Historic Counties of the United Kingdom - origins, confusions, solutions

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What are the historic counties?

Why is there confusion about whether they exist?

What solution is there to end the present-day confusion?

The traditional counties of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are 92 historic subdivisions of the United Kingdom. They are also known as the historic, ancient or geographical counties.

The historic counties (so-called because they ‘have a lot of history’) have existed over 1,000 years in some cases, many centuries in others.

While each historic county may have originally been set up for some public purpose or other, long before the beginning of the nineteenth century it was their geographical and cultural identities that were paramount.

The counties were considered to be territorial divisions of the country, whose names and areas had been fixed for many centuries and were universally known and accepted.

However, particularly since 1974, many county identities have been unnecessarily eroded, while some have been crushed almost to the point of extinction – mainly as a result of confusion created by the misuse of the term ‘county’ (and misuse of historic county names) in local admin zones.

Let’s rescue them before it’s too late.

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