Talk:Ancient borough

Title and/or scope?
Just wondering if we should either add a lot of information to the bottom the page on the Local Government Acts of 1888, 1933, 1958, the 1900 to 1965 metropolitan boroughs, the London boroughs, the post 1974 situation, etc etc; or rename the article (say) History of the English borough to 1889, which is what it is at the moment? Lozleader 16:58, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Good question. I started the article as a place to put material from a 1911 Brittanica article (public domain). As you know, it now overlaps to some extent with burh but also extends into the Victorian period. A couple of options are:
 * Turn it into a more complete history of the borough as you suggest
 * Divide it into a few articles, possibly relegating the anglo-saxon material to the burh article, and creating separate articles for the post-Norman and modern periods.
 * I tend to prefer more comprehensive articles, so at the moment I'd opt for your suggestion to add information about the later Local Government Acts. We can always decide later to divide, or let it become the main trunk for sub-articles.
 * Nesbit 00:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this article should end at 1835 and municipal reform should probably be an article to itself.


 * History of borough status in England and Wales (until 1835) - basically this article with a bit of trimming
 * History of borough status in England and Wales (1835—1974) - all the reform stuff
 * Borough status in England and Wales - for current situation MRSC • Talk 06:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

High Steward
There are a lot of biogs which describe someone as the "High Steward" of a town - is there someone able to create a brief article explaining what that title meant? CarolGray 08:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Article here: High steward (civic) Lozleader (talk) 21:04, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Problems with List

 * 1) Cinque ports is listed as a borough, but some individual ports are also listed, for example, Dover and Hythe.
 * 2) Surely Oxford had borough status for some or all of this period?
 * 3) Presumably Ortford refers to Orford (Suffolk).

Such errors don't inspire confidence in the list. Norvo (talk) 00:56, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * With apologies to those who have created the list, I think it needs improving too. BTW I've taken the liberty of re-formatting your comment so that it appears as I think you might have intended, hope you don't mind. About your points:


 * 1) I haven't seen the source, Weinbaum, so it may be that it reports some charter incorporating all of the Cinque Ports as a single borough of some kind; but I'm tempted to stick my neck out and delete Cinque Ports from the list: its presence may be due to an imperfect reading of the source, if not it can always be put back, preferably IMHO with an explanatory footnote; and some of the Cinque Ports are omitted here anyway, but I do have a source to hand which says they were all medieval boroughs. I'll add the ones that aren't listed.
 * Yes, Oxford was a borough from about 900 AD!
 * 1) I'm sure you're right about Orford: I fixed one typo here a while ago, and I've just spotted another...
 * Apart from that the list needs a bit of tidying, I'll have a go; but, shouldn't the list make reference to location for all of the boroughs included, i.e by the ceremonial county in which they were included at the time? Some counties are given but only to save confusion, e.g. Richmond, Yorks vs Richmond, Surrey. If so, I think the list ought to be broken down into county headings: as it stands, the straight alphabetical listing darts all over the country (England), whereas listing by county would both locate them and suggest where boroughs were concentrated or sparse. Also, is there a good reason why the boroughs aren't wikilinked where articles exist? Obviously that would create many adjoining links, but in this context I don't see the harm in it – indeed, it looks like a serious omission to me... As I say, I'll have a go at improving the list, but I'm not proposing to reconfigure the whole thing myself –  for now at least they're only suggestions! Nortonius (talk) 12:54, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've had a go... I think there are probably still some omissions, not least because Flint is now on its own under the heading "Wales"! Nortonius (talk) 16:05, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi chaps. I have the two volumes of Youngs: and . These helpfully have ancient boroughs listed by county. His main source was Beresford & Finsberg's 1973 English Medieval Boroughs : A Hand-List, "other secondary sources and consultation with the archivists of the various counties, but not on original research." I'm sure I can generate a list/table. (It's only England though)Lozleader (talk) 10:15, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Just had a quick look at a single county in Youngs (Devon as it happens as the book fell open there) and compared it to the list in this article and there are more missing from the article than are included. Definitely needs some surgery!Lozleader (talk) 10:22, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello – do you mean you actually own the two vols of Youngs? I thought I might be the only individual crazy enough to do that! ;o) But mine were consigned to my loft some years ago, and it takes some pressing need for me to get up there these days... I remember spotting quite a lot of errors in Vol.1, fewer in Vol.2, but I can't remember what they were, probably more to do with parochial members and status than anything to do with boroughs: just something to be aware of. I have Beresford & Finberg to hand, in case you haven't, and something needs checking. Interesting what you say about Devon: I was thinking about possible omissions yesterday, and the first place I thought of wasn't in that list, so I'm not too surprised –  if there's that much to add, maybe tabulation is needed, as you suggest. What do you think about wikilinking, and breaking the list into counties? Wikilinking shouldn't be a problem in a table. It also occurred to me that, if this list gets very much longer, perhaps it should be split off into a separate article? Sorry I can't help with Wales... Perhaps the E 179 Database might be mined somehow, it covers Wales, though what's in there is at the mercy of surviving documents: I see it has Swansea as a borough, for example. Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 10:51, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, I own them. Vol.I has some strange problems alright largely to do with (some of) the parish pages being printed out of order. Essex and Somerset very confused in particular. There are other things too, but Vol.II has 6 pages of corrections for Vol.I. One hopes they learnt their lesson in the 12 years between volumes and checked the second one more thoroughly.
 * I would say that yes, it will need to be split out as a list article. Probably an idea to develop it somewhere is userspace and double/treble check it. Wikilinking and county splitting is logical especially as some of these places are fairly obscure and/or ambiguous. Lozleader (talk) 11:18, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I wonder if that makes us members of a select club! Understood about errors, and I don't think I ever even looked at Essex or Somerset! I was mostly concerned with a swathe from Hunts down to Hants, taking in Gloucs and Wilts, with forays into Lincs and Northants. I think userspace is an excellent idea. Tabulation would help with the obscurity and ambiguity of Dunheved/Launceston, for one: it might give space for a little explanation, cited of course. Agreed about county splitting. If you make a start, by all means let me/us know where if you want any input: I'm not sure that I'd be much help right now, or at all depending on how happy you feel about doing it, but feel free to ask. BTW, I see that some boroughs in South Wales are included in this E 179 record from the early 1290s: I wouldn't make any bets on it being all-inclusive, though... Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 11:46, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Might make a start... of course the Welsh boroughs would in many cases predate the counties, just to make things a little more interesting :-)20:02, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Eek – Welsh administrative history! I know nothing... Ten years ago I'd have known who to ask, hey ho. There's always WikiProject Wales. But I get the feeling you know more about it than I do so I'll shut up! [gets coat] Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 09:48, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

"Established by the monarchy"
I notice the second sentence in the lead is: "The ancient boroughs covered only important towns and were established by charters granted at different times by the monarchy."

This is isn't quite right, as there were various places where a peer or bishop enjoyed (palatine? regalian? powers) for instance:
 * Salford: "In about 1230, the vill of Salford, Lancashire, was created a free borough by charter granted by Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester."
 * Gateshead: "Gateshead's first charter, granted in the 12th century by Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham."

And there were the Welsh ones e.g.:
 * Cowbridge "The first charter granted to Cowbridge was in 1254 by Sir Richard de Clare, Lord of Glamorgan"
 * Aberavon "[the charter]... is dated around 1304-7, a... it is the charter by which Leysan ap Morgan granted privileges and responsibilities to the burgesses of Aberavon. Leysan was Lord of Avan, one of the member lordships of the Norman Lordship of Glamorgan. Interestingly he was a Welshman, and this charter is a rare example of a Welsh lord granting a charter to a borough."

And then some were "boroughs by prescription" and had no charter. Among the boroughs reformed in 1835, Stockton and Swansea had no charters, it seems.

I would suggest someone needs to do a little surgery to the sentence... I'm not sure I have the legal/language skills to pin it down. Lozleader (talk) 16:19, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Sources for future article expansion
These were cribbed from the EB11 article. They may still have useful information, but should only be returned to the page once they're being used to source information: — Llywelyn II   15:34, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Gross, C. (1897). Bibliography of British Municipal History.
 * Maitland (1898). Township and Borough.
 * Ballard, A. (1904). Domesday Boroughs.
 * Bateson (1906). Borough Customs.
 * Webb, (1908). English Local Government.