Watsonian vice-counties

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Watsonian vice-counties are subdivisions of Great Britain and Ireland used largely for the purposes of biological recording and other scientific data-gathering.

The vice-counties are based on the ancient counties of Britain, but often subdividing these boundaries to create smaller, more uniform units, and considering exclaves to be part of the vice county in which they locally lie. They provide a stable basis for recording using similarly-sized units, and, although grid-based reporting has grown in popularity, they remain a standard in the vast majority of ecological surveys, allowing data collected over long periods of time to be compared easily.

The vice-counties were introduced in Hewett Cottrell Watson who first used them in the third volume of his Cybele Britannica published in 1852. He refined the system somewhat in later volumes. The vice-counties remain unchanged by subsequent local government reorganisations, allowing historical and modern data to be more accurately compared.

Every vice-county in Britain has a name, and additionally, they are numbered from 1 to 112. Vice counties in Ireland are numbered from H1 to H40.

Contents 1 List of vice-counties 1.1 Great Britain 1.2 Ireland 2 Vice counties listed by county 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] List of vice-counties

[edit] Great Britain VC Vice county 1 West Cornwall with Scilly 2 East Cornwall 3 South Devon 4 North Devon 5 South Somerset 6 North Somerset 7 North Wiltshire 8 South Wiltshire 9 Dorset 10 Isle of Wight 11 South Hampshire 12 North Hampshire 13 West Sussex 14 East Sussex 15 East Kent 16 West Kent 17 Surrey 18 South Essex 19 North Essex 20 Hertfordshire 21 Middlesex 22 Berkshire 23 Oxfordshire 24 Buckinghamshire 25 East Suffolk 26 West Suffolk 27 East Norfolk 28 West Norfolk 29 Cambridgeshire 30 Bedfordshire 31 Huntingdonshire 32 Northamptonshire 33 East Gloucestershire 34 West Gloucestershire 35 Monmouthshire 36 Herefordshire 37 Worcestershire 38 Warwickshire 39 Staffordshire 40 Shropshire 41 Glamorganshire 42 Breconshire 43 Radnorshire 44 Carmarthenshire 45 Pembrokeshire 46 Cardiganshire 47 Montgomeryshire 48 Merionethshire 49 Caernarvonshire 50 Denbighshire 51 Flintshire 52 Anglesey 53 South Lincolnshire 54 North Lincolnshire 55 Leicestershire (with Rutland) 56 Nottinghamshire 57 Derbyshire 58 Cheshire 59 South Lancashire 60 West Lancashire 61 South-east Yorkshire 62 North-east Yorkshire 63 South-west Yorkshire 64 Mid-west Yorkshire 65 North-west Yorkshire 66 County Durham 67 South Northumberland 68 North Northumberland 69 Westmorland (with Furness) 70 Cumberland 71 Isle of Man 72 Dumfriesshire 73 Kirkcudbrightshire 74 Wigtownshire 75 Ayrshire 76 Renfrewshire 77 Lanarkshire 78 Peebleshire 79 Selkirkshire 80 Roxburghshire 81 Berwickshire 82 East Lothian 83 Midlothian 84 West Lothian 85 Fifeshire 86 Stirlingshire 87 West Perthshire 88 Mid Perthshire 89 East Perthshire 90 Angus 91 Kincardineshire 92 South Aberdeenshire 93 North Aberdeenshire 94 Banffshire 95 Moray 96 East Inverness-shire 97 West Inverness-shire 98 Argyllshire 99 Dunbartonshire 100 Clyde Isles 101 Kintyre 102 South Ebudes 103 Mid Ebudes 104 North Ebudes 105 West Ross & Cromarty 106 East Ross & Cromarty 107 East Sutherland 108 West Sutherland 109 Caithness 110 Outer Hebrides 111 Orkney 112 Shetland

[edit] Ireland VC Vice county H1 South Kerry H2 North Kerry H3 West Cork H4 Mid-Cork H5 East Cork H6 Waterford H7 South Tipperary H8 Limerick H9 Clare H10 North Tipperary H11 Kilkenny H12 Wexford H13 Carlow H14 Laois H15 South-east Galway H16 West Galway H17 North-east Galway H18 Offaly H19 Kildare H20 Wicklow H21 Dublin H22 Meath H23 Westmeath H24 Longford H25 Roscommon H26 East Mayo H27 West Mayo H28 Sligo H29 Leitrim H30 Cavan H31 Louth H32 Monaghan H33 Fermanagh H34 East Donegal H35 West Donegal H36 Tyrone H37 Armagh H38 Down H39 Antrim H40 Londonderry

[edit] Vice counties listed by county

County	Vice counties
Bedfordshire	Bedfordshire
Berkshire	Berkshire
Buckinghamshire	Buckinghamshire
Cambridgeshire, incorporating the Isle of Ely	Cambridgeshire
Cheshire	Cheshire
Cornwall	West Cornwall with Scilly, East Cornwall
Cumberland	Cumberland
Derbyshire	Derbyshire
Devon	South Devon, North Devon
Dorset	Dorset
County Durham	Durham
Essex	South Essex, North Essex
Gloucestershire	East Gloucestershire, West Gloucestershire
Hampshire	South Hampshire, North Hampshire, Isle of Wight
Herefordshire	Herefordshire
Hertfordshire	Hertfordshire
Huntingdonshire	Huntingdonshire
Kent	East Kent, West Kent
Lancashire less Furness	South Lancashire, West Lancashire
Leicestershire and Rutland	Leicestershire with Rutland
Lincolnshire	South Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire
Middlesex	Middlesex
Monmouthshire	Monmouthshire
Norfolk	East Norfolk, West Norfolk
Northamptonshire, incorporating the Soke of Peterborough	Northamptonshire
Northumberland	South Northumberland, North Northumberland (Cheviotland)
Nottinghamshire	Nottinghamshire
Oxfordshire	Oxfordshire
Shropshire	Shropshire
Somerset	South Somerset, North Somerset
Staffordshire	Staffordshire
Suffolk	East Suffolk, West Suffolk
Surrey	Surrey
Sussex	West Sussex, East Sussex
Warwickshire	Warwickshire
Westmorland and Furness	Westmoreland with Furness
Wiltshire	North Wiltshire, South Wiltshire
Worcestershire	Worcestershire
Yorkshire	South-east Yorkshire, North-east Yorkshire, South-west Yorkshire, Mid-west Yorkshire, North-west Yorkshire
Anglesey	Anglesey
Brecknockshire	Brecknockshire
Caernarvonshire	Caernarvonshire
Cardiganshire	Cardiganshire
Carmarthenshire	Carmarthenshire
Denbighshire and Maelor	Denbighshire
Flintshire less Maelor	Flintshire
Glamorgan	Glamorgan
Merionethshire	Merionethshire
Montgomeryshire	Montgomeryshire
Pembrokeshire	Pembrokeshire
Radnorshire	Radnorshire
Aberdeenshire	South Aberdeenshire, North Aberdeenshire
Argyllshire	Main Argyll, Kintyre, Mid Ebudes, South Ebudes
Ayrshire	Ayrshire
Banffshire	Banffshire
Berwickshire	Berwickshire
Buteshire	Clyde Isles
Caithness	Caithness
Dumbartonshire	Dumbartonshire
Dumfriesshire	Dumfriesshire
Edinburghshire	Edinburghshire
Elginshire	Moray
Fife and Kinross-shire	Fife
Forfarshire	Angus
Haddingtonshire	Haddingtonshire
Inverness-shire and Nairnshire less Outer Hebrides	Easterness, Westerness, North Ebudes
Kincardineshire	Kincardineshire
Kirkcudbrightshire	Kirkcudbrightshire
Lanarkshire	Lanarkshire
Linlithgowshire	Linlithgowshire
Orkney	Orkney
Peeblesshire	Peeblesshire
Perthshire and Clackmannanshire	West Perth, Mid Perth, East Perth
Renfrewshire	Renfrewshire
Ross and Cromarty less Outer Hebrides	East Ross, West Ross
Roxburghshire	Roxburghshire
Selkirkshire	Selkirkshire
Stirlingshire	Stirlingshire
Sutherland	East Sutherland, West Sutherland
Wigtownshire	Wigtownshire
Zetland	Shetland

[edit] See also

• Subdivisions of England
• Subdivisions of Scotland
• Subdivisions of Wales
• Subdivisions of Northern Ireland
• Counties of Ireland

[edit] References

• Vice-county map from the British Bryological Society
• Report on a project to store maps defining vice county boundaries in digital format The report contains details of the origins of the Vice-counties (PDF).

[edit] External links

• National Biodiversity Network vice-county browser
• Interactive map which displays vice-counties alongside other boundary types
• OS grid reference to vice-county conversion utility