[Talk-GB] Traditional Counties and Vice Counties

[Chris Hodges]

Traditional counties (for some value of "traditional", that's not the 
same as ceremonial) are still used for some niche purposes. This is 
particularly obvious to me living in Avon, which is neither current nor 
ceremonial.

One example is wildlife records - here's the British Trust for 
Ornithology's list of counties:

https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/birdtrack/bird-recording/county-bird-recorders

Whether, and how, we should map these is tricky.  I'm not sure anyone 
else has. I had hoped to find a bird records county map to demonstrate, 
but failed to do so

Chris

On 08/01/2021 10:34, Andy Townsend wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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