Aidan Stanger wrote:
Mrs Redboots wrote:
Neil Williams wrote to uk.transport.london on Sat, 22 Jan 2005:
"Stimpy" wrote:

I did a quick test of this in the pub at lunchtime. I asked 6
people which county Reading was in and they all said Berkshire

I'd have said that, too. Where do people normally think it is
located?

I know, I was wondering that, as I, too, would have said it was in
Berkshire.

Indeed it was, so the six people and you were right. But now
Berkshire's no longer a single county - West Berkshire is, but the
eastern half (starting with Reading) has been broken into several
entities.

West Berkshire is *not* a county. It's a unitary district, as also are
Reading, Wokingham, Bracknell Forest, Windsor & Maidenhead, and Slough.
(Strictly, some of them are unitary boroughs.) Berkshire still exists as
a defined area for which certain local government services are managed
county-wide by one of the districts or by a separate body. Thus there
is still the Royal Berkshire Fire & Rescue Service, Berkshire Record
Office (managed by Reading), Joint Strategic Planning Unit (based in
Maidenhead). Many other organisations cover the county area of
Berkshire, such as Royal Berkshire Ambulance Service. Berkshire is
still a county but without a county council.

Mind you, I was born in Abingdon, Berkshire, and these days it's in
Oxfordshire, so these things do move.

And until tomorrow* I hadn't noticed that Caversham's no longer in
Oxfordshire.

Caversham has been part of Reading and therefore in Berkshire for many
years. I had thought it was done as part of the 1974 changes (when
Abingdon transferred to Oxfordshire), but I read some reports that most
of Caversham became part of Reading in 1911.

* Assuming you're reading this before your timezone catches up...

... but don't forget that UTC is based on the Greenwich meridian, so we
don't catch up with anyone. You just jumped the gun in your cheeky
colonial way.
:-)

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)