Talk:County (England)

Needs more work to separate the various kinds of region that the vague term "county" can apply to, in an NPOV manner. The current first few paragraphs are too definite on the matter, choosing the "administrative regions", which are continually changing. The term is still very much used in the other senses -- in sport & literature for example. -- Hotlorp

Where is the evidence for the statement about the Post Office and counties? My evidence is the PO doesn't give a monkey's about counties as a rule, since what they want in most cases is the post town followed by the post code. If I write to an address in Bristol, BS6 7QT, I expect it will get there without the PO troubling itself over the counties of Bristol, Gloucester, Somerset, Avon etc etc. This seems to be general with most places you write to - there may be examples of where a county name is compulsory (presmably for disambiguation between town names??) but I'd like to know what they are - I think the current statement on the PO "preferring" county names is too broad, and I'd love to read about why it isn't! :) Nevilley 19:13 Dec 15, 2002 (UTC)


 * As far as I can tell, Royal Mail completely disdains counties, even when there are ambiguous town names - the post code should serve to disambiguate. If you go to http://www.royalmail.com and then to postcode finder, and enter the address 1 High Street Newport, it comes back with 22 results, disambiguated by county. But if you select "view label" for any of them, it produces an address without a county, just a post code. From this I conclude that they prefer no county at all. --rbrwr


 * yep, I think that's exactly right. Even the (Old) Counties fans at the URL given at the page bottom confirm that the PO isn't really interested in them - yes you *can* include them if you want but this is not "preferring" them is it? I might edit the article if I can be bothered and/or think how to put it! Nevilley


 * I think they use OCR to read envelopes as much as possible, which is why they prefer addresses with post town and post code in capitals. Counties only get in the way. If you look at http://www.royalmail.com and go to "Personal Mail", then "addressing your mail" (down towards the bottom), you'll see their advice. They desperately want posttown and postcode; county (actually it says "country") is optional... --rbrwr


 * BS6 7QT is just around the corner from me. --rbrwr
 * I used to live at that postcode! That's why it came easily as an example. 188a, opposite Dugar Walk. Nevilley
 * Actually, to be honest, it's round two corners (I'm Devonshire Road, BS6 7NL) --rbrwr

One thing this page lacks is the concept of "ceremonial county", which is the area served by a Lord Lieutenant and a High Sheriff. Some of these are the same as the 1974 counties, even where they no longer exist for administrative purposes (eg. the metros, Berks); some are the same as the old counties (ceremonial Somerset includes North Soms and BANES); some are different again (ceremonial North Yorks includes bits of Cleveland but isn't the same as the old North Riding). I think. --rbrwr

Actually the whole thing is a bit of a mess, isn't it? The listing of "former counties" is bizarre in that it mixes up old former counties with 1974-inventions-later-abolished like Avon, when I think these are probably two separate lists. It doesn't (as someone says up there ^) make clear the distinction between the (horribly numerous) different types of county. And it's difficult to tell what is and is not froman authorative source, for example we do not list Tyne and Wear, many people think it has been abolished, yet the Boundary Commission still does! Bizarre, as I say. And yes, this is one of thoese annoying edits which is just a moan not an offer of action, as I don;t have the time (or understanding) to do it properly! Sorry. Nevilley 09:31 Dec 22, 2002 (UTC)


 * http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/uklocalgov/whtsacty.htm is informative and potentially useful. I might have a go at it if I have time --rbrwr

I concur with the statement that this is all a mess. However I am approaching it from a slightly different point of view - that of UK towns.

US towns are all named 'placename, state' and where appropriate there exists 'placename (disambiguation)'. This seems fine. The UK has all sorts of things: 'placename, county', 'placename, country', 'placename', 'placename, district, county'. This is horrible.

It seems to me that the most sensible option is to convert (albeit slowly) everything to 'placename, county', with redirects from the others as required.

I was about to unilaterally set off on this rationalisation when I realsied that the definition of county is too screwed up to be useful. How do we resolve it? It is a certainty that places like Telford are in Shropshire not in 'Telford and Wrekin', so this year's administrative counties are no use. Probably the best concensus would be the pre 1974 counties, but I don't really like Middlesex and Rutland either.

If you asked the residents of each town what county they were in, (assuming we could actually do that!) would the replies be consitent and usable?

I'm confused. -- SGBailey 18:38 Dec 22, 2002 (UTC)


 * You're right, a lot of people nowadays are confused about what counties they live in, or whether they live in counties at all. Personally, I don't think entries for UK towns should automatically include the name of the county unless it's essential for disambiguation purposes.  OK, so most towns have namesakes somewhere in the UK or elsewhere in the world, but how many of those smaller places will ever have wikipedia entries? (Or at least, by the time we need to worry about it, we might have another round of local government reorganisation.) --Deb Dec 22


 * I'm with Deb on this one. America has a strong culture of using city-comma-state even for well-known cities. We don't, and we shouldn't try to make one just for the sake of consistency. I don't agree that the current situation is "horrible". Having said that, I think the answer to Steve's question is this: Most towns didn't change counties in 1974. Of those that did, some were put into newly-created counties that are (more or less) gone again now: Bath into Avon, Middlesbrough into Cleveland, and so on. Many of the little fiddly 1974 boundary changes were in rural areas and don't affect towns. That does leave some problems, of which the only one that I feel fit to comment on is Bristol, which lies on the ancient boundary of Gloucestershire and Somerset, but had seperate county status from 1373 onwards. For me Bristol is Bristol, and is not in any county. --rbrwr


 * I have to agree. The US has this rigid place, state thing and in the UK it's not so clear-cut. Only disambiguate when absolutely necessary. Mintguy

There is a great deal of archived talk about this at wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names) already. You might also want to see the resulting naming convention at naming conventions (city names) (which hasn't be finalized simply becuase nobody has gotten around to it). --mav


 * Thanks, Mav. There's quite a lot of stuff there, but I notice the vote on the question we're discussing here (whioch is in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)/Archive 3) was a two-all draw. Just our luck. --rbrwr


 * I vote for placename, country: Alnwick, England, Aberdeen, Scotland, etc. The USA is a lot bigger than the UK, so where they need to split into the relevant state, we can get away with splitting to the country level. Plus, the boundary between England and Wales is a little more settled than county boundaries -Martin