An addendum to Richard Oliver's message, ending with a question we really
need advice on:
In so far as I started this, I should point out that the GBHGIS system,
which goes live at the end of the year, differs from the ABC site and most
similar sites by treating the relationships between levels in the
administrative hierarchy as changing constantly over time. Even the demo
site we have on-line handles the 1965 changes (go to
http://www.gbhgis.org/demo_gaz.htm, select "Try out the demonstration
gazetteer ..." option, and type "Huntingdon" into the search box.
We are defining Ancient Counties EXACTLY as Richard does, for the simple
reason that we are incorporating his work into the system (with fulsome
acknowledgment).
We will be trying to include information on changes pre-1844, but for now
this means simply that we will be including the rather limited information
that Youngs' Local Administrative Units gives. One problem is that Youngs
often gives the date of these changes simply as "early". Our system is
able to store dates which are simply strings of text, but there is still
not much we can do with such a vague "date".
The other side of this is that Youngs's entries for individual parishes,
which are organised by Ancient County, sometimes say that a parish changed
the county it was in after c.1850. My interpretation of these entries,
which seem to mainly concern changes in the 1890s, should be read as about
the relationship between parishes and Administrative Counties, which were
being set up around then. DO PEOPLE AGREE?
Anyone who has been following our progress will know that we launched the
above demo site at the end of January with sub-county detail limited to the
Isle of Wight, but promised that additional counties would follow fairly
soon. The reason why Hampshire has still not appeared is that it raised
more new issues than we expected and this is one of them. Our system holds
Ancient Counties, Poor Law/Registration Counties and Administrative
Counties as quite separate units even where they had identical names,
linking them via "SucceededBy" relationships; one reason this is essential
is that different types of county clearly existed concurrently, e.g. in
census reports, and had different boundaries.
WERE ANCIENT COUNTIES _EVER_ ABOLISHED, or should we treat them as
continuing to exist up to the present? (At present, we are effectively
taking the latter approach.) IS THE SAME TRUE OF "ANCIENT DISTRICTS"?
(i.e. Hundreds, Liberties, etc.) If we treat these units as continuing to
exist, should we treat their boundaries as being unchanging post c.1850?
A KEY RELATED QUESTION IS WHETHER PARISHES "BELONGED TO" ADMINISTRATIVE
COUNTIES ENTIRELY THROUGH BEING PART OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT DISTRICTS. This
would make our life simpler, but there are various examples where Local
Government Districts seem to have been split between two counties, at least
until the County Reviews of the 1930s. In the 1931 census, for example, the
bulk of Holsworthy Rural District was in Devon AC, but North Tamerton
parish was in Cornwall; similarly, most of Faringdon RD was in Berkshire
but Farringdon parish was in Gloucestershire; and there are several more
examples.
We really need advice on these questions.
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
|