-on-Trent is a city in the English Midlands, it is a part of Staffordshire for ceremonial purposes, although it is administered as a unitary authority

Examples of unacceptable things:

• Coventry is a town in Warwickshire, and administered by the metropolititan administrative "county" of West Midlands
• Brixton is a place in Surrey, England within the former metropolitan "county" of Greater London and in the London Borough of Lambeth.
• Middlesex was a county of England. It was abolished in 1965 after being gutted in 1889 to form the County of London. The end.

Addendum

 * Some people have claimed that this contradicts the rest of the above policy, so an explanation is in order. No administrative or ceremonial county of Middlesex exists, it therefore exists purely as an area name and is in fairly common usage, the same applies to Yorkshire. In all other cases where an administrative county or ceremonial county exists, for the purposes of Wikipedia, these are treated as single entities which have changed their borders over time, so referring to the historic county area as a still existing entity is not acceptable, as is stated clearly above. If a county is still commonly used as an area name in its historic area, and is relevant, than that should be noted

N.b. it should be noted that the above 'interpretation' was added after the policy was passed and was not voted on. Editors might therefore not consider it to be canonical in comparison with the policy proper.

It should also be pointed out that six users have privately told User:G-Man that they support this addendum, although of course it is unknown how many other users support or oppose this addendum but have remained silent.

This does not form part of the policy, but attempts to reason that it is not self-contradictory, as has been alleged. If you have comments they go on the talkpage.

These examples were intended to demonstrate that (a) it is totally acceptable to refer to counties as 99% of people do, and regard the 1844, 1889, 1965 and 1974 changes as changes. (b) as a concession it is important to mention continued use of the placename. Thus we should mention Middlesex Crown Courts, Middlesex bank of the Thames, Middlesex as a former postal address location, etc.)