About Counties: an Introduction
Introduction
Counties, which date back to the Anglo-Saxon period, are the ancient administrative divisions of England. The Domesday Book is divided into county sections and counties are still the major division of local government in England today.
County boundaries
Many changes in county boundaries have
taken place in the 20th century. For the sake of consistency,
the VCH still uses the county boundaries current when it was
planned in the 1890s. These are analagous to those familiar in
county cricket, so that for example the VCH Middlesex covers
north London and the VCH Surrey south London.
Hundreds
The Anglo-Saxons divided counties into various sub-units. Of
these the most common was the hundred. All the residents of a
hundred would regularly gather at a fixed meeting place to, for
example, hold courts and muster for military service. The name
of the hundred was taken from this meeting place so that the
hundred which covers most of north London was known as Ossultone
hundred, from 'Oswald's Stone' which served as the meeting
place. The hundred and hundred names are now mostly forgotten,
but they provided a convenient way of dividing up counties, and
most of the printed volumes of the VCH are arranged according to hundreds.
