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Post by islington on Jul 7, 2022 14:08:19 GMT
Here's an historic example.
This is a detail from the 1868 boundary commission's map of Manchester. Ignore the red line, which is the commission's proposed extension, and the green line, which is the municipal boundary. But the blue line, which is the existing Parliamentary boundary as set in 1832, includes a detached part of Newton township (the rest of which is located some distance away on the north side of the city) which is included within the Parliamentary boundary, but not the municipal boundary, and touches the main body of the PB at what I think, after close scrutiny of old OS maps, is a true quadripoint.
This would have been resolved had the proposed boundary extension not been rejected by Parliament; but as it was the arrangement persisted until 1885.
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YL
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Post by YL on Jul 7, 2022 15:16:52 GMT
Doesn't Norwich North constituency technically have a detached part now, because of the bizarre boundaries of Norwich city along the banks of the River Yare dividing Thorpe St Andrew South East ward of Broadland, and hence the constituency, into two? I think the electorate of the detached part is zero, though.
On the subjects of both detached parts and quadripoints, in the Cotswolds there is a Four Shire Stone where the historic counties of Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire meet. The part of Worcestershire in question, though, was a detached part, and since the tidying up of Worcestershire's detached parts in the 1930s it has been merely a three shire stone.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 7, 2022 15:30:10 GMT
Doesn't Norwich North constituency technically have a detached part now, because of the bizarre boundaries of Norwich city along the banks of the River Yare dividing Thorpe St Andrew South East ward of Broadland, and hence the constituency, into two? I think the electorate of the detached part is zero, though. And whilst the initial proposals fix that detached part, they create another one in East Cambridgeshire which does have about 150 electors.
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Jul 7, 2022 15:39:49 GMT
A quadripoint (I'd call it) is a common feature in countries like the US where a lot of boundaries are straight lines. It's much less common in the UK and often boundaries that look like quadripoints from a distance turn out on closer scrutiny to be two tripoints very close together. But a true quadripoint happens occasionally - not, I think we've established, in the case of Glasgow Pollok above, but if you want an example on the current map check Cheswardine ward in Shropshire at the westernmost point of which, in the Tern Hill area, there is what you would classify either as a salient or as a detached part, depending on your attitude to quadripoints. The OS treats it as a salient; I prefer to think of it as a detached part. The 1902 25" map clearly shows it as a quadripoint, the road crossing the river, forming a detached part. Well done!
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Post by aargauer on Jul 7, 2022 19:48:33 GMT
I've been to the four counties Indian restaurant near the edge of Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Warwickshire. Sadly Warwickshire and Derbyshire almost but don't quite touch.
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Post by islington on Jul 8, 2022 8:24:10 GMT
I've been to the four counties Indian restaurant near the edge of Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Warwickshire. Sadly Warwickshire and Derbyshire almost but don't quite touch. They used to ... I give you: the Measham pocket. (Turquoise = Derbys, purple = Warwks, orange = Staffs, yellow = Leics.) And while we're at it, here's another fine example of pre-1844 boundaries for the 'traditional counties' brigade to savour. (Yellow = Worcs, pink = Salop, Warwks and Staffs as above.)
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Post by aargauer on Jul 8, 2022 9:08:18 GMT
I've been to the four counties Indian restaurant near the edge of Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Warwickshire. Sadly Warwickshire and Derbyshire almost but don't quite touch. They used to ... I give you: the Measham pocket. (Turquoise = Derbys, purple = Warwks, orange = Staffs, yellow = Leics.) And while we're at it, here's another fine example of pre-1844 boundaries for the 'traditional counties' brigade to savour. (Yellow = Worcs, pink = Salop, Warwks and Staffs as above.) Interesting. Think our land might have spanned into Warwickshire back then. Or perhaps formed the Staffs / Warwickshire boundary.i Edit: I'm reading it wrong - it was entirely in Warwickshire. Now entirely in Staffordshire.
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Jul 8, 2022 9:15:39 GMT
They used to ... I give you: the Measham pocket. (Turquoise = Derbys, purple = Warwks, orange = Staffs, yellow = Leics.) And while we're at it, here's another fine example of pre-1844 boundaries for the 'traditional counties' brigade to savour. (Yellow = Worcs, pink = Salop, Warwks and Staffs as above.) Interesting. Think our land might have spanned into Warwickshire back then. Or perhaps formed the Staffs / Warwickshire boundary. Some of these squiggly bits are so small that when you switch the map to "outline,labels", some are too small to be labelled!
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YL
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Post by YL on Jul 8, 2022 14:00:04 GMT
I've been to the four counties Indian restaurant near the edge of Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Warwickshire. Sadly Warwickshire and Derbyshire almost but don't quite touch. They used to ... I give you: the Measham pocket. (Turquoise = Derbys, purple = Warwks, orange = Staffs, yellow = Leics.) How did that mass of interlocking exclaves of Leicestershire and Derbyshire around Donisthorpe, or the various tiny fragments of Derbyshire east of the main enclave, actually work in practice?
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YL
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Post by YL on Jul 8, 2022 14:21:10 GMT
Interesting. Think our land might have spanned into Warwickshire back then. Or perhaps formed the Staffs / Warwickshire boundary.i Edit: I'm reading it wrong - it was entirely in Warwickshire. Now entirely in Staffordshire. The historic boundary between Staffordshire and Warwickshire goes right through the middle of Tamworth. When the Parliamentary Borough of Tamworth was abolished in 1885, that meant that the town would be split between a county division of Staffordshire and one of Warwickshire. At one point the plan was that the Staffordshire division would be named after Lichfield and the Warwickshire division would be named after Coleshill; the maps on Vision of Britain show these names. But there was a principle set that the names of abolished boroughs should be preserved in county divisions where possible, and perhaps that was thought particularly relevant for Tamworth given its association with Peel, so the Warwickshire division ended up being named Tamworth, even though it only contained the Warwickshire part of the town. By the next review, in 1918, Tamworth Municipal Borough had been united in Staffordshire, but that review maintained a Tamworth division of Warwickshire which was entirely within that county and so didn't contain any of Tamworth MB (see the Warwickshire map from the 1918 review). It did contain some areas which are now eastern suburbs of the town but were then outside the MB boundary (Wilnecote etc.) but also contained Sutton Coldfield, Solihull and what is now Meriden constituency. As that suggests it was a rather large constituency and was broken up in the 1945 review. Edit: note how that 1917 Warwickshire map shows the detached parts in the south, including Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire ("Det. No. 6", i.e. Evenlode parish) meeting at the Four Shire Stone.
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ilerda
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Post by ilerda on Jul 8, 2022 14:44:29 GMT
They used to ... I give you: the Measham pocket. (Turquoise = Derbys, purple = Warwks, orange = Staffs, yellow = Leics.) How did that mass of interlocking exclaves of Leicestershire and Derbyshire around Donisthorpe, or the various tiny fragments of Derbyshire east of the main enclave, actually work in practice? I’m not sure it really had to work in practice. What exactly would need to work? There weren’t refuse collections or strategic highways authorities or planning committees to worry about back then. People just lived their lives and if it became relevant to know what county something was in for legal purposes, they probably went off what everyone locally believed to be the case.
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Post by johnloony on Jul 8, 2022 14:57:40 GMT
I sometimes imagine a version of Croydon in which the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) are not merely political parties, but are like tribal / communitarian alliances, engaged in a street-by-street war of attrition like Belfast during the troubles. The map in general terms looks like a straightforward division between Labour in the north, and Conservative in the south. But those of us with local knowledge know about various small chunks and exclaves where Labour has pockets of support in the south, and (probably to a lesser extent) vice-versa. If you could have detailed voting statistics for each ward, each polling district, each neighbourhood, each street, each tower block, then we could draw a Berlin Wall / peace wall between the two “communities” with dozens of tiny fiddly exclaves. As demographic changes happen over the decades, and as the parties wax or wane in popularity, there could be an entrenched war of attrition as one community gains control over each little block or street at a a time.
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Post by aargauer on Jul 8, 2022 15:37:50 GMT
I sometimes imagine a version of Croydon in which the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) are not merely political parties, but are like tribal / communitarian alliances, engaged in a street-by-street war of attrition like Belfast during the troubles. The map in general terms looks like a straightforward division between Labour in the north, and Conservative in the south. But those of us with local knowledge know about various small chunks and exclaves where Labour has pockets of support in the south, and (probably to a lesser extent) vice-versa. If you could have detailed voting statistics for each ward, each polling district, each neighbourhood, each street, each tower block, then we could draw a Berlin Wall / peace wall between the two “communities” with dozens of tiny fiddly exclaves. As demographic changes happen over the decades, and as the parties wax or wane in popularity, there could be an entrenched war of attrition as one community gains control over each little block or street at a a time. Unfortunately we are very much the Protestants in this demographic scenario. Better than Wandsworth at least where we are on course to be the Tamil Tigers.
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Post by No Offence Alan on Jul 8, 2022 15:44:38 GMT
Interesting. Think our land might have spanned into Warwickshire back then. Or perhaps formed the Staffs / Warwickshire boundary.i Edit: I'm reading it wrong - it was entirely in Warwickshire. Now entirely in Staffordshire. The historic boundary between Staffordshire and Warwickshire goes right through the middle of Tamworth. When the Parliamentary Borough of Tamworth was abolished in 1885, that meant that the town would be split between a county division of Staffordshire and one of Warwickshire. At one point the plan was that the Staffordshire division would be named after Lichfield and the Warwickshire division would be named after Coleshill; the maps on Vision of Britain show these names. But there was a principle set that the names of abolished boroughs should be preserved in county divisions where possible, and perhaps that was thought particularly relevant for Tamworth given its association with Peel, so the Warwickshire division ended up being named Tamworth, even though it only contained the Warwickshire part of the town. By the next review, in 1918, Tamworth Municipal Borough had been united in Staffordshire, but that review maintained a Tamworth division of Warwickshire which was entirely within that county and so didn't contain any of Tamworth MB (see the Warwickshire map from the 1918 review). It did contain some areas which are now eastern suburbs of the town but were then outside the MB boundary (Wilnecote etc.) but also contained Sutton Coldfield, Solihull and what is now Meriden constituency. As that suggests it was a rather large constituency and was broken up in the 1945 review. Edit: note how that 1917 Warwickshire map shows the detached parts in the south, including Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire ("Det. No. 6", i.e. Evenlode parish) meeting at the Four Shire Stone. 7 of my 8 great-grandparents were born in Worcestershire, with 1 in Gloucestershire, but the tidying up of the Worcs/Glos border puts that bit in modern Worcestershire.
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Post by islington on Jul 8, 2022 20:37:08 GMT
They used to ... I give you: the Measham pocket. (Turquoise = Derbys, purple = Warwks, orange = Staffs, yellow = Leics.) How did that mass of interlocking exclaves of Leicestershire and Derbyshire around Donisthorpe, or the various tiny fragments of Derbyshire east of the main enclave, actually work in practice? Well, I've been looking in detail at this area on OS maps in this area dating mostly from the early-to-mid 1880s (thank you, National Library of Scotland) and it's interesting to see that although the Measham pocket still existed, its boundaries were much less messy. The exclaves and salients of Leicestershire in the Donisthorpe area are all shown as part of Derbyshire, and the smaller Derbyshire exclaves to the east of the main pocket are shown as part of Leics. But I'd need to do more research to work out how and when this simplification occurred.
I also got distracted by following the boundary between the northern and southern divisions of Leics as it existed from 1832 to 1885. It turns out to be far more interesting and convoluted than anyone would think from looking at the rather sketchy map produced by the 1832 boundary commission.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 9, 2022 19:03:38 GMT
Interesting. Think our land might have spanned into Warwickshire back then. Or perhaps formed the Staffs / Warwickshire boundary.i Edit: I'm reading it wrong - it was entirely in Warwickshire. Now entirely in Staffordshire. The historic boundary between Staffordshire and Warwickshire goes right through the middle of Tamworth. When the Parliamentary Borough of Tamworth was abolished in 1885, that meant that the town would be split between a county division of Staffordshire and one of Warwickshire. At one point the plan was that the Staffordshire division would be named after Lichfield and the Warwickshire division would be named after Coleshill; the maps on Vision of Britain show these names. But there was a principle set that the names of abolished boroughs should be preserved in county divisions where possible, and perhaps that was thought particularly relevant for Tamworth given its association with Peel, so the Warwickshire division ended up being named Tamworth, even though it only contained the Warwickshire part of the town. By the next review, in 1918, Tamworth Municipal Borough had been united in Staffordshire, but that review maintained a Tamworth division of Warwickshire which was entirely within that county and so didn't contain any of Tamworth MB (see the Warwickshire map from the 1918 review). It did contain some areas which are now eastern suburbs of the town but were then outside the MB boundary (Wilnecote etc.) but also contained Sutton Coldfield, Solihull and what is now Meriden constituency. As that suggests it was a rather large constituency and was broken up in the 1945 review. Edit: note how that 1917 Warwickshire map shows the detached parts in the south, including Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire ("Det. No. 6", i.e. Evenlode parish) meeting at the Four Shire Stone. It's been suggested that the county boundaries in that bit of the world were deliberately designed to split up the core Mercian territory (Wednesbury to Repton, more or less) up between as many different counties as possible to minimise their influence.
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Post by Peter Wilkinson on Jul 9, 2022 23:10:08 GMT
How did that mass of interlocking exclaves of Leicestershire and Derbyshire around Donisthorpe, or the various tiny fragments of Derbyshire east of the main enclave, actually work in practice? Well, I've been looking in detail at this area on OS maps in this area dating mostly from the early-to-mid 1880s (thank you, National Library of Scotland) and it's interesting to see that although the Measham pocket still existed, its boundaries were much less messy. The exclaves and salients of Leicestershire in the Donisthorpe area are all shown as part of Derbyshire, and the smaller Derbyshire exclaves to the east of the main pocket are shown as part of Leics. But I'd need to do more research to work out how and when this simplification occurred. I also got distracted by following the boundary between the northern and southern divisions of Leics as it existed from 1832 to 1885. It turns out to be far more interesting and convoluted than anyone would think from looking at the rather sketchy map produced by the 1832 boundary commission.
More than likely, the Counties (Detached Parts) Act of 1844.
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YL
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Post by YL on Jul 10, 2022 8:41:14 GMT
It's been suggested that the county boundaries in that bit of the world were deliberately designed to split up the core Mercian territory (Wednesbury to Repton, more or less) up between as many different counties as possible to minimise their influence. Roughly when were they drawn?
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YL
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Post by YL on Jul 10, 2022 9:04:05 GMT
Well, I've been looking in detail at this area on OS maps in this area dating mostly from the early-to-mid 1880s (thank you, National Library of Scotland) and it's interesting to see that although the Measham pocket still existed, its boundaries were much less messy. The exclaves and salients of Leicestershire in the Donisthorpe area are all shown as part of Derbyshire, and the smaller Derbyshire exclaves to the east of the main pocket are shown as part of Leics. But I'd need to do more research to work out how and when this simplification occurred. I also got distracted by following the boundary between the northern and southern divisions of Leics as it existed from 1832 to 1885. It turns out to be far more interesting and convoluted than anyone would think from looking at the rather sketchy map produced by the 1832 boundary commission.
More than likely, the Counties (Detached Parts) Act of 1844. If you look at the 1885 map of Derbyshire on Vision of Britain you can see that the simplified borders of the Measham pocket are shown as the red constituency boundaries, although there is still something of a mess on the southern edge, around Appleby Magna, which doesn't show up very well at this scale. However, on the background map many of the smaller enclaves to the east of the main pocket, around Packington and Ravenstone, are still shown as dashed lines. The total mess around Donisthorpe isn't shown in detail but the most messy area seems to be delineated by dashed lines on both sides. The 1868 map is on a less detailed base map, but shows the smaller eastern enclaves as part of Derbyshire, except possibly the northernmost one, which has a green boundary but not a red one. The Donisthorpe mess is, again, not clearly shown. So I think that the simplification happened between 1868 and 1885, and was still quite recent at the latter date.
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Post by islington on Jul 10, 2022 10:09:45 GMT
More than likely, the Counties (Detached Parts) Act of 1844. If you look at the 1885 map of Derbyshire on Vision of Britain you can see that the simplified borders of the Measham pocket are shown as the red constituency boundaries, although there is still something of a mess on the southern edge, around Appleby Magna, which doesn't show up very well at this scale. However, on the background map many of the smaller enclaves to the east of the main pocket, around Packington and Ravenstone, are still shown as dashed lines. The total mess around Donisthorpe isn't shown in detail but the most messy area seems to be delineated by dashed lines on both sides. The 1868 map is on a less detailed base map, but shows the smaller eastern enclaves as part of Derbyshire, except possibly the northernmost one, which has a green boundary but not a red one. The Donisthorpe mess is, again, not clearly shown. So I think that the simplification happened between 1868 and 1885, and was still quite recent at the latter date. That may well be the correct answer. I don't think it can have been the 1844 Act because that was predicated on the provisions for Parliamentary boundaries as set out in the Boundaries Act 1832; and Schedule M to that Act explicitly provided for the Derbyshire exclaves in this area to remain part of Derbyshire. The 1844 Act is quite short and there's nothing in it to justify departing from Sch M, even though it must have become evident by 1844 that the Schedule, which shows clear signs of having been prepared in a hurry, contained a number of errors and ambiguities. There's an interesting Wikipedia article here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_county_exclaves_in_England_and_Wales_1844%E2%80%931974#Derbyshire that seems to imply that in practice there was some latitude about applying the 1844 Act but I can't see anything in the Act to allow this flexibility, nor is it clear who was responsible for exercising it. I also note that by the time the OS maps at the NLS were produced in the early or mid 1880s, not only had the utter mess around Donisthorpe had been put completely in Derbyshire but also the small enclaves to the east of the Measham pocket had been incorporated into Leicestershire, even though (as YL points out) the latter were still shown as part of Derbyshire as recently as the boundary commission map of 1868. In addition, although Appleby Magna remained very messy, some on the smaller excleves in this area seem to have disappeared by the time the OS maps were drawn.
This is all based on 6" OS maps. The 25" maps of the area for this period might provide additional information but unfortunately they are not on the NLS site.
The Wikipedia article says that the Donisthorpe mess involved 5 Derbyshire exclaves apart from the main Measham pocket itself, plus no fewer than 12 Leics counter-exclaves. Looking at the wikishire map I think this is correct; the mess also involves an unbelievably convoluted main boundary between the pocket and Leics, including a spectacular Leics salient that enters Donisthorpe village from the north via a narrow isthmus no wider than a road (although not coinciding with any actual road) and then spreads far to the south and west. Sadly for connoisseurs of this sort of thing, there are no counter-counter-exclaves that I can see.
The mind boggles.
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