What is a shire?

[Alice Bradford]

I feel really dumb. I've been trying to do Scottish research for about a year and I just discovered that I've been thinking Old Monkland was a city and Lanarkshire was like a county in the U.S. The other day I decided that maybe Lanarkshire was like a state in the U.S. If that is right, what is Old Monkland? Can someone educate me on this.
Thanks bunch,
Alice

[AndrewP]

Hi Alice,

Shires were (more or less) counties, of which there were 33 in Scotland, including your example Lanarkshire. Most, but not all of the counties were named after the county town, with the word "shire" appended to the town name, such as Lanarkshire. Other counties, such as Caithness, were never truly known as Caithness-shire or the like, but you will occasionally see them called that anyway (in error in most opinions).

Within each county were the parishes, of which Old Monkland was one of many in Lanarkshire. The parishes were originally a church-based area. Each parish was based around the parish church, and had a parish council which ran some of the local government for that parish. Some parishes had a town within them, others had villages, and urban parishes were completely within a town or city. The parishes varied greatly in size from one or two square miles up to over 100 square miles. There were about 900 parishes in Scotland at varying amounts within each county. Parishes as local government units were done away with in the 1920s (1929 or 1930?), but remain as church units to this day.

When civil registration was set up in 1855, registration districts were set up by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). Initially these were based on the parishes, but as populations in each area changed ove the years, some registration districts were divided to form two or more smaller registration districts. Or if there was a reducing population some registration districts were merged. More recently registration districts have merged for economic reasons. So the registration districts became more removed from the original parishes. From 1855 the registration districts were the local divisions used for the registration of births, marriages and deaths and hence are the units referred to in genealogy from 1855. Pre-1855 the keeping of parochial registers was a job for the "Established Church" (the Church of Scotland) within each parish. These registers are the ones now referred to as the OPRs (Old Parochial Registers).

All the best,

Andrew Paterson

[JustJean]

Hi Alice

A very good question if you ask me!! I gave up long ago trying to compare Scotland to the good ol' USof A......you'll only frustrate yourself if you think it's an apples to apples game! Don't even try and create states as it won't work... Some better understanding can be gained from learning all the various divisions and definitions of same over the centuries...and also understanding that Scotland got redefined by their English neighbors at some point. (I'm sure someone will be along and fill us in on this!)

One website that I've used that refers to places in England but is very helpful is here:

http://www.jimella.nildram.co.uk/counties.htm#name

Of course if you just Google on "Old Monkland" you can find this nifty little description here:

http://tinyurl.com/fsh84

and the further explanation of a Parish can be obtained by clicking on the words "Scottish Parish" located on the above site.

I hope this helps a little bit.

Best wishes
Jean

[Montrose Budie]

See also the post in the FAQ forum http://talkingscot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3436

David

[Malcolm]

Hello Alice
I don’t know how the Shire came into being in Scotland but, and I don’t wish to appear argumentative with the very delightful JustJean, Scotland was never redefined by the English. The English don’t, or have ever had, the authority.
A Shire has similarities with your American States in that they serve as discreet taxation centres. The principle difference being that your states are big and our shires are……well anyway, they were established by the Anglo Saxons.
Cut right back, a Shire is an area of land that could be covered by a man on a horse in a day.
I thought you might like to know that.

[DavidWW]

Hi Malcolm

Agreed to an extent but there were times when those in power in Scotland wanted to anglify Scotland, - hence Linlithgowshire, Edinburghshire, Haddingtonshire, Forfarshire, and the other one up on the Moray coast that I always get confused over, instead of The Lothians and Angus.

Hence also the use of "Buteshire" and "Argyllshire" instead of the plain "Bute" or "Isle of Bute" and "Argyll", or, maybe the County of Bute, and the County of Argyll.

Regarding other Scottish "shires", e.g. Ayrshire, there was never back in the 1600s anything other than the districts long known as Kyle, Carrick and Cunningham, which only later became the administrative unit known as the County of Ayr, or Ayrshire. Quite when the usage "County of ..." dropped out of regular usage and Ayrshire took over I'm not sure, but I suspect that it was also in the late 1700s, early 1800s when the "fashion" was to be as "British" i.e. English as possible.

I'm just thankful that I still live in Scotland, and not North Britain, as many people, not least Scots would have had it as recently as the mid/late 1800s

Only to an extent, BTW, in the sense that how can there be an equal partnership when the one partner is 10 times the size of the other, with the national parliament down in London where it was easy (until the restoration of the parliament in Edinburgh) for Scottish interests to be overwhelmed by those of England. Perhaps not de jure control, but certainly de facto control.

David

[joette]

I had never given the a thought to the use of Shire until I read David WW posts on the subject.Since then I have dropped the shire apart from Ayrshire/Dumbartonshire as this sounds "right" & not like an artificial addition.
I live in England very proud of being British but only too acutely aware of the indifference that most English people have to the rights of the Scots,Welsh?& the Northern Irish to express their own nationhood unless it is the St.Patricks Day Celebrations or the singing of Auld Lang Syne.

[DavidWW]

Hi Joette

Thanks for that.

I come from the town of Ayr, - I'm an "Honest Man" (go Google!), - and wouldn't hesitate to say that I come from Ayrshire, but am, at the same time, acutely aware that it wasn't always the case that that the county was so described, the alternative being the "County of Ayr".

David

[sporran]

Hello Alice,


Malcolm gave a useful definition of a shire as a local administrative centre, and that applies also to some of the UK's larger cities and metropolitan authorities.

There are big differences between UK counties and US states, mainly in autonomy. Although counties can pass local laws (by-laws), those are small scale, such as prohibiting drinking alcohol on some streets. Counties can not have different speed limits, "turn right on red", daylight saving, or local sales tax, and other things that caught me out when travelling through states in the USA!

One distracting thought while typing: has the Scottish Parliament tried to change the clocks away from GMT/BST? It would remove the problems about children going to school in the dark during winter months.


Regards,

John

[Malcolm]

Hello Joette
It’s upsetting to learn that you can’t express your nationhood down there in Middlesex. You should get yourself up to Yorkshire where you can strip the willow any old night of the week. Tell me what rights the English are indifferent to or how your Scottishness is stifled in any way and I’ll have a word with them for you. I hate to think of you being left out of the party. There can’t be another place on the planet where so much cultural diversity exists on equal terms. Is this indifference or inclusiveness?
I don’t know anything about “force de jure or de facto control” David. I do know that we pay tuition fees for two university places and another on the way up out of net earnings, imposed on us largely by Scottish MP’S who have no mind to inflict this tax on their own constituents. This must turn your notion of being overwhelmed upside down. Scotland may have more going for it than you know.
MM