Welcome t'Map Men. We're t'men An' 'ere's t'map. ♫ Map Men, Map Men ♫ Map Map Map Men Men. In today's programme we're
going to talk about counties. Counties are the building blocks
that make up Britain. The units you're expected to have heard of to help place towns and villages
you've not heard of such as Wingerworth - Where?
- in Derbyshire. Ohh. Where's Derbyshire? Arguably the county that inspires the fiercest
pride and loyalty in its inhabitants is Yorkshire. Yorkshire is known for Yorkshire puddings,
Yorkshire terriers, and Yorkshire tea which comes from this part of Yorkshire. With its distinctive accent, strong identity, and intense one-way rivalry with Lancashire next door, Yorkshire folk are proud to tell everyone they come across that they come from Yorkshire. And they're all wrong to do so
because Yorkshire doesn't exist. Yes it does. Alright, show me a map with Yorkshire on it. Okay. Here. This map of the 39 counties of England clearly shows a county called Yorkshire. But this map of the 48 counties of England shows seperate North, South, West
and East Riding Of Yorkshire but no single county called Yorkshire. But my map is correct and up-to-date. So's mine. And so's this one. What's going on? We're doing Map Men. No, I mean with the counties? Well... The definition of 'county'
in Britain is a minefield of anomalies, asterisks,
confusions, vague areas and contradictory Wikipedia articles. The more you look for answers
about what a county really is the more questions you come across. Which is perhaps why no one's attempted
to do a video about them before. Even Google Docs won't let you
type the word 'county' without suggesting 'Did you mean "country"?' But we're not taking citation needed for an answer. It's time to do some actual research
to find out once and for all what is a county? Aaaand... go! ♫ ♫ ♫ Right, now that we've eaten all those biscuits,
shall we start doing some research? I've done it all. The first time England was split into what we now call counties was back in the 10th Century when King Æthelstan wanted to make sure
all the same laws were being obeyed and all the same taxes were being
collected all across England. Which curiously is the opposite reason why
you'd divide a nation up nowadays. He split his kingdom into bitesize manageable chunks and sent an earl to be in charge of each one of them. How they got their names tells you
a bit about how they were formed. These were named after ethnic groups or old kingdoms that existed before England. These ones that end in 'sex' tehehehehe were part of the Saxon kingdoms that
spread across the south of England. and these ones took their name from
the most important town - the county town and added the Anglo-Saxon word 'shire' on the end the same word that 'sheriff' comes from. Sheer... sheer...iff... sherriff Ooh! And for our American viewers,
it's pronounced "sheer", not "shyer". Actually it's pronounced "sher",
not "sheer", plebs! Over the centuries, these areas have been controlled by earls, dukes, sherriffs, lords, and at one point, counts which is how they came to be known as count-ies. The precise location of exactly where one county stopped and another one started wasn't important in those days. Nobody tried to draw the boundaries on a map
until the 1080s when the Normans did a survey. Hello Norman, I've done a survey of all the people
who say they live in Worcestershire. Thanks Norman, I'll just add that to my survey of all the people who say they live in Gloucestershire. - Oh dear.
- Oh dear. And that's how the fuzzy county borders
became sharp lines but with lots of panhandles, detached areas,
exclaves and squiggly bits. England's counties varied massively in size. The biggest, Yorkshire, was half the size of Wales and the smallest, Rutland,
was roughly the size of a whale with zero cities and frankly had
no business being a county. Harsh. But these differences didn't really matter, until... In 1888, the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury
established administrative counties, making democracy local. Each county would now have its own
county council in the county town in charge of local things like police, fire,
council tax, and so on. But some counties were too big
to be easily manageable. Sussex got split into east and west and Yorkshire was split into its historic "Ridings" a word that meant "thirds". Third...ings... th'rdings... r'dings... ridings... yeah, that sort of works. In addition to this, big cities were
given the status of County Borough which made them independent
from the county they were in effectively taking the
Leicester out of Leicestershire, Derby out of Derbyshire, and
Nottingham out of Nottinghamshire. So does this all mean that a united
Yorkshire hasn't existed since 1888? Well, not exactly. Strap in. The new administrative counties did not
replace the historic counties. Both systems confusingly
co-existed at the same time. And the confusion was
only going to get worse. Lots of towns in Britain had the same name. This often caused confusion with many people's letters being delivered to the wrong place. Which is why from 18 something onwards, the Royal Mail required that
every address had to end with a county. But! Because many post towns happened to spread inconveniently across county borders, the Royal Mail, for the own convenience,
introduced the last thing Britain needed... another counties map. The post office's counties didn't match up with the historic ones or the administrative ones. For example, the town of Ugley was in the county of Essex, but the address ended in Hertfordshire. Which meant there were now three
interpretations of what county you lived in: historical, administrative, and/or postal. As the centuries rolled on, the counties
system went from being confusing to being completely out of date. After the Industrial Revolution,
Britain's new big cities were manspreading themselves
across county borders. And many county towns were no longer
the commercial powerhouses they used to be. The once mighty city of York had fallen to
fifth place in non-existant Yorkshire. The counties didn't reflect 20th century Britain in any cultural, practical, or meaning... ...ful sense. It was time for a complete shake-up. The year was 1972. A time of optimism, and experimentation and the first episode of Rainbow. The Local Government Act of 1972 was a
radical attempt at cleaning up the complicated, outdated counties mess,
both once and for all. Brand new Metropolitan Counties
sprang into existence with modern sounding names like
Merseyside, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, and Tyne and Wear. London of course wasn't
included in any of this as they'd already done their
own thing ten years earlier which Jay has previously discussed
on a video he made without me. At the same time, several traditional
counties vanished overnight. It was county carnage! Huntingdonshire got eaten by Cambridgeshire. Hereford got anded with Worcester. Cumberland, Westmorland
and this lump of Lancashire were all merged and given
the horrible new name 'Cumbria'. And silly little Rutland was sensibly
absorbed by Leicestershire. Chances are, nobody would have
battenburged an eyelid at yet another change to
Britain's local authorities. But the Government made a big mistake. They messed with Yorkshire. Yorkshire's borders got a complete meddling, creating a new South Yorkshire which was cheeky. But when the East Riding got
taken out of Yorkshire altogether and became part of the new 'Humberside', that was not on. It was off. The previously Yorkshirean
residents of Hull were not at all keen to be
lumped with Grimsby on the other side of the River Humber. It was a particularly bizarre union given the Humber Bridge connecting the two sides hadn't even been built yet. There was an anti-Humberside campaign and even anti-Humberside graffiti. All this kerfuffle forced
the government's hand and in 1996, Humberside
quietly disappeared. As did other unpopular experiments like Cleveland, and Avon. Hereford and Worcester
once again became Hereford and Worcester... shire. Even ridiculous Rutland
regained its status as England's smallest county. The shake-up of 1972
designed to simplify things did nothing of the sort, instead marking the beginning of an era where county borders,
names, and powers have been changing on
an ever-increasing basis. England today has nine regions,
comprising 47 ceremonial counties alongside six metropolitan counties
comprising 36 metropolitan districts, 26 non-metropolitan counties
comprising 192 non-metropolitan districts and 56 unitary authorities, not including Greater London which is a Ceremonial County, and not a county comprising 32 boroughs and the City of London which is a district, and a county, and not a ceremonial county and we haven't even talked about Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland where it's different. Absolute state of this! Although it may seem
more impossible than ever to tell what, and isn't a county according to this particularly
aggressive map publisher... "It's very simple... "our historic counties have never been
affected, nor their boundaries changed "by the endless shifting of local government
boundaries over the past 100 years." This is a view shared by
the increasingly exasperated Association of British Counties, who seek to... "Give every county a county day" "teach counties to schoolchildren" "fly county flags in every county" "stop using the word county for local authorities" "who are not proper counties..." Fruitcakes. The reality is, unless you live in a county that's particularly, unusually
proud of itself, like Yorkshire, in general, not much of
a monkey's is given about the county you live in. And that might be because
it just doesn't really matter. It's not like the USA where laws vary
from one state to the next. Even Royal Mail doesn't care anymore. Thanks to postcodes, putting
a county on your address has been unnecessary since 1996 despite the boxes they make you
fill in on Amazon. But just because they're not important
doesn't mean we should forget about them. Present-day knowledge and understanding
of English counties is in an abysmal state. We stopped over four
people on the street and not a single one of them
could faultlessly name every single county in England
and its county town. Well we think that's a terrible shame. And it's about time something
was done about it. ♫ Ohhhhh.... ♫ There's Leicestershire, Oxfordshire,
Rutland and... Knock knock. Who's there? Sir. Sir who? Surfshark is a VPN... An app and browser extension that makes your internet safer by masking your IP address, protecting you from trackers and hackers. It has servers in more than 60 countries, which means you can bypass your country's internet restrictions and experience a fully open global internet. Sounds pretty. nerdy. Not for me thanks. It's not nerdy. Only nerds use acronyms like VPN. Okay. I'll show you how it's useful without using any acronyms. Let's say you're in a cafe And you're using your laptop using the public WiFi and you're trying to leave a comment on a YouTube video but it won't let you because the WiFi is restricted... WiFi is an acronym. No it's not, that's a common misconception. Oh. Anyway, if you've got Surfshark, then in just two clicks you can turn Surfshark on. and hey pesto, the internet's fully open like normal and it's just as fast and reliable as before. This genuinely happened to me in Starbucks. and I was genuinely blown away by how easy it was. But how do I actually get Surfshark if I'm not a nerd like you? I assume it's on the dark web. Nope. Just click the link in the description and get 83% off plus an extra 3 months for free by using the code "mapmen". Looks like there's a 30 day money-back guarantee. which basically makes it a free trial. So whether it's for country hopping, or making your internet safer or bypassing restricted WiFi to leave YouTube comments in a cafe Surfshark is really really good. This Surfshark thing sounds easier and more up my street than I'd originally assumed. And that's why you should get Surfshark ASAP. Oops! Acronym! Aaargh!! ♫ Leicestershire, Oxfordshire,
Rutland and Warwickshire Northamptonshire is next door. Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire,
Norfolk and Lincolnshire Huntingdonshire and there's more,
Like... Suffolk and Essex and Surrey and Sussex,
And Nottinghamshire in the centre Devon and Cornwall
and Dorset and Somerset Kent, and what comes after Kent? Er... Westmorland, Cumberland
also Northumberland and County Durham below There's Lancashire, Gloucestershire
Derbyshire, Cheshire Eleven more counties to go. Shropshire and Staffordshire,
Berkshire and Hampshire and Herefordshire next to Wales There's Hertfordshire, Middlesex
Worcestershire, Wiltshire and Yorkshire with all of the dales. And Buckinghamshire's the end of the list,
There's no need to sing any more Cos we're not doing Scotland or Wales or new ones invented in 1974.
Yay, a new Jay Foreman video.
Great. The thumbnail has me in existential crisis. Thanks for that.
I live in a town that was the county town of a different county. why and how it lost it's leadership and was banished to another county I don't know.
This guy is so off the chain, it's amazing
Really good. Thanks.
Hah I was going to post this too. I never understood this. At least now I know that that’s because it’s utter nonsense.
Thanks i've been waiting scince last Monday