In the United Kingdom, an extra-parochial area or extra-parochial place was an area considered to be outside any parish. They were therefore exempt from payment of any poor or church rate and usually tithe. Extra-parochial areas were gradually either integrated with a neighbouring or surrounding parish, or made separate civil parishes by the Extra-Parochial Places Act 1857 and the Poor Law Amendment Act 1868.
The term unparished areas (now most urban areas) relates only to civil parishes and has no connection to extra-parochial areas.
The Poor Law Amendment Act 1868 incorporated "for all civil parochial purposes" the remaining extra-parochial places, that were without an appointed Overseer of the Poor, into a neighbouring parish with the longest common boundary.[1]
The historic extra-parochial areas of Inner Temple and Middle Temple, within the liberties of the City of London, still exist[2] (and the combined extra-parochial area is shown on Ordnance Survey's most detailed OS MasterMap mapping). Since the time of the Knights Templar, 700 years before the separation of civil and ecclesiastical parishes, The Temple has been a Peculiar, exempt from the Bishop's jurisdiction (so the Master of the Temple is answerable only to the Queen, and not to the Bishop of London). Likewise the Temple was too well connected with the Crown to submit to the jurisdiction of the City: the Honorable Societies of The Middle and The Inner Temple undertook the functions of local authorities (and still do to some extent).