The truth is boundaries have never been static things but have extensively altered throughout time.
In the late 1880s the boundaries of many of the new County Boroughs were altered to bring in adjacent areas, even in those instances in which they fell in another county. I can't speak of any examples from Yorkshire but Warrington, then a Lancashire town, was extended to include Latchford in Cheshire situated on the opposite bank of the Mersey and a detached portion of Thelwall (where I was born - the maternity hospital being located there) was also incorporated into the town.
Similarly parts of Staffordshire were added to Birmingham then a Warwickshire town.
The 1974 reforms managed to annoy just about everyone without actually doing what they set out to do, which was to create efficient providers of local services. The Prime Minister Edward Health then being keen to annoy as few Tory voters as he could.
The irony of all this is that way back in the 1830s and early 1840s Edwin Chadwick created the basis of a far more efficient system and democratic form of local government when he created the Poor Law Unions. Had the existing counties then been abolished and the Poor Law Unions given responsibility for all local government services, and the franchise extended to include all males and females aged over 14 then we would all be a lot better off today. In deed I do wonder if this was what Edwin Chadwick wanted to do. As it was the Poor Law Unions were given responsibility for vital registration (hence they were also known as Registration Districts) and some powers over sanitation. Sadly Chadwick's achievements were thrown out in the 1880s in favour of a system of local government based on the ancient counties and boroughs, although the areas of many rural district councils coincided with the old Poor Law Unions.
Incidentally the 1851, 1861 and 1871 Censuses include statistical tables for Registration Counties, which were groups of Poor Law Unions which roughly corresponded to the ancient counties.
Here endeth the lecture! :-)
David
----
Dr David Alan Gatley
Senior Lecturer, Sociology
Faculty of Arts and Creative Technologies
Staffordshire University
College Road
Stoke-on-Trent
ST4 2DE
________________________________________
From: From: Local-History list [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Hudd [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 02 December 2013 14:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [LOCAL-HISTORY] Yorkshire/Lancs boundary
If you look at the history of diocesan boundaries, which I suppose are in some ways comparable as an organisational concept, you find that they have not been immutable, though it is often assumed that they have been
Nick Hudd
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