Historic Counties of England (bitesize)

England is part of the United Kingdom, taking up the greater part of the island of Great Britain, with 39 of the counties of the United Kingdom (not counting Monmouthshire).
This video briefly outlines where the name ‘England’ comes from, the union with Wales in 1535 and Scotland in 1707.
Also discover more about the 39 counties of England - the historic subdivisions that have been around for a thousand years!
(A new, edited video following feedback that the music was too loud.)

[@shaydb0038]

Could I ask, wasn't Hexhamshire mentioned? It was after all the first historical country to stop being a country

[@RealCounties]

@@shaydb0038 thanks for your question! 👍 Hexhamshire is an area of southern Northumberland around the town of Hexham. It was in origin a liberty belonging to the Archbishop of York, which was abolished in 1572. There were many such liberties in Northumberland and Yorkshire. It was never a county in its own right.

[@terrystokes7047]

Thanks; born n bred in Wigan Lancashire; Gods county 😉

[@RealCounties]

@@terrystokes7047 thanks for your comment! 👍 Lancashire is a wonderful county and Wigan is an important part of it! 🌹

[@johnorchard4]

The narrator never once mentioned why the authors of this video felt that the 'traditional' counties were of such importance. It was never mentioned about the towns and cities that obtained county status. It was not mentioned about the peculiars of the Archbishops or the other quirks that meant that the 'traditional' counties were not what they seem to have thought them to be.Your comments seem to suggest that the Ainsty and York are synonymous, rather than the fact that the county of York was divided into four parts, the East, West and North Ridings, which each bounded the City of York which administratively also extended to include the wapentake of the Ainsty. A fairly lightweight contribution to the explanation about the historical counties of England. Sounds to me more of a xenophobic rant by someone who wishes to be a revisionist.

[@RealCounties]

@@johnorchard4 thanks for your comment! 👍 This is deliberately a bitesize video, as explained by the title. There are longer and more detailed videos on this channel that go into more detail. Towns and cities granted county status are a completely different thing to the historic counties. Yes, there are a few medieval ‘counties corporate’, which were granted independence from the county authorities. But they remained geographically part of their ‘host’ county - Chester is still in Cheshire, Hull in Yorkshire, & Newcastle in Northumberland. The peculiars of Archbishops etc are a similar matter. Our coverage is about the 39 geographical counties in England (92 in the UK as a whole) rather than peculiars and county corporates, which are unrelated to the geographical counties. Our information certainly is not revisionist as we are not talking about things in the past - the traditional, geographical counties haven’t gone anywhere. The 39 counties of England have existed for many centuries and continue to do so. (NB the counties are ‘historic’, not ‘historical’. Historic means ‘with a lot of history’, while historical means in the past.)

[@williamgates2567]

Cornwall not part of the UK

[@RealCounties]

@@williamgates2567 thanks for your comment! 👍

[@danielfay]

Sod off, Born and bred in Greater Manchester and proud of it.

[@RealCounties]

@@danielfay thanks for your comment! 👍 That may well be - but ‘Greater Manchester’ is merely an admin zone, created in 1974 to deliver services to people and places in parts of the counties of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, nothing more. GM = admin zone (local service provider) Lancs, Ches, Yorks, Derbys = counties (geographical divisions of the country unrelated to admin) 😃

[@johnorchard4]

@@RealCounties And legally a county, in the same way that Greater London was a county. It is completely daft to say that the traditional counties were unrelated to admin istration.

[@RealCounties]

@@johnorchard4 yes, a ceremonial ‘county’, which is an unnecessary confusion that we wish to see changed. While each historic county may have originally been set up for some public purpose or other, long before the beginning of the nineteenth century it was their geographical and cultural identities that were paramount. The counties were considered to be territorial divisions of the country, whose names and areas had been fixed for many centuries and were universally known and accepted.

[@johnorchard4]

@@RealCounties "The counties were considered to be territorial divisions of the country, whose names and areas had been fixed for many centuries and were universally known and accepted." Fixed for many centuries? Really. I would agree that many appear to have been fixed for a long time, long before the 1888 Act, but I am struggling to think of a single county, with the possible exception of Cornwall, that remained unchanged throughout its history until the county councils were invented. Have you ever asked yourself about why there were, so often, exclaves and enclaves of counties? My home county of Wiltshire was a shire long before England even existed, so I guess that the idea that it was a division of England falls at that point, since the shire was a key unit that helped define the boundary of the kingdom, in this case Wessex (in its established state before expansion). As for being fixed, and universally known and accepted, I would ask about Rutland? It is still not clear about its identity, having been wrought from older counties. This is all about the long period of history in which England was established as a polity - and the administration of ot was an important part of that evolutionary process. If we are to get so transfixed about the pre-1888, or even the pre-1963, or the pre-1974 counties, then what about the divisions of the territories immediately after the fall of the Roman administration here? Surely, by the same token, these ought to be granted some special status? How about the pre-Roman divisions? The reality is that these are all human constructs and only need to be considered as important during the time that they exist in one shape or form.

[@danielfay]

@@RealCounties Nah! take that boomer nonsense somewhere else. We're proud to be part of Manchester, Manchester is where cultural identity lies. I couldn't care less about Lancashire!