England and Wales Pre-19th century The initial cities () of
Britain were the fortified settlements organised by the
Romans as the capitals of the
Celtic tribes under
Roman rule. The
British clerics of the
early Middle Ages later preserved a traditional list of the "
28 Cities" () which was mentioned by
Gildas and listed by
Nennius. In the 16th century, a town was recognised as a city by the English Crown if it had a
diocesan cathedral within its limits, for which 22 dioceses existed in England & Wales (see
City status conferment further in the article). This association between having a cathedral and being called a city was established when
Henry VIII founded new dioceses (each having a cathedral in the
see city) in six English towns and also granted them city status by issuing
letters patent, demonstrating these were discrete procedures. Some cities today are very small because they were granted city status in or before the 16th century, then were unaffected by population growth during the
Industrial Revolution—notably
Wells (population about 10,000) and
St Davids (population about 2,000). After the 16th century, no new dioceses (and no new cities) were created until the 19th century in England (
a further city was created in Ireland during the rule of King James I in the 17th century).
1836–1888 A long-awaited resumption of
creating dioceses began in 1836 with
Ripon. Ripon Town Council assumed that this had elevated the town to the rank of a city, and started referring to itself as the
City and Borough of Ripon. The next diocese formed was
Manchester and its Borough Council began informally to use the title
city. When
Queen Victoria visited Manchester in 1851, widespread doubts surrounding its status were raised. The pretension was ended when the borough petitioned for city status, which was granted by letters patent in 1853. This eventually forced Ripon to regularise its position; its city status was recognised by
Act of Parliament in 1865. From this year Ripon bore city status whilst the rapidly expanding conurbation of Leeds – in the Ripon diocese – did not. The Manchester case established a precedent that any
municipal borough in which an Anglican see was established was entitled to petition for city status. Accordingly,
Truro,
St Albans,
Liverpool,
Newcastle upon Tyne and
Wakefield were all officially designated as cities between 1877 and 1888. This was not without opposition from the
Home Office, which dismissed
St Albans as "a fourth or fifth rate market town" and objected to
Wakefield's elevation on grounds of population. In one new diocese,
Southwell, a city was not created, because it was a village without a borough corporation and therefore could not petition the Queen. The
diocese covered the counties of
Derbyshire and
Nottinghamshire, and the boroughs of
Derby and
Nottingham were disappointed that they would not be able to claim the title of city.
1889–1907 was the first English town without an Anglican cathedral to be granted city status.
Birmingham City Council meets at the
Council House. The link with Anglican dioceses was broken within England in 1889 when
Birmingham successfully petitioned for city status (it was
pre-empted in Ireland by Belfast in 1888) on the grounds of its large population and history of good local government. At the time of the grant, Birmingham lacked an Anglican cathedral, although
the parish church later became a cathedral in 1905. This new precedent was followed by other large municipalities:
Leeds and
Sheffield became cities in 1893, and
Bradford,
Kingston upon Hull and
Nottingham were honoured on the occasion of Queen Victoria's
Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The last three had been the largest
county boroughs outside the London area without city status. The government eventually relented, with Balfour stating that "as soon as the necessary arrangements under the London Government Act have been completed, there will be conferred on the borough of Westminster, as constituted under the Act, the title of city, originally conferred in the time of Henry VIII". Letters patent were duly issued granting the title of "city" to the newly created
Metropolitan Borough of Westminster.
1907–1953 In 1907, the Home Office and
King Edward VII agreed on a policy that future applicants would have to meet certain criteria. This policy, which was not at the time made public, had the effect of stemming the number of city creations. The 1907 policy contained three criteria: • A minimum population of 300,000. • A "local metropolitan character"—this implied that the town had a distinct identity of its own and was the centre of a wider area. • A good record of local government. Following the
First World War, the King made an official visit to
Leicester in 1919 to commemorate its contributions to the military victory. The borough council had made several applications for city status since 1889, and took the opportunity of the visit to renew its request.
Leicester had a population of approximately 230,000 at the previous census, but its petition was granted as an exception to the policy, as it was officially a restoration of a dignity lost in the past. When the county borough of
Stoke-on-Trent applied for city status in 1925, it was initially refused as it had only 294,000 inhabitants. The decision was overturned, however, as it was felt to have outstanding importance as the centre of the pottery industry. The effective relaxation of the population rule led to applications from
Portsmouth and
Salford. The civil servants in the Home Office were minded to refuse both applications. In particular,
Salford was felt to be "merely a scratch collection of 240,000 people cut off from Manchester by the river". Salford's case, however, was considered favourably by the Home Secretary,
William Joynson-Hicks, who had once been a
Member of Parliament (MP) for a neighbouring constituency of
Manchester North West. Following protests from
Portsmouth, which felt it had better credentials as a larger town and as the "first Naval Port of the kingdom", both applications were approved in 1926. In 1928,
Plymouth submitted an application for city status. As the borough had more inhabitants than
Portsmouth and had absorbed
Devonport and
East Stonehouse, the King agreed to the request. However, he indicated that he had "come to an end of city making", and
Southampton's application in the following year was turned down. as was
Derby's in 1935. The next city to be created was
Lancaster in 1937 as part of the celebrations of the
coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. With a population of a little over 50,000,
Lancaster was stated to be an exception due to the town's "long association with the crown" and because it was "the county town of the King's Duchy of Lancaster". Following the
Second World War, members of
Cambridge Borough Council made contact with
Lancaster officials for assistance in their application.
Cambridge became a city in 1951, again for "exceptional" reasons, as the only ancient seat of learning in the kingdom not a city or
royal burgh and to coincide with the 750th anniversary of the borough's first charter of incorporation.
1953–1974 It was anticipated that the coronation of
Elizabeth II in 1953 would lead to the creation of a city, and
Wolverhampton,
Preston and
Southampton made approaches; the only civic honour given was that of a lord mayoralty to
Coventry.
Croydon applied in 1954, but failed as it was felt not to have a sufficient identity apart from
Greater London, and reports on the conduct of local government in the town were unfavourable. In the meantime, the administration of London was reformed under the
London Government Act 1963. While the
City of London was permitted to continue in existence largely unchanged,
Westminster was merged with two neighbouring authorities to form a new
London borough from 1 April 1965. In December 1963 it was announced that a charter was to be granted incorporating the new authority as "Westminster", and that the Queen had accepted the advice of the Home Secretary to raise the London borough to the title and dignity of city. This example, of a successor local authority to a merged local government entity taking on that former entity's city status, was to be replicated in many instances as a result of the 1972/74 local government reforms across England and Wales (see below). With the establishment of the
Royal Commission on Local Government in England in 1966, city grants were again in abeyance in England. Attempts by
Derby,
Teesside and
Wolverhampton to become cities were not proceeded with. In Wales,
Swansea campaigned for city status throughout the 1960s. The campaign came to a successful conclusion in 1969, in conjunction with the investiture of
Charles, Prince of Wales.
1974 reorganisation and new cities The
Local Government Act 1972 abolished all existing local authorities outside London (other than
parish councils) in England and Wales. This meant that the various local authorities that held city status ceased to exist on 1 April 1974. To preserve city status new letters patent were issued to the most relevant
metropolitan borough,
non-metropolitan district or
successor parish councils created by the Act. Some of these came to cover local government districts many times wider than the previous city, even taking in many square miles of rural land outside the urban areas, for example the cities of
Bradford,
Leeds and
Winchester. Three non-local authority preservations arose: here
charter trustees were established for the cities of
Lichfield and
Salisbury (or New Sarum) being neither districts nor civil parishes, and special letters patent for a time preserved the city of
Rochester. In 1977, as part of the celebrations of the
Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II, the Home Office identified nine candidates for city status:
Blackburn,
Brighton,
Croydon,
Derby,
Dudley,
Newport,
Sandwell,
Sunderland and
Wolverhampton. In April 1980 a parish council was created for Lichfield, and the charter trustees established six years earlier were dissolved. City status was temporarily lost until new letters patent were issued in November of the same year. In 1992, on the fortieth anniversary of the monarch's accession, it was announced that another town would be elevated to a city. An innovation on this occasion was that a competition was to be held, and communities would be required to submit applications. Sunderland was the successful applicant. This was followed in 1994 by the restoration of the dignity to
St David's, historic see of a bishop. Since 2000, city status has been awarded to towns or local government districts by competition on special occasions. A large number of towns have applied for the honour in recent decades including
Blackpool,
Colchester,
Croydon,
Gateshead,
Ipswich,
Middlesbrough,
Milton Keynes,
Reading,
Swindon and
Warrington. Four successful applicants in England have become cities, as well as two in Wales; in 2000 for the Millennium celebrations, the new cities were
Brighton and Hove and
Wolverhampton; in 2002 for the Queen's Golden Jubilee it was
Preston and
Newport, and in 2012 for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee it was
Chelmsford and
St Asaph.
2021 bids for city status From June 2021,
submissions for city status were invited to mark the
Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 2022. Places submitting bids (some for a second or subsequent time) included
Bangor (Northern Ireland),
Bournemouth,
Doncaster,
Dunfermline,
Dudley,
Marazion,
Middlesbrough,
Milton Keynes,
Reading,
St Andrews and
Wrexham. Bids were also accepted from
overseas territories and
crown dependencies for the first time. The competition closed on 8 December 2021 with 39 locations on the shortlist, and the winners were to be announced in June 2022. On 18 October 2021, the
Prime Minister announced in Parliament that the Queen, in advance of the closing date, would accord city status to one of the applicants,
Southend-on-Sea. This was in memory of Sir
David Amess, the town's MP who
was murdered three days earlier and had long pressed for the status. City status was officially granted by letters patent dated 26 January 2022. They were presented to Southend Borough Council by
Charles, Prince of Wales, on 1 March 2022. An announcement on 20 May 2022 declared that eight new cities were to be created from the shortlist, with at least one in every UK country as well as in
overseas locations. In England, Milton Keynes, Colchester and Doncaster were to be the recipients of the honour. Dunfermline, a previous royal capital of Scotland, was granted the privilege. Bangor in Northern Ireland was also a recipient, and the title in Wales was granted to Wrexham. These awards increased the number of official mainland cities to 76, with 55 in England, eight in Scotland, seven in Wales, six in Northern Ireland.
Greater London Other than the
City of London and the
City of Westminster, no local authorities in the
Greater London area have been granted city status. The Home Office had a policy of resisting any attempt by metropolitan boroughs to become cities even when their populations, and other proposed claims as qualifying criteria, might otherwise have made them eligible. It was felt that such a grant would undermine the status of the two existing cities in the capital. The
Metropolitan Borough of Southwark made a number of applications, but in 1955 the borough's town clerk was told not to pursue the matter any further.
Rochester Rochester was recognised as a city from 1211 to 1998. On 1 April 1974, the city council was abolished, becoming part of the
Borough of Medway, a
local government district in the county of
Kent. However, under
letters patent the former city council area was to continue to be styled the "City of Rochester" to "perpetuate the ancient name" and to recall "the long history and proud heritage of the said city". The city was unique, as it had no council or charter trustees and no mayor or civic head. In 1979, the
Borough of Medway was renamed as
Rochester-upon-Medway, and in 1982 further letters patent transferred the city status to the entire borough. On 1 April 1998, the existing local government districts of Rochester-upon-Medway and
Gillingham were abolished and became the new
unitary authority of
Medway. Since it was the local government district that officially held city status under the 1982 letters patent, when it was abolished, it also ceased to be a city. Whilst the two other local government districts with city status (
Bath and
Hereford) that were abolished around this time decided to appoint
charter trustees to maintain the existence of the city and the mayoralty, Rochester-upon-Medway City Council did not do so. Medway Council apparently only became aware of this when, in 2002, they discovered that
Rochester was not on the
Lord Chancellor's Office's list of cities. The council campaigned unsuccessfully to be one of 2012 Diamond Jubilee cities. The campaign's "City of Medway" logo was used on a council tourism leaflet titled "Historic Rochester and Maritime
Chatham" until the
Advertising Standards Authority upheld a 2010 complaint that it
misleadingly implied Medway had "officially been granted city status" because "readers of the leaflet were likely to be aware of [the] official definition of a city".
Scotland Scotland had no cities by
royal charter or letters patent before 1889. The nearest equivalent in pre-Union Scotland was the
royal burgh. The term
city was not always consistently applied, and there were doubts over the number of officially designated cities. The royal burghs of
Edinburgh and
Perth anciently used the title
civitas, but the term
city does not seem to have been used before the 15th century. Unlike the situation in England, in Scotland there was no link between the presence of a cathedral and the title of
city.
Aberdeen,
Glasgow and
Edinburgh were accepted as cities by ancient usage by the 18th century, while
Perth and
Elgin also used the title. The
Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 completely reorganised Scotland's local administration in 1975. All burghs were abolished, and a system of districts created. The four districts of
Aberdeen,
Edinburgh,
Dundee and
Glasgow had
City included in their titles by the Act. The 1975 districts were replaced with the present council areas in 1996 by the
Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, and the same four cities were designated. Since the 1996 reorganisation, four more Scottish cities have been designated: Inverness as part of the millennium celebrations,
Stirling in 2002 to commemorate
Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee,
Perth in 2012 to mark the
Queen's Diamond Jubilee In February 2024 the Provost of Fife, the council area containing Dunfermline, petitioned Lord Lyon to matriculate arms for the city. Arms were duly granted to the 'Provost of Fife for and on behalf of the City of Dunfermline' in August of that year.
Ireland and Northern Ireland City status in Ireland tended historically to be granted by royal charter. There are many towns in Ireland with
Church of Ireland cathedrals that have never been called cities. In spite of this,
Armagh was considered a city, by virtue of its being the seat of the
Primate of All Ireland, until the abolition of Armagh's city corporation by the
Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840. The only historic city with a charter in present-day Northern Ireland is
Derry. The garrison town of Derry was
attacked and destroyed by
Cahir O'Doherty in 1608. The present city status is the result of a Royal Charter granted in 1615 to
The Honourable The Irish Society as part of the
Plantation of Ulster, providing for the building of a walled city, which was named in recognition of the
London Guilds that established the Society. In 1887, the Golden Jubilee of
Queen Victoria was celebrated, and the Borough of Belfast submitted a memorial to the
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland seeking city status. Belfast based its claim on its similarity to two English boroughs that had received the honour—the seaport of
Liverpool and the textile centre of
Manchester—and the fact that it had (at the time) a larger population than the City of
Dublin. Following some legal debate, city status was conferred in 1888. The grant of the honour on the grounds of being a large industrial town, rather than a diocesan centre, was unprecedented.
Belfast's example was soon followed by
Birmingham in England and
Dundee in Scotland.
Newry, like
Inverness and
Stirling in Scotland, has no formal boundaries or city council. The letters patent were presented to representatives of
Newry and Mourne District Council on behalf of the city.
Crown colonies and British Overseas Territories During the
British Empire, the
Colonial Office had the power to declare cities in
Crown colonies by letters patent when appointing bishops. When the
Bishop of Guyana was created in 1842,
Georgetown (then part of
British Guiana) was officially declared the "City of Georgetown". The same process was followed for
Gibraltar,
Jamestown, St Helena,
Bridgetown, Barbados,
St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda,
Victoria, Hong Kong and
Nassau, Bahamas.
Hamilton, Bermuda was named as a city in 1897 as part of the celebration of the
Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Since the second Millennium, competitions have been arranged by the UK government to grant the status to settlements. In 2021
submissions for city status were invited to mark the
Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II, with Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories being allowed to take part for the first time. The applicants were
George Town (in the
Cayman Islands),
Gibraltar,
Stanley (in the
Falkland Islands),
Douglas and
Peel (both in the
Isle of Man). It was later discovered that Gibraltar had been previously named a city, researchers at
The National Archives confirming that Gibraltar's city status was still in effect, with the territory missing from the official list of cities for the past 140 years. Stanley and Douglas were later granted the honour, and after confirmations this will take the overseas
total to five cities. == Current practice of granting city status ==