[Talk-GB] Traditional Counties and Vice Counties

[Andy Townsend]

On 08/01/2021 09:00, Mark Goodge wrote:
>
> Secondly, there's no such thing as "the" traditional county boundaries 
> anyway. They were fluid, and subject to change. The Victorians, in 
> particular, were inveterate tinkerers with local government and were 
> forever tweaking the boundaries, a little here and a little there. So 
> any traditional county boundary data can only ever be a snapshot of 
> what the boundaries were at any particular point in time. And there's 
> no consensus about which is the most "correct" snapshot to use. Even 
> the Historic Counties Trust, which aims to promote awareness of the 
> traditional counties, offers boundary data in different definitions. 
> We can't possibly include all of them in OSM, but picking just one of 
> them means making an editorial view as to the most appropriate 
> snapshot. In the absence of an agreed traditional county standard for 
> OSM, leaving it up to individual mappers will inevitably result in 
> inconsistencies.
>
I think (and I'm guessing a bit here) that the "traditional" ones partly 
in OSM are the immediately-pre-1974 ones.  Modelling the pre-1974 
changes sounds like something best done in OpenHistoricalMap, and to be 
honest sounds like a nice lockdown project for someone interested in 
such things.

I can also see where you're coming from about whether the traditional 
ones should be in OSM at all.  In some cases the boundary is signposted 
(the "traditional East Riding" at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire certainly 
is), and in many cases boundaries will follow natural features that 
haven't moved, but in some cases (e.g. Crayke, formerly a Durham Exclave 
until some early Victorian tinkering, now in Yorkshire, 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bettss-Crayke-map.png ) I don't think 
they do.

Best Regards,

Andy