Cautionary
Note:
These are the major old Cheshire townships, county boroughs and
villages as they existed before Local Government reorganisation
in 1974. Some of these places are now administratively within
the Greater Manchester Metropolitan County and the old County
Boroughs have been abolished. Stockport, for example, was before
1974 the County Borough of Stockport - now it is a Metropolitan
Borough within Greater Manchester and its residents pay a portion
of their Council Tax to the Greater Manchester Metropolitan County
Council and all ten Metropolitan Boroughs are members of the Association
of Greater Manchester Authorities. Therefore, to deny that Greater
Manchester exists is pointless.
However,
confusion still exists some thirty-odd years later as to whether
some of these old townships are still in the County of Cheshire
or in Greater Manchester, and the author periodically receives
mail asserting both to be true. A similar state exists in the
County of Lancashire. Is Liverpool still within the County of
Lancashire as it has been for centuries, or is it now in Merseyside?
Can it be both? The Government has always maintained that "...
new county boundaries are solely for the purpose of defining areas
of local government". They maintain that these are "...
administrative areas, and will not alter the traditional boundaries
of Counties, nor is it intended that the loyalties of people living
in them will change". So, are they in fact actually "new
county barriers" (to quote the govenment statement), or just
new "adminstrative" demarkations? Or is this simply
a governmental rationalisation of an impossibly embarassing faux
pas on their part in attempting to redraw old county borders?
Whichever
is the true state, the author wishes to state categorically here
that he has no loyalties or opinion one way or another on the
subject, and does not wish to enter into the ongoing debate. Therefore,
please do not email me with your viewpoint - I have now heard
all that can be said on both sides of the argument - it is now
for the reader to judge.
If you feel
that your village or town ought to have been included here, and
we appear to have overlooked it, please feel free to suggest it
to us, and provided we can find sufficient material to make an
entry worthwhile, we will endeavour to add it. Please contact
us via our online Contact Form.
