[Talk-GB] 'historic' county boundaries added to the database

[Adam Snape]

Hi,

Both Colin and Dave have repeated the implication that the traditional
counties don't exist. It's very much arguable I guess, certainly successive
governments have made clear that they recognised the continued existence of
the traditional counties, and that administrative changes neither legally
abolished nor altered these counties.

On Sun, 26 Aug 2018, 22:01 Colin Smale, <colin.smale at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Except that the "ceremonial counties" actually do exist, and serve a
> function. They are formally called "Lieutenancy Areas" and represent the
> jurisdiction of the Lord Lieutenant as direct representative of the
> monarchy. Their boundaries are maintained by a different legal process to
> the admin areas, and on occasions can diverge for a limited period until
> they catch up with changes to admin boundaries. And then there is the
> Stockton-on-Tees anomaly...the borough is divided between the ceremonial
> counties of Durham and North Yorkshire.
>

Thanks Colin,

Yes, I was aware of how the ceremonial counties are defined. I think if
we're truly honest with ourselves we don't really map them because lord
lieutenancies (as wonderfully arcane and obscure as they are) are of any
real importance, but because they provide a vaguely sensible and
recognisable set of geographic areas that we can call counties. Certainly
if administrative importance were genuinely to be our criteria for mapping
we would be mapping all kinds of things prior to lord lieutenancies.

In practical terms lords lieutenant are historic, honorary crown
appointments and little more. If we actually believed this was
justification for mapping we could use the same arguments for mapping the
areas over which the royal duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall perform
various honorary and historic functions (such as appointing the
ever-so-important-in-the-present-day lords lieutenant) and exercise special
rights. Incidentally their legally-defined and extant boundaries are the
historic/traditional boundaries of the counties of Lancashire and Cornwall
:)

Kind regards,

Adam
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