English Counties
A few notes on some selected English counties. The names and boundaries of counties* have changed on maps over the years, the last major changes being in 1974 and 1990, and they will undoubtedly change again. A sketch map at the bottom of the page shows the counties as Wodehouse knew them.
- Avon, Cleveland and Humberside
- Born 1974, died 1990 - mourned by few.
- Cumberland
- Now joined with Westmorland, and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, as Cumbria. The new administrative county encompasses the Lake District, an area of rugged beauty, good hill walking, lots of rain and soggy sheep.
- Dorset
- Sometimes 'Dorsetshire', a mainly rural county on the south coast of England between Hampshire and Devon. It has several resorts on the coast and a naval base at Portland next to the extraordinary Chesil Beach, several miles of shingle bank. Many of the villages have names that rival anything PG thought up, for example, Puddletown, Langton Herring and the pair of Melcombe Bingham and Bingham's Melcombe.
- Gloucestershire
- A rural county with only Gloucester and Cheltenham of any size even today.
- Hampshire
- A semi-rural county on the south coast of England, it also contains the major ports of Southampton and Portsmouth. Unusually for a coastal county, many of the nicer parts are inland, notably the New Forest. Abbreviated to 'Hants' from the Old English 'Hantescire'.
- Hertfordshire
- Abbreviated to 'Herts.' One of the 'Home Counties' - in this case to the north of London.
- Home Counties
- A collective name for the counties immediately surrounding London. Currently these are (clockwise from the north) Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey and Buckinghamshire.
- Kent
- A good farming area, hence its name 'The Garden of England', with fruit orchards and hop farms. It has a number of ports, including a naval base, several old-fashioned coastal resorts and a large suburbia near London - a real mixture. It is also the nearest county to France, but then somewhere has to be.
- Lincolnshire
- A flat and largely agricultural county on the east coast.
- Loamshire
- A fictional county - used to add colour without being specific.
- London
- In Wodehouse's time, the second tier of Government for the area, now known broadly as Inner London, from 1889 to 1965. It was replaced by the larger Greater London Council.
- Metropolitan Counties
- These were created in 1974 so did not touch Wodehouse. They appear on modern maps, so for information they are: Merseyside, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.
- Middlesex
- Abbreviated to Middx., it used to be one of the home counties but no longer exists as a separate administrative entity. It does, however, continue to field a county cricket team. (The 'sex' in Essex, Sussex, Wessex and Middlesex stands for 'saxons', so these are East saxons, South saxons, West saxons and middle saxons respectively. There is no Norsex so presumably the North saxons wandered off before giving their name to a county.)
- Norfolk
- Occasionally mentioned in the books, a largely rural county with a virtually unspoilt coast. It includes the famous Broads, flooded peat diggings now used by wildlife and for leisure boating, an uneasy combination. Wodehouse stayed in Hunstanton several times and the town now has a road named after him (close to the golf course).
- Rutland / Rutlandshire
- Once Britain's smallest county it was brought within Leicestershire in one of the periodic shake-ups that Governments like so much. Recently it re-gained its 'independence' and is again a full county in every sense.
- Shropshire
- Salop is an old abbreviation for Shropshire, once used on envelopes or telegrams, and comes from the Anglo-French 'Salopesberia'. It has now been replaced by the boring 'Shrops' although Shropshire residents are still 'Salopians'. Shropshire is mainly rural, but saw the origins of the English industrial revolution in places such as Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge. PG's descriptions make Shropshire seem an idyllic place to live and it may well be, but the Shropshire town of Newport had the lowest temperature ever recorded in Britain: minus 26.1 degrees Celsius (minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit) on the 10th January 1982. Enough to make even the fattest pig shiver!
- Somerset
- A mainly rural county in the west coast of England with a largely north-facing coast onto the Bristol Channel. Visitors should note the local accent where the 's' sound almost becomes a 'z' so Somerset becomes 'Zummerzet'. Beware 'scrumpy' cider, particularly if still and cloudy - it has the alcohol content of wine and 'stingeth like a zerpent'.
- Sussex
- A largely rural county on the south coast with light industry and Gatwick Airport. The holiday resorts of Brighton and Bognor Regis are past their prime and Eastbourne now has one of the largest populations of the elderly in the country. That said, Brighton has one of the first municipally approved naturist beaches in England and a new Marina; by contrast, the Victorian Voulkes beach railway still runs. Inland are several race courses, including Goodwood, and some beautiful but gentle countryside. Newhaven is a cross-channel ferry port.
- Warwickshire
- The second 'W' is not pronounced. Abbreviated to 'Warks'.
- Wessex
- Not a county but a region, roughly covering Dorset. (As far as I know, not used by Wodehouse but appears in books by other authors, notably Thomas Hardy.)
- Worcestershire
- Pronounced "Woo-ster-sher" not "War-sester-shire" and abbreviated to 'Worcs'. Quite a few village names are reflected in PG's books, not surprising as he had grandparents living there suggesting he knew the area.
- Yorkshire
- A huge county by UK standards, including industrial areas, large cities, coastal resorts and open moorland. It has been the subject of many boundary changes.
© Reggie
Sketch map of the English Counties for use with Wodehouse's books.
Click here for a larger version (double size 912 x 1119 pixels - 55k).
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* Counties. In Britain there are essentially two types of 'county'. The 'historic' counties are regions which were used for administrative purposes, addresses, records etc. and have existed for hundreds of years unchanged. Changes to local administration, partly attempts at removing layers, have led to new administrative areas, some of which are the old counties with revised boundaries but some are entirely new; these tend to be called counties but that is not always correct. The regions found on today's maps or in the indexes of map books, are usually based on the administrative counties and larger areas, but not the smaller areas even when they are the highest layer below central government. This can lead to confusion, especially when dealing with references that pre-date these maps (i.e. the works of P. G. Wodehouse).
The historic counties have not disappeared, however. Middlesex, for example, still exists for some purposes, including the recording of plant and animal species, but is not shown on new maps. These counties can provide a continuity that ever-changing administrative boundaries simply cannot. For more information, please see the web site of the Association of British Counties. (This site advocates for greater use of the historic counties. Reggie does not endorse the views of campaigning sites as a matter of policy - please make up your own mind on the arguments presented.)
