Google earth county boundaries

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doebag
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

Post by doebag »

Does anyone know the reason for the hernia that is the Suffolk/Cambs border around Newmarket ?
The story I've heard is that the great and wealthy of Newmarket thought Suffolk was a better county to be in.
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Alderpoint
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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doebag wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 09:49 Does anyone know the reason for the hernia that is the Suffolk/Cambs border around Newmarket ?
The story I've heard is that the great and wealthy of Newmarket thought Suffolk was a better county to be in.
Maybe because they wanted to be a large fish in the Suffolk pond rather than a comparitively small fish in the Cambridgeshire pond.

i know this was the commonly claimed to be case with Harrogate ending up in North Yorkshire rather than West Yorkshire in 1974.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Alderpoint wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:32
doebag wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 09:49 Does anyone know the reason for the hernia that is the Suffolk/Cambs border around Newmarket ?
The story I've heard is that the great and wealthy of Newmarket thought Suffolk was a better county to be in.
Maybe because they wanted to be a large fish in the Suffolk pond rather than a comparitively small fish in the Cambridgeshire pond.

i know this was the commonly claimed to be case with Harrogate ending up in North Yorkshire rather than West Yorkshire in 1974.
It's not obvious to me this would be the case. The two counties have a similar population, and at district level Newmarket would end up largely coequal with Ely in East Cambs, rather than being run from Bury. I think if you were starting from scratch, Newmarket would end up in Cambs rather than Suffolk, but the difference isn't sufficient to warrant a change, especially given the history.

Interestingly I saw a map of pre-Roman tribes which had the border in the same place, hernia and all, so it seems to go back a long way!
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trickstat
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Alderpoint wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:32
doebag wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 09:49 Does anyone know the reason for the hernia that is the Suffolk/Cambs border around Newmarket ?
The story I've heard is that the great and wealthy of Newmarket thought Suffolk was a better county to be in.
Maybe because they wanted to be a large fish in the Suffolk pond rather than a comparitively small fish in the Cambridgeshire pond.

i know this was the commonly claimed to be case with Harrogate ending up in North Yorkshire rather than West Yorkshire in 1974.
Worth bearing in mind that, until only a few decades ago, Cambridgeshire didn't include the then county of Huntingdonshire or the Soke of Peterborough. Newmarket could have been a fairly big fish in Cambs then.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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trickstat wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 15:39
Alderpoint wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:32
doebag wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 09:49 Does anyone know the reason for the hernia that is the Suffolk/Cambs border around Newmarket ?
The story I've heard is that the great and wealthy of Newmarket thought Suffolk was a better county to be in.
Maybe because they wanted to be a large fish in the Suffolk pond rather than a comparitively small fish in the Cambridgeshire pond.

i know this was the commonly claimed to be case with Harrogate ending up in North Yorkshire rather than West Yorkshire in 1974.
Worth bearing in mind that, until only a few decades ago, Cambridgeshire didn't include the then county of Huntingdonshire or the Soke of Peterborough. Newmarket could have been a fairly big fish in Cambs then.
Sounds interesting, especially as Suffolk was one of the poorer counties in England when many areas of farming were moribund due to cheap imports from Commonwealth countries and farming subsidies being a few decades away.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

Post by Al__S »

Newmarket into Cambs was proposed in mid 20th century reorganisations and proposed reorganisations. Certainly on a "from scratch" attempt at local government both Newmarket & Haverhill would be recognised as having their economic and cultural centre of gravity being Cambridge
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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This one's always struck me as odd too. I once read Newmarket was transferred from Cambridgeshire into Suffolk in the late 19th century at the same time Royston and other some other towns were moved. However I've since realised this is hogwash. The other towns were split between counties eg Royston was only partly in Cambridgeshire with the town centre always in Hertfordshire. It's more likely it arose from land owned by powerful dukes. Is it really any stranger than the enclaves in the west midlands or the crazy squigglefest around Tewkesbury?
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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the cheesecake man wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 13:07 This one's always struck me as odd too. I once read Newmarket was transferred from Cambridgeshire into Suffolk in the late 19th century at the same time Royston and other some other towns were moved. However I've since realised this is hogwash. The other towns were split between counties eg Royston was only partly in Cambridgeshire with the town centre always in Hertfordshire. It's more likely it arose from land owned by powerful dukes. Is it really any stranger than the enclaves in the west midlands or the crazy squigglefest around Tewkesbury?
In the early '90s the Herts/Cambs border was moved to the A505 bypass so that all the northern suburbs of Royston were in Herts.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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trickstat wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 13:27
the cheesecake man wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 13:07 This one's always struck me as odd too. I once read Newmarket was transferred from Cambridgeshire into Suffolk in the late 19th century at the same time Royston and other some other towns were moved. However I've since realised this is hogwash. The other towns were split between counties eg Royston was only partly in Cambridgeshire with the town centre always in Hertfordshire. It's more likely it arose from land owned by powerful dukes. Is it really any stranger than the enclaves in the west midlands or the crazy squigglefest around Tewkesbury?
In the early '90s the Herts/Cambs border was moved to the A505 bypass so that all the northern suburbs of Royston were in Herts.
In the case of Newmarket, however, the boundary splits the built-up area to the south, passes through the station, and bisects the racecourses, with the Rowley Mile course in Suffolk and the rest all in Cambs. There are other bizarre boundaries around the country, but this is one of the oddest.
Last edited by Chris Bertram on Tue Oct 05, 2021 17:58, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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trickstat wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 13:27
the cheesecake man wrote: Tue Oct 05, 2021 13:07 This one's always struck me as odd too. I once read Newmarket was transferred from Cambridgeshire into Suffolk in the late 19th century at the same time Royston and other some other towns were moved. However I've since realised this is hogwash. The other towns were split between counties eg Royston was only partly in Cambridgeshire with the town centre always in Hertfordshire. It's more likely it arose from land owned by powerful dukes. Is it really any stranger than the enclaves in the west midlands or the crazy squigglefest around Tewkesbury?
In the early '90s the Herts/Cambs border was moved to the A505 bypass so that all the northern suburbs of Royston were in Herts.
There was a previous move a century earlier to do the same thing for the then suburbs. The original boundary in the area was along Icknield Way(the original A505) which was logical until the town grew across it, so this one at least isn't a case of landownership. Herts oddly seems to have relatively sane boundaries with two neighbours (Cambs and Essex) but those with Beds, Bucks and Middlesex are all over the place.

Newmarket was historically two separate parishes, one in each county. The southern (Cambs) one was the larger until the northern one got the market the place is now named after.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

Post by Vierwielen »

Another case of shifting county boundaries is the Dorset/Hampshire boundary. Until the 1975 reorganisation, Poole was in Dorset while Bournemouth and Christchurch were in Hampshire. In 1975, Bournemouth was transferred to Dorset. In the latest reorganisation, Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch were combined into a single unitary authority called BCP (mainly urban) while the remnant of Dorset was likewise reorganised into a mainly rural unitary authority. The area that was Hampshire in 1974 now consists of three and a half unitary authorities (Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, Southampton and half of BCP) while the remnant is a traditional "shire" with district councils.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Vierwielen wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 17:35 Another case of shifting county boundaries is the Dorset/Hampshire boundary. Until the 1975 reorganisation, Poole was in Dorset while Bournemouth and Christchurch were in Hampshire. In 1975, Bournemouth was transferred to Dorset. In the latest reorganisation, Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch were combined into a single unitary authority called BCP (mainly urban) while the remnant of Dorset was likewise reorganised into a mainly rural unitary authority. The area that was Hampshire in 1974 now consists of three and a half unitary authorities (Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, Southampton and half of BCP) while the remnant is a traditional "shire" with district councils.
I'll do my usual here and point out that actually, the county boundaries haven't moved at all, and all of the places listed are still in their original counties.

What has changed is the administrative boundaries, but there's no continuity between the different flavours of, say, "Dorset County Council". The body incorporated in 1888 was brand new at that date, and later completely dissolved and replaced by a brand new Dorset County Council in 1974, which did not cover the same area or have the same functions, despite the identical name. There was no "transferring" going on, but the slate completely wiped clean before the new administrative areas came in.

Then in 1997, two entirely new administrative county areas came into being, those of "The County of Bournemouth" and "The County of Poole", and both of them were removed from the administrative county of Dorset.

Finally, in 2019 all three administrative county areas were abolished and the brand new Dorset Council and BCP Council areas were formed - each being an administrative county in their own right, but in both cases there is a single district council with no county council.
Last edited by Steven on Thu Oct 07, 2021 07:36, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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doebag wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 09:49 Does anyone know the reason for the hernia that is the Suffolk/Cambs border around Newmarket?
The story I've heard is that the great and wealthy of Newmarket thought Suffolk was a better county to be in.
The other way around actually. Newmarket has been in Suffolk for centuries, at several reorganisations Newmarket proposed it be transfered into Cambridgershire, but was always overruled.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Alderpoint wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:32 I know this was the commonly claimed to be case with Harrogate ending up in North Yorkshire rather than West Yorkshire in 1974.
Harrogate has absolutely no business being in a metropolitan county, it's a shire county town.

Arguably there are bits of the current West Yorkshire that should have been put in North Yorkshire, but the River Wharf is too strong a boundary to ignore. Except where it isn't - I'm looking at you Wetherby.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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jgharston wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 21:19
Alderpoint wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:32 I know this was the commonly claimed to be case with Harrogate ending up in North Yorkshire rather than West Yorkshire in 1974.
Harrogate has absolutely no business being in a metropolitan county, it's a shire county town.
Yet previously it was within the West Riding, together with Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Doncaster, ...
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Alderpoint wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 21:46
jgharston wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 21:19
Alderpoint wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:32 I know this was the commonly claimed to be case with Harrogate ending up in North Yorkshire rather than West Yorkshire in 1974.
Harrogate has absolutely no business being in a metropolitan county, it's a shire county town.
Yet previously it was within the West Riding, together with Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Doncaster, ...
Yes, the old West Riding was draw on geographical boundaries more than 800 years ago, not on commonality administrative boundaries, and was a mishmash of what had become shire areas and highly urban areas, and administratively full of County Borough holes.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Alderpoint wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 21:46
jgharston wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 21:19
Alderpoint wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:32 I know this was the commonly claimed to be case with Harrogate ending up in North Yorkshire rather than West Yorkshire in 1974.
Harrogate has absolutely no business being in a metropolitan county, it's a shire county town.
Yet previously it was within the West Riding, together with Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Doncaster, ...
The West Riding included big cities like Leeds and Bradford, and small towns like Sedbergh (in modern Cumbria), Barnoldswick (in modern Lancashire) and Settle (still in Yorkshire, albeit the North division). It contained most of the heavy industry of Yorkshire, and hence was divided up most thoroughly in 1974, with parts going into West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, Humberside (Goole), Lancashire (West Craven), Greater Manchester (Saddleworth) and Cumbria (Dent and Sedbergh). Put it all back together now and it would have a population of about 6 million. The populations of the North and East Ridings were piddling by comparison.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

Post by doebag »

In addition to my OP, the neck of the bag around Newmarket is about 350metres across at it's closest point measured t the junction of the A1304/B1506.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

Post by Initiation »

Apologies if I've missed it but with all this discussion on counties I can't believe this recent video that briefly examines the history of English counties has not been posted

https://youtu.be/hCc0OsyMbQk
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Initiation wrote: Thu Oct 07, 2021 21:19 Apologies if I've missed it but with all this discussion on counties I can't believe this recent video that briefly examines the history of English counties has not been posted

https://youtu.be/hCc0OsyMbQk
I think it's probably been posted in another thread already. But the Map Men are great fun (as is Jay Foreman alone), and worth subscribing to on YouTube. They've covered Trap Streets on published maps, as well, and for local government nerds Jay has done the London Boroughs.
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