Origins as they were in 1851, excluding
Monmouthshire which was sometimes deemed part of England rather than Wales prior to 1974 Most of the historic English counties were established between the 7th and 11th centuries. Counties were initially used for the administration of justice and organisation of the militia, all overseen by a sheriff. The sheriff was usually appointed by the monarch but in some cases, known as the
counties palatine, the right to appoint sheriffs rested elsewhere; for example with the
Bishop of Durham for
County Durham, and with the
Earl of Chester for
Cheshire. A county's magistrates sat four times a year as the
quarter sessions. For more serious cases judges visited each county twice a year for the
assizes. In some larger counties the practice arose of holding the quarter sessions separately for subdivisions of the county, including the
Ridings of
Yorkshire, the
Parts of Lincolnshire and the
Eastern and
Western divisions of
Sussex. The quarter sessions were also gradually given various civil functions, such as providing asylums, maintaining main roads and bridges, and the regulation of alehouses. When
parliaments began to be called from the 13th century onwards, the counties formed part of the system for electing
members of parliament. Certain towns and cities were
parliamentary boroughs sending their own representatives, and the remainder of each county served as a
county constituency, with the MPs for such constituencies being known as
knights of the shire. From
Tudor times onwards a
lord-lieutenant was appointed to oversee the militia, taking some of the functions previously held by the sheriff. Some larger towns and cities were made self-governing
counties corporate, starting with
London in , with the right to hold their own courts and appoint their own sheriffs. The counties corporate continued to be deemed part of the wider county for the purposes of lieutenancy, with the exception of London which had its own lieutenants. The Ridings of Yorkshire had their own lieutenants from 1660 onwards. Sometimes smaller counties shared either a sheriff or lieutenant; the same person was usually appointed to be lieutenant of both
Cumberland and
Westmorland until 1876, whilst
Cambridgeshire and
Huntingdonshire shared a sheriff until 1965. The counties' role as constituencies effectively ceased following the
Reform Act 1832 and the associated
Parliamentary Boundaries Act 1832. Most counties were divided into smaller constituencies, with the group of constituencies within each county being termed the 'parliamentary county'. County boundaries were sometimes adjusted, for example by some of the
Inclosure Acts of the 18th and 19th centuries. County and other boundaries were not centrally recorded with any accuracy before the 19th century, but were instead known by local knowledge and custom. When the
Ordnance Survey started producing large scale maps, they had to undertake extensive research with locals to establish where exactly the boundaries were. Boundaries were recorded by the Ordnance Survey gradually in a process which started in 1841 and was not fully completed until 1888. Many counties had detached
exclaves, away from the main body of the county. Most exclaves were eliminated by boundary adjustments under the
Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844. The
Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 created
poor law unions, which were defined as groups of
parishes and frequently crossed county boundaries. Parishes were typically assigned to a union centred on a nearby town, whether or not that town was in the same county. The unions were administered by elected
boards of guardians, and formed the basis for the
registration districts created in 1837. Each union as a whole was assigned to a
registration county, which therefore differed in places from the legal counties. The registration counties were used for census reporting from 1851 to 1911. The unions also formed the basis for the
sanitary districts created in 1872, which took on various local government functions. The county of
Westmorland was formed in 1227. From then until 1889 there were generally agreed to be 39 counties in England, although there were some
liberties such as the
Liberty of Ripon which were independent from their host counties for judicial purposes. The
Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542 formally absorbed
Wales into the kingdom of England and completed its division into
13 counties on the English model. Contemporary lists after that sometimes included
Monmouthshire as a 40th English county, on account of its assizes being included in the
Oxford circuit rather than one of the
Welsh circuits. The 39 historic counties were: Some towns and cities were considered large enough to run their own county-level services and so were made
county boroughs, independent from the new county councils.
Urban sanitary districts which straddled county boundaries were placed entirely in one county. A new
County of London was created covering the area which had been administered by the
Metropolitan Board of Works since 1856, which covered the City of London and parts of
Middlesex,
Surrey and
Kent. In those counties where the quarter sessions had been held separately for different parts of the county, separate county councils were created for each part. The area controlled by a county council was termed an
administrative county. The 1888 Act also adjusted the county boundaries for all other purposes, including judicial functions, sheriffs and lieutenants, to match groups of the administrative counties and county boroughs. As such, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Suffolk and Sussex retained a single sheriff and lieutenant each, despite being split between multiple administrative counties. Yorkshire kept a single sheriff, whilst each of its ridings retained a separate lieutenant and formed their own administrative counties. In 1890 the
Isle of Wight was made an administrative county whilst remaining part of
Hampshire for other purposes. Constituencies were not changed by the 1888 Act and so the parliamentary counties continued to be defined as they had been when the constituencies were last
reviewed in 1885, by reference to the counties as they had then existed. This led to a mismatch in some areas between the parliamentary counties and the counties as had been adjusted for all other purposes. This lasted until the constituencies were next
reviewed in 1918, when they were realigned to nest within the newer versions of the counties. The 1888 Act used the term 'entire county' to refer to the wider version of the county, including any associated county boroughs or parts which had been made administrative counties. The informal term 'geographical county' was also used on Ordnance Survey maps to distinguish the wider version of the county from the administrative counties. There were various adjustments to county boundaries after 1889. There were numerous changes following the
Local Government Act 1894, which converted
rural sanitary districts into
rural districts and established
parish councils, but said that districts and parishes were no longer allowed to straddle county boundaries. The number of county boroughs gradually increased, and boundaries were occasionally adjusted to accommodate urban areas which were developing across county boundaries. In 1931 the boundaries between Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire were adjusted to transfer 26 parishes between the three counties, largely to eliminate the
remaining exclaves not addressed in 1844. The functions of county councils gradually grew. Notable expansions in their responsibilities included taking over education from the abolished
school boards in 1902, and taking over the assistance of the poor from the abolished boards of guardians in 1930.
Reforms A
Local Government Boundary Commission was set up in 1945 which reviewed the structure of local government and recommended a significant overhaul, including extensive changes to counties and county boroughs. The commission was wound up in 1949 when the government decided not to pursue these proposals. 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 County of London was abolished and was replaced by the
Greater London administrative area, which also included most of the remaining part of Middlesex (which was abolished as an administrative county) and areas formerly part of Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire. Huntingdonshire was merged with the
Soke of Peterborough to form
Huntingdon and Peterborough, and the original administrative county of Cambridgeshire was merged with the
Isle of Ely to form
Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely. A Royal Commission on Local Government in England was set up in 1966 and produced the
Redcliffe-Maud Report in 1969, which recommended the complete redrawing of local government areas in England, replacing the existing counties and districts and having most local government functions exercised by all-purpose unitary authorities. Following the change in government at the
1970 general election, the incoming
Conservative administration of
Edward Heath abandoned the Redcliffe-Maud proposals, having campaigned against them as part of their election manifesto. Instead, the Heath government produced the
Local Government Act 1972 which reorganised local government from 1 April 1974 into a two-tier structure of counties and districts across the whole of England apart from the Isles of Scilly and Greater London (which retained its two-tier structure of the
Greater London Council and
London boroughs which had been introduced in 1965). The administrative counties and county boroughs were all abolished, and the lower tier of district councils was reorganised. The Heath government also reformed the judicial functions which had been organised by geographical counties; the
Courts Act 1971 abolished the quarter sessions and assizes with effect from 1972. The sheriffs and lieutenants continued to exist, but both roles had lost powers to become largely ceremonial by the time of the 1970s reforms. As such, following the loss of judicial functions in 1972, the counties' roles were the administrative functions of local government, plus the limited ceremonial roles of the sheriffs and lieutenants. As part of the reforms under the Local Government Act 1972 the post of sheriff was renamed '
high sheriff', and both they and the lieutenants were appointed to the new counties created in 1974. Whilst the administrative counties and county boroughs were abolished in 1974, the wider geographical or historic counties were not explicitly abolished by the 1972 Act, albeit they were left with no administrative or ceremonial functions. Following the 1974 reforms there were 45 counties, six of which were classed as metropolitan counties, covering the larger urban areas: •
Greater Manchester •
Merseyside •
South Yorkshire •
Tyne and Wear •
West Midlands •
West Yorkshire The other 39 counties were classed as non-metropolitan counties: •
Avon • Bedfordshire • Berkshire • Buckinghamshire • Cambridgeshire • Cheshire •
Cleveland • Cornwall •
Cumbria • Derbyshire • Devon • Dorset • Durham •
East Sussex • Essex • Gloucestershire • Hampshire •
Hereford and Worcester • Hertfordshire •
Humberside • Isle of Wight • Kent • Lancashire • Leicestershire • Lincolnshire • Norfolk •
North Yorkshire • Northamptonshire • Northumberland • Nottinghamshire • Oxfordshire • Shropshire • Somerset • Staffordshire • Suffolk • Surrey • Warwickshire •
West Sussex • Wiltshire Most of the non-metropolitan counties retained the names of historic counties and were defined by reference to the administrative and geographical counties which preceded them, retaining the same or similar boundaries where practicable. Whilst the Heath government had rejected the more radical Radcliffe-Maud proposals, they did still make adjustments to boundaries where they concluded they were necessary to better align with functional economic areas. For example, the north-western part of
Berkshire was transferred to
Oxfordshire on account of being separated from the rest of Berkshire by the
Berkshire Downs hills and having better connections to the city of
Oxford than to Berkshire's largest town and administrative centre of
Reading. Similarly,
Gatwick Airport was transferred from
Surrey to
West Sussex so that it could be in the same county as
Crawley, the adjoining
new town. Four of the non-metropolitan counties established in 1974 were given names that had not previously been used for counties:
Avon,
Cleveland,
Cumbria, and
Humberside. Another was a merger of two former counties and combined both their names:
Hereford and Worcester. The pre-1974 counties of Cumberland, Rutland, Westmorland, and Huntingdon and Peterborough were considered too small to function efficiently as separate counties, and did not have their names taken forward by new counties. Cumberland and Westmorland were both incorporated into Cumbria (alongside parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire). Huntingdon and
Peterborough became lower-tier districts within Cambridgeshire, and Rutland was made a district of Leicestershire.
Further changes }} The metropolitan county councils were abolished in 1986 after just 12 years in operation. The Greater London Council was abolished at the same time. The metropolitan counties and Greater London continued to legally exist as geographic areas and retained their high sheriffs and lieutenants despite the loss of their upper-tier councils. The lower-tier
metropolitan boroughs and London boroughs took on the functions of the abolished councils, with some functions (such as emergency services, civil defence and public transport) being delivered through joint committees. Further
reform in the 1990s allowed the creation of non-metropolitan counties containing a single district, where one council performed both county and district functions. These became informally known as
unitary authorities. The first was the Isle of Wight, where the two districts were abolished and the county council took over their functions in 1995. In 1996, Avon, Cleveland and Humberside were abolished after just 22 years in existence. None of those three had attracted much public loyalty, and there had been campaigns to abolish them, especially in the case of Humberside. Those three counties were split into unitary authorities, each of which was legally a new non-metropolitan county and a district covering the same area, with the district council also performing county functions. Rather than appoint lieutenants and high sheriffs for these new counties created in 1996, it was decided to resurrect the pre-1974 practice of defining counties for the purposes of lieutenancy and shrievalty separately from the local government counties. Several other unitary authorities were created between 1996 and 1998. Many of these were districts based on larger towns and cities, including several places that had been county boroughs prior to 1974. Being made unitary authorities therefore effectively restored the pre-1974 powers in such cases. Whilst these unitary authorities are legally all non-metropolitan counties, they are rarely referred to as counties other than in the context of local government law. The pre-1974 counties of Rutland, Herefordshire and Worcestershire also regained their independence. Rutland was made a unitary authority in 1997, and in 1998 Herefordshire was made a unitary authority and Worcestershire was re-established as a two-tier county.
Berkshire County Council was abolished in 1998 and the county's six districts became unitary authorities, but unusually the non-metropolitan county of Berkshire was not abolished. The six Berkshire unitary authorities are the only ones not to also be non-metropolitan counties. Further
reforms in 2009 and between
2019 and 2023 saw more unitary authorities created within the non-metropolitan counties. Since the most recent changes in 2023, England outside Greater London and the Isles of Scilly has been divided into 84 metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties for local government purposes. The 48 ceremonial counties used for the purposes of lieutenancy have been unchanged since 1998. == Local government ==