[Talk-GB] Traditional Counties and Vice Counties

[Robert Skedgell]

Another example of a niche use of traditional counties is sport. For
athletics purposes. I was born in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands and
live in Stratford, London, but can compete in county championships in
Warwickshire or Essex.

On 08/01/2021 10:59, Chris Hodges wrote:
> 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
>>