What are the historic counties?

The historic counties are the long-standing named and bounded counties of Britain and Ireland. They developed over many centuries and remain an important part of local identity, history, culture, records, sport, genealogy and everyday speech.

They should not be confused with council areas, lieutenancy areas, regions or other public boundaries. Those areas are used for different purposes and have changed many times.

A place can therefore be in a historic county and also in a different council area or lieutenancy area. These are not contradictions — they are different layers of place.

RealCounties provides this map as a public reference and educational resource, so that anyone can see the historic counties clearly, compare them with other boundaries, and understand why different maps and organisations may describe the same place in different ways.

Sources and standards

Historic counties

This website made use of data provided by the Historic County Borders Project. The Historic Counties Standard defines the UK county geography; the Historic Counties Trust supplied the Definition A and B digital borders. RealCounties prepared the generalised overview and exact web-delivery packages.

Republic of Ireland geographic-county boundaries use the Historic County Borders Project’s 27 August 2026 all-islands data, implementing the Historic Counties Standard, obtained from the Wikishire catalogue. Definition A or B county geometry follows the selected map definition, with a simplified overview and ungeneralised source-derived geometry at detailed zoom. Republic of Ireland barony boundaries remain a separate Tailte Éireann product, derived from its 2019 National Statutory Boundaries and licensed under CC BY 4.0. Republic of Ireland baronies retain Tailte Éireann’s official 20 m generalised overview and ungeneralised source-derived strokes. Legacy historic-subdivision reference files are retained separately.

Census statistics

Census statistics: ONS Census 2021 for England and Wales; NISRA Census 2021 for Northern Ireland; Scotland’s Census 2022 / National Records of Scotland (NRS). RealCounties aggregates source geography data to geographic counties.

Administrative and electoral boundaries

• Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0.
• Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026.

These statements cover ONS Open Geography council and parliamentary boundary products and OS OpenData Boundary-Line source geometry used for lieutenancies, regions, county councils and LGR reconstruction. RealCounties normalised, generalised or packaged the production assets.

Local government reorganisation

Selected authority extents follow MHCLG decision letters and approved schedules. RealCounties reconstructed the displayed polygons from the attributed ONS/OS current administrative geometry. House of Commons Library geospatial material is used only for independent corroboration where available. Proposal cards contain package-specific provenance.

Search, base map and weather

• Place-name search uses the Gazetteer of British Place Names, published by the Association of British Counties and licensed under CC BY 4.0. RealCounties sharded and enriched the search index; major-feature entries are RealCounties-curated.
• Base-map tiles and postcode results use OpenStreetMap contributors data under the ODbL; postcode lookup uses OSM Nominatim.
• Current weather is provided by Open-Meteo.com under CC BY 4.0. RealCounties rounds and formats the displayed conditions.