John wrote on 30 December 2009 18:01:20 ...
Reverting to the original debate between Roland and MIG about
Essex/Greater London, I agree it depends on your interpretation of
boundary and side with Roland.
Unlike MIG I do not take any notice of artificial local govt. boundaries -
a place is defined by its postal area.Until fairly recently I lived in
Harold Wood (the last station within the GLA area) Romford Essex (Postal
Code RM12, not London E or heaven forbid Havering) which makes it Essex to
me.

That's because you've added 'Essex' to the address. It's not part of
the postal address.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

John wrote:

Unlike MIG I do not take any notice of artificial local govt. boundaries -
a place is defined by its postal area.

That is even more artificial! I have relatives who live in south Cumbria,
regardless of the fact their postal address has a Lancashire town on it.

In message , John
writes

Unlike MIG I do not take any notice of artificial local govt.
boundaries - a place is defined by its postal area.

Really? Near to where I live is a road where the houses on the east side
have a SW London postcode, while those opposite start with a Twickenham
postcode and then revert to SW London, all within the space of 50 yards.
I suspect that the residents would probably define themselves as living
in Richmond, since that is far closer than Twickenham!

Postal areas (and more recently postcodes) were designed purely to
facilitate mail delivery, and are based on the positions of sorting
offices and the practicalities of postmen's rounds - nothing more.

--
Paul Terry

On 30 Dec, 18:50, Paul Terry wrote:
In message , John
writes

Unlike MIG I do not take any notice of artificial local govt.
boundaries - a place is defined by its postal area.

Really? Near to where I live is a road where the houses on the east side
have a SW London postcode, while those opposite start with a Twickenham
postcode and then revert to SW London, all within the space of 50 yards.
I suspect that the residents would probably define themselves as living
in Richmond, since that is far closer than Twickenham!

Postal areas (and more recently postcodes) were designed purely to
facilitate mail delivery, and are based on the positions of sorting
offices and the practicalities of postmen's rounds - nothing more.

And in any case, counties don't exist at all in postal addresses any
more. It would be a bizarre basis. The boundary of a particular
authority to whom one pays taxes to provide services seems like a
sensible one to me.

On 29 Dec, 21:35, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
07:16:43 on Tue, 29 Dec 2009, MIG
remarked:

any county is an administrative concept and its borders are
administrative and can't be anything else.

No, they can be geographic, ignoring recent administrative changes.

What is a geographic boundary of a county, unless the county is an
island or something?

Even if a geographic feature, such as a river, is chosen as the
boundary, it's still an administrative boundary. The concept of the
county doesn't come frome the river. The concept of administration
requires boundaries and the river may be chosen.

Let's just agree to differ. Whatever it was when I left school (1965) will
be my take on it until the day I die.
You think differently - I accept that.

John

In article , (Roland
Perry) wrote:

In message , at
07:06:15 on Wed, 30 Dec 2009, remarked:
Royston used to straddle the border of Cambridgeshire
and Hertfordshire. The border was redrawn round it in the nineteenth
century.

That counts as "fairly recent" (in my centuries-old timeline)!

(Last time we discussed this, did we come up with a date for this
boundary change?)

The establishment of county councils in 1889 probably. A lot of county
boundary anomalies were sorted out then.

As Wikipaedia puts it: "The boundaries of the counties were to be those
used for parliamentary purposes, adjusted to include urban sanitary
districts on county borders within a single county." The same article
mentions Newmarket as an urban sanitary district which lay in more than
one county and which was given to Suffolk (because it contained largest
part of the district's population at the 1881 census).

It doesn't mention Royston however. I suspect it hadn't developed
enough to be an urban sanitary district before then.

It seems that the former Royston USD may have been too big to fully
incorporate in either one county or the other, and half of it ended
up as the Melbourn District, within Cambridgshire. The other half
may have been lumped into Ashwell for a few years, before gaining
'independence'.

More likely they were rural sanitary districts. A number of rural
districts straddling county boundaries were divided between them.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 14:57:01
on Wed, 30 Dec 2009, remarked:
As Wikipaedia puts it: "The boundaries of the counties were to be those
used for parliamentary purposes, adjusted to include urban sanitary
districts on county borders within a single county." The same article
mentions Newmarket as an urban sanitary district which lay in more than
one county and which was given to Suffolk (because it contained largest
part of the district's population at the 1881 census).

It doesn't mention Royston however. I suspect it hadn't developed
enough to be an urban sanitary district before then.

It seems that the former Royston USD may have been too big to fully
incorporate in either one county or the other, and half of it ended
up as the Melbourn District, within Cambridgshire. The other half
may have been lumped into Ashwell for a few years, before gaining
'independence'.

More likely they were rural sanitary districts. A number of rural
districts straddling county boundaries were divided between them.

Wikipedia again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourn_Rural_District

Although that begs the question of why the boundary was moved, because
that's orthogonal to splitting an existing RSD into two parts.
--
Roland Perry

In message
, at
11:38:43 on Wed, 30 Dec 2009, MIG
remarked:

any county is an administrative concept and its borders are
administrative and can't be anything else.

No, they can be geographic, ignoring recent administrative changes.

What is a geographic boundary of a county, unless the county is an
island or something?

Even if a geographic feature, such as a river, is chosen as the
boundary, it's still an administrative boundary. The concept of the
county doesn't come frome the river. The concept of administration
requires boundaries and the river may be chosen.

If you take the earlier example of Reading; historically north of the
river was Oxon and south of the river was Berks. More recently (fsvo) it
was decided to transfer a chunk of the town north of the river
administratively into Berks, but geographically and psychologically it's
still north of the river.
--
Roland Perry

On 30 Dec, 21:54, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
11:38:43 on Wed, 30 Dec 2009, MIG
remarked:

any county is an administrative concept and its borders are
administrative and can't be anything else.

No, they can be geographic, ignoring recent administrative changes.

What is a geographic boundary of a county, unless the county is an
island or something?

Even if a geographic feature, such as a river, is chosen as the
boundary, it's still an administrative boundary. *The concept of the
county doesn't come frome the river. *The concept of administration
requires boundaries and the river may be chosen.

If you take the earlier example of Reading; historically north of the
river was Oxon and south of the river was Berks. More recently (fsvo) it
was decided to transfer a chunk of the town north of the river
administratively into Berks, but geographically and psychologically it's
still north of the river.

Geographically north of the river indeed. Rivers are geographical. I
have no problem with that.