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Dear All,
One for a Friday afternoon, and maybe the dumbest question ever asked on
this list, but what is England? Has it changed? And what are and were the
following?
United Kingdom
Great Britain
England
Scotland
Wales
England and Wales
Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ulster
Northern Ireland
Channel Islands (and the component islands)
Isle of Man
Berwick on Tweed
Broadly, this question is (obviously) not about where these entities are,
or what they are "like", but what exactly is and was their legal
status. For example, my understanding is that the Channel Islands are not
part of the UK. Are some of the above names simply geographical terms, not
legal units?
The more detailed reason for asking this is that my project is constructing
a detailed historical gazetteer for Great Britain, with money from the New
Opportunities Fund. This is primarily a gazetteer of administrative units,
rather than places, and aims to implement the National Council on Archives
"Rules for the Construction of Place Names":
http://www.hmc.gov.uk/nca/rules3.htm
This means, for example, that we are computerising all the names in Youngs'
Local Administrative Units of England (with the Royal Historical Society's
permission), and we already hold a great deal of information about these
units from census reports back to 1801, and have mapped their changing
boundaries. The system will include the gazetteer of Scottish
administrative units created by the Scottish Archives Network. For now,
systematic coverage is limited to Great Britain.
The vast majority of units we are covering have very clear legal status,
under legislation which made them part of large categories: Civil
Parishes, Administrative Counties and so on. Some aspects of that status
can change over time, while others are fundamental to the unit, so our
system distinguishes between TYPE and STATUS. For example, "Local
Government District" is a type, covering the units created in 1894 and
abolished in 1974, while "Urban District", "Municipal Borough" and "County
Borough" are status values that might change over time (and can have dates
associated with them that are independent of the unit's dates of creation
and abolition).
The sources we are working from do not really deal with the "big bits" that
I am asking about. To build the system, the main components of Britain
have had to go in (every unit, apart from the United Kingdom "at the top",
is required to belong to at least one other unit). So far, they are in the
system as:
Name Type
UNITED KINGDOM STATE
ENGLAND NATION
WALES NATION (with CYMRU as an alternative name)
SCOTLAND NATION
None currently has a date of creation or abolition, and none has any status
values. We have a demonstration system which will go live next month and
be announced on this list, mainly concerned with the Isle of Wight, but
before we do I would like to tidy up this small number of entries where we
do not really have any specific "authorities". My guess is that this is
mainly about adding status values for these units.
Incidentally, Berwick on Tweed is in the list because someone told me it
had some strange status. Could anyone clarify? Are there other special
cases we need to worry about? (We know, and are recording, that the City of
London has the unique status of a County Corporate).
Best wishes,
Humphrey Southall
====================================
Humphrey Southall
Reader in Geography/Director,
Great Britain Historical GIS Project
Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth
Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth PO1 3HE
GIS Project Office: (023) 9284 2500
Home office: (020) 8853 0396
Mobile: (07736) 727928
Web site: http://www.gbhgis.org
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